Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns everything you recognize from this amazing Twilight universe.

Thank you for the feedback on the last chapter!

Sooo little bit longer of a chapter this time, since I made you guys wait again...

"...suffer now or suffer then. It's bad enough. I want the fear. Need the fear cause... (he's alone...)"--Chevelle

"I want her," Raoul stated evenly.

"Too bad. You'll have to fight him for her. That is between you two. I just needed to get him here," Maria replied, looking out the window.

"That's not exactly a 'no'..." Raoul started to say. Maria cut him off.

"No."

He grimaced and then glared at her.

She turned swiftly and had him by the throat against the wall in an instant. "If you weren't so useful, I'd kill you for looking at me that way," she stated clearly.

He let out a breath as she let go of him and strolled back over to the window. "Get out of my sight. I'll call you when it's time."

Raoul left the room, mumbling something in French. But then his eyes sparked, as if he had suddenly figured something out.

"Aurelie!?" he called, moving at vampire speed to find her.

Alice had been sitting in that same room for a few hours, now.

"Aurelie!?" Raoul called, his voice echoing down into the basement. She had only been seeing minutes into the future.

Etienne raised an eyebrow in amusement as he heard Raoul's voice. He had been assigned to watch over Alice. He was not as talkative as Aurelie, but she was somewhat glad for this.

Alice didn't want to search her visions with him in the room. She felt too vulnerable when she let herself get lost in them. Instead, she just tolerated the fleeting ones that would come over her without her looking for them.

The first had shown her Bella and Renesmee, but she couldn't make out what they were doing or saying. Nessie blocked that part.

A second one had shown her just a glimpse of Jasper's face before he faded away again. She broke her earlier rule and tried to find him again, but saw nothing. She hoped it was just because Jacob was with him. She didn't want to think of the other option of why his future suddenly wasn't there...

The third and most recent one was the one that had scared her. It was the one that she had just experienced now, with Raoul and Maria. What had he meant, he wanted her?

Another vision swept over her, unwillingly. It was detailed, definite.

As Raoul entered the room, Maria turned to him impatiently. "Finally. What took you so long?"

"I was distracted, please forgive me," he said quietly, his eyes downcast in respect.

"They'll be here shortly. I sent Carlos and Rosa to track them down. They called to say that Jasper is about two hours away, but moving fast. They may get here before then," Maria told him, her Spanish accent just barely noticeable in her excitement.

"Excellent," Raoul agreed.

Maria smirked and came closer to him. "Should be nice to see an old friend, don't you think?"

He met her eyes and she froze at his glance, her eyes narrowing slightly as she stared at him.

Raoul grinned and moved so that he was pressed against her. He kissed his way down her neck, his large hands on her small hips.

"You went to Aurelie," Maria whispered hoarsely, her voice clear with need for him.

"I did, yes. Sometimes it's nice when you actually want me when we have sex," he told her, almost bitterly, as he continued to kiss her.

Her laugh turned into a moan as his mouth found her chest. "That girl... I never expected that someone could benefit from her gift more than she could."

"You never expected to meet someone who could steal others' gifts, either," he said, making her gasp as his teeth grazed her skin.

"Too bad it's only temporary," she taunted him.

He bit her, angry that she was disrespecting him, and she dug her nails into his shoulders, "Raoul, if I was thinking correctly right now, you'd be suffering," she said, amused.

"Lucky for me, then," he mumbled, "Enough talking."

Raoul made it last until he felt the effects of what he had taken from Aurelie start to fade. Maria wouldn't want him nearly as much when Aurelie's power left him entirely. He used the last few moments to his advantage.

"Raoul," Maria begged. He loved to make her beg. The only time that she would be submissive to him was when he tricked her into it with Aurelie's help. He'd have to find a way to thank Aurelie someday.

"I want Alice, Maria," he said roughly, not giving her what she wanted just yet.

"He won't help us, then. I don't--" she moaned again as he teased her, "Please, Raoul," she pleaded once more.

"Let me bite her," he whispered into her ear as he tongue flecked over her neck. He was perfectly still.

"Fine!" she yelled, giving in to him. In return, he gave her what she wanted; let her feel how she needed to feel, all the while smirking at the way she said his name.

Aurelie really didn't realize how powerful her gift could be.

Alice watched as Aurelie came in to sit with her. She was beautiful as ever, but there was something in the way that she walked that let Alice know something was different.

Alice's eyes scanned over her, resting on her wrist. Her vision had come true. She didn't need to see the bite mark to know it. She had just seen Raoul using it against Maria. To make Maria agree to let Raoul bite her....

That one vision had told her everything. Jasper would be here in around two hours, maybe more, maybe less, depending on how far into the future the vision was. It felt close.

Raoul had been with Maria for about fifty minutes in her vision, which meant that he had about an hour to get to Alice. Maria, in the heat of the moment, had given him permission to bite her.

Alice finally realized the significance of Aurelie's scars. Every one of them was from Raoul. He had bitten her that many times so that he could use her gift. It seemed that by biting her, he managed to get a taste of her power. What exactly was her gift? To be able to make people lust after her?...

She tried to suppress the fear of Raoul's wishes coming true. She tried to have hope that Jasper would come in time....

If she had understood Raoul's gift correctly, then by biting Alice, Raoul would be able to temporarily steal visions from Alice. He wanted to know the future.

"Leave us," Aurelie told Etienne quietly.

Etienne raised an eyebrow. "And do what?"

"Don't question me. I don't care. Just go," Aurelie replied sharply. She reminded Alice slightly of Rosalie. She thought that they would get along. Either that, or end up killing each other.

He kissed her cheek before leaving them. Aurelie stood stiffly at the door, staring at Alice.

"I want to tell you something," Aurelie started.

-~-~-~-

"I want to tell you something," Jasper started.

"What?" she giggled, brushing her nose against his.

"Something I've never had to say out loud to anyone," he said quietly.

She blinked as he let her feel the shift in his emotions. He had gone from being playful to serious in just a second.

"I'm listening," she said clearly, curious about what he suddenly felt that he needed to tell her.

He swallowed, but his eyes never left hers. "You never--" he took in a breath, "you saw me with Peter and Charlotte, right?"

She nodded, waiting patiently to see where this was going. She could feel that he was nervous, but even if he hadn't been letting her feel it, she would have seen it in his eyes.

"But never with Maria?"

She shook her head. "You were never with a Maria. Sometimes you were with me and other times you and I were with the Cullens... or you were with Peter and Charlotte. Or alone..."

He ran his fingers through her hair and she nuzzled her face into his hand. They were laying outside, under the stars, on a beach somewhere along the east coast.

"I'm... I didn't... you know about the wars."

"Some. What you've told me from the scars."

While they had traveled, they had invented a game to pass the time, but also to get to know each other. To get to know the person that they both felt so connected to immediately.

In the first part of the game, Alice would pick 2 scars and Jasper would tell her how he got them. She'd ask him so many questions about the story, wanting to know everything about him.

Then, in the second part of the game, Jasper would ask Alice two questions: one about her vampire past, that she could answer, and one about her human past, that she couldn't.

Sometimes they'd make up fun stories about what she might have been like as a human. Other times, he could feel the loss that she felt when she realized that no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember.

"Well... I purposely never mentioned Maria when I told you stories about the scars..." he admitted, trying to feel out her emotions. She was still calm.

"Okay," she nodded, "you want to tell me about Maria? 'Cause I have a feeling if you don't do it soon, I'll have a vision about it before you get the chance," she tried to joke to lighten the mood.

"That might actually be easier..." he mumbled to himself. She crinkled her brow with concern, now.

"Jasper... you can feel how I feel, yet you're still uncertain?" Alice asked, running her thumb over a scar under his eye.

He searched her eyes again before he closed his own, giving in.

"Alice, when we would fight well, we were rewarded. By Maria. Our leader. She would give us anything we wanted: small territories to watch over and hunt in, an extra few humans to share with her that night... and if we did especially well, she would give us herself...."

He weighed her reaction and felt her curiosity and concern. He wished he knew why she was concerned!

Alice stayed silent, so Jasper decided to continue. "When we didn't do so well... when we lost a battle, or disobeyed orders, we were punished. Again, by Maria. She'd take away territories, starve us for a few days until we couldn't take it anymore... or she'd..." He stopped as he felt the growing fear in her. Then he pushed through it.

"She'd force us to give ourselves to her. For whatever she wanted. Sometimes it would be to watch her eating while she only allowed us a drop of the blood. Other times it would be for more. For sex. For biting... for whatever. She liked to bite... to keep us in line."

He turned his wrist over to show her a particularly gruesome scar that covered part of the front of his wrist and part of the back. "Besides marking necks out of passion, she liked to bite wrists...out of dominance. To show that we were hers. More than once. It's where she bit me when she turned me... she liked to remind us why we were there in the first place."

He started to lose himself in the memories, until he felt Alice's tiny fingers curling around the scar that Maria had marked on his wrist.

"Her venom burned sharper than any other I've ever felt," he confessed, his eyes cloudy.

Her bright eyes met his. "And you were afraid to tell me this until now," she stated. It wasn't a question. She knew.

He tried to explain to her. "I feel as if... as if I need you. And I know that you feel that way too."

It hadn't been said, but both knew that it didn't need to be. It was there. They needed each other. They wanted each other. And they both felt like they were getting close to sealing those wants and needs by taking the final step in their commitment to one another.

"I didn't want..." he shook his head, "before anything else happened between us, I wanted you to know that the way that I felt about Maria was just some form of twisted lust. It could never mean anything close to what I feel when I'm with you. And I needed you to know that the first time we're together, it will be to make love. It won't be anything at all like what Maria initiated...."

He searched her eyes and tried to lighten the situation, "I apologize, I'm not very good with words. Emotions are more my specialty...."

But Alice's emotions were confusing him. He expected something painful, or some type of confusion from her... but she was excited and her love for him was starting to crush every emotion in his body.

"No words, then," she whispered.

He felt her nerves perk just for a moment, and then pure bliss coursed through her as she crushed her lips against his, pulling him tightly to her on the sandy beach.

And after making love with Alice for the first time, his hope for the future was sealed and definite.

-~-~-~-

"How do you know them?" Edward finally asked, breaking Jasper out of his thoughts about Alice. Edward had noticed that Jasper had been doing nothing other than remembering different things that he had done with Alice throughout the years. But he didn't need to read Jasper's thoughts to know that he was lost without her.

"Raoul?" Jasper questioned out loud, so that Emmett and Jacob could hear too. He could feel their curiosity peaking with Edward's.

"Yes."

"Raoul and I fought alongside Maria for a time," he answered.

He felt their emotions spark as they recognized the name.

"Do you think...?" Jacob started.

"Yes," Jasper answered, knowing what he was about to ask. "He's still fighting with her. I have no doubt that she's involved."

No one said anything. What could they say? How did you comfort someone who had just had part of their own soul ripped from them?

They ran in silence for a while, until Jacob stopped, followed quickly by Edward.

Jasper felt the shift in their emotions. An identical wariness spread through both of them, and Jasper sent it to Emmett so that he would understand why they had stopped.

What's he thinking, Edward? Jasper thought.

Edward tilted his head slightly to the left, his emotions asking for Jasper's permission.

Jasper nodded, and together, Edward and Jacob leaped into the brush and ran off.

Jasper could feel Emmett's burning confusion, and appreciated the fact that Emmett had decided not to ask Jasper what was going on. Jasper didn't know, either.

Before long, Edward and Jacob had returned, bringing a man that Jasper recognized with him.

"There were two of them. This one and a woman. The woman ran off," Edward explained, handing the man over to Emmett, who could hold on to him better.

Jacob was still in wolf form. He snarled at the man that they had captured.

"This is Carlos," Jasper told them. "What do you know about Alice, Carlos?"

"Please don't hurt me, Jasper. I'm sorry. You know how Maria is..." Carlos begged.

"You know how I am, too. I won't hurt you unless I think you deserve it. Can you give me anything that'll make me want to spare you?" Jasper reasoned calmly.

"Maria doesn't let anyone see Alice. Only Raoul, Aurelie, and Etienne can guard her. They're the ones who took her."

"Why?!" Jasper demanded, his eyes blazing as he moved closer to Carlos' face. "Why did they take her?!" His voice almost broke with the emotions in his tone.

Emmett's grip on Carlos become tighter.

"She didn't tell me! She just sent us out to see how you were progressing. She knows you're coming. That's all I know, I swear. You know how she works... she tells no one her plans, always suspecting them to betray her...."

"That's all you know?" Jasper asked.

"I promise you. It is all I know! Please..."

Jasper tested his emotions, and then looked over to Edward for confirmation. Edward gave him a slight nod and Jasper decided that he was telling the truth.

"We're leaving, now. He is of no use to us," Jasper stated simply, starting to head through the woods again.

"What do I do with him?" Emmett asked, referring to Carlos.

Jasper felt the anger that was coming from everyone, but especially from Jacob. Jacob's anger was close to a mad rage. He was murderous.

He shrugged, his mind, once again, focused on finding Alice. "Let the wolf decide."

And then he ran, knowing that they would catch up. Part of him, to his surprise, didn't want to know what Jacob would do to Carlos.

This took me a LONG time to write. But it's a little more than usual... I hope you all enjoyed it. What'd you think of the flashback? Of Raoul? Of his and Aurelie's gifts? Please let me know what you thought of everything---good or bad! Noting makes me happier than to hear what you all have to say about my writing. (Well, almost nothing! haha). Review, please!