Chapter Nine

A True Death

"We can't continue this."

"What? Jasper, what are you saying?"

"It's better this way. We can't be together. It was a mistake."

"No, no it wasn't! Jasper, what happened? Tell me!"

The dial tone answered her. He hung up.

The day was a haze. The moment she closed her phone she felt the numbness kick in, a involuntary reaction to the hurt she would feel.

She didn't taste the cereal she ate for breakfast, she didn't feel the jerk of her old truck as she started it. She drove on auto-pilot all the way to the reservation. She parked outside of Jacob's house and rested her head on the steering wheel. She gripped the lower half of it willing herself to stay together, to not fall apart. Not again. She wouldn't survive it a second time.

Right on time Alice slid into the passenger seat, she could see her bloodless skin out of the corner of her eye. Without a word she took Bella into her arms and she laid there. She wasn't crying, shivering or having any normal reaction. Was she so used to pain of rejection that she could no longer feel it?

"You knew," she said in statement to her friend.

"Yes."

"A warning would've been nice."

"I'm sorry. It wouldn't have changed anything."

"Why? Why did he do it?"

"He had a slip-up in his diet."

Suddenly she was cold, ice running from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. Alice stirred to move away, obviously thinking it was her cold skin that was doing it, but Bella held on tighter. "Who," she chattered.

"No one we know."

That calmed her, but only slightly. An innocent person died, had the life literally sucked out of them. Did they see what was coming? Did they suffer? Was their family aware that she was gone? A human. Someone like her.

"That's it," she asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Isn't that plenty?"

"No. She shook her head and pushed herself up. "No! It's not plenty. I forgive him. Mistakes happen."

Alice's eyes widened. "Our mistakes are fatal, Bella."

"He didn't mean to."

"He thinks he doesn't deserve you."

"That's not true!"

Her door opened and she heard Jacob's voice, "Bells..."

Violently she shook her head, not looking to Jacob. She knew she was going to hear a bad prediction and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She had to know and at the same time she didn't want to.

"Bella," Alice said strongly grabbing her head, holding her still. "Listen -"

"He's not coming back," she choked.

Sympathetically she whispered, "no, he's not."

A warm hand held her shoulder as the world - her world ripped away and bled in the form of tears. They held her as she shattered to a million pieces.

She didn't need Alice's visions to have seen where she was going to go. She would spend her life making it up to the man she betrayed. For all of eternity that was what she would do. It was what she owed.

Morbidly she thought that it was at least better than the last time someone left her. At least she had something to live for, something that would occupy her every moment. She would give up the life she wanted to live with the vampire that was with her from the beginning. She would give him everything and anything he wanted.

***

Jasper sat inside of the shades of the woods. Bella wasn't inside of the house to avoid and Edward was off with Emmett, his thoughts were safe, but he didn't move. He watched the stream flow over the multi-colored pebbles. It was trickling, a composition that was better than anything his brother could've dreamed up with.

He wasted his day there. He observed the clouds in the stream rolling past until they became dark and gloomy. He stayed out of reach of his reflection. He knew that crimson would streak the gold. He didn't care to see the blood of Marissa. A human like his - like Bella. Precious Bella.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw Bella. There was no life in her, or in him. He imagined the kill, not Marissa, but of the only woman that mattered to him. Too easy, too sweet, too close.

The night rolled on. It rained on him and yet he didn't budge. No one came to get him. Bella never called back but as far as he was knew his phone was possibly ruined from the light storm that he was encased in. All that mattered to him was that he was alone in the world once more. He cared for nothing else but that small fact. He was alone after he left his maker Maria, and he was alone then after leaving Bella. What was worse was that he couldn't even look forward to death like any other human would in his position.

Edward and Emmett came home. Emmett joined Rosalie in their bedroom while Edward sat at his piano. He played Bella's lullaby and Jasper felt inhumanely sick.

What was he doing? He had made the exact same choice that Edward made with her. He was leaving her but not truly letting her go. They had already decided to change her, he would just have Carlisle change her sooner, there would be no risks after that. They would all have what they wanted. He was being as foolish as his brother. She would forgive him, she would still love him.

It was true what they said... Love blinded you.

He stood up and was a second from going to her, to beg her to take him back. However, he heard her truck and he realized that the song was nothing compared to her footsteps and the heartbeat that brought the thoughts of how close he could've come to ending it. It didn't matter. He would tell Edward, he'd take the punishment, and he would be with her.

He had no idea that it would get worse... The long kiss she gave Edward and then the words that sent him spiraling down an abyss he couldn't return from.

"Edward, can I have that ring now?"

Down the abyss, to the lowest of the sea floors. He would never return from it. He was drowning and yet he would never die.

As Edward placed his mother's ring on her finger Alice bounced up to them. She was filled with bubbly happiness begging already to be coordinator. Edward was relieved and ecstatic. And Bella...

Without thinking of what he was doing Jasper walked towards the window. As though she was a Siren and he was a sick sailor, he kept walking, closer and closer. Her emotions grew stronger and he knew he wasn't mistaken. She wasn't happy. Her frightful feelings were a cloud over the otherwise joyful occasion. He was impressed, on the outside she hid it well.

For the first time in his death he felt dead. He was empty inside and none of his thoughts were coherent. He wasn't really thinking or even feeling, just observing. A walking corpse, that was all he was.

Instinctively Edward turned his head to him. Jasper could practically hear his brain working miles in seconds to figure him out. What was surprise became contemplative, then wary.

What he must've looked like, soaked to the bone, resembling death exactly. He tried to care. He couldn't. He wished he was six feet under like he was supposed to be. If he was then Bella could be happy. She was supposed to be.

She looked at him - saw through him was more fitting. He begged her silently to hate him. She felt an unbound sadness and it showed only in the tiniest of her smile, the glittering of her eyes. He couldn't leave. She needed him. He needed her.

Alice grinned and excused herself. She went outside and grabbed his arm, her nails digging in pulling him forcefully from the scene, but as his contact with Bella broke he realized that he was the scene.

He trailed numbly after her, into the woods, to his post. She was livid when she rounded on him and he wished for her wrath to be strong enough to destroy him.

"What do you think you're doing," she hissed.

He didn't respond.

"Do you want to give yourselves away?"

"No," he whispered.

"I don't know why. You made a stupid mistake by letting her go. You should have thought of telling him sooner!"

That snapped him back, and he was filled with rage. "What if it was her, Alice? It could've so easily have been Bella in the woods! She's ran in here before! What if it was a friend of hers?! She's better off with him, she's safe!"

She relented in pity. "If you don't stand up and take her back you'll both be miserable. I saw it, Jasper. She won't be happy, neither will you. I don't have to see further than that to know what will happen to you two. The whole family will be torn apart."

"The family will be torn apart if we stayed together."

"Yes, for a little while... You have a choice, a permanent change that will be the death of both of you, or a transient change that will leave you two happier than you've ever been."

"She wanted that ring!"

"You know how she feels! How difficult is it to go in there and end all of this -"

"As difficult as ending her!"

"What's keeping you?!"

"I know emotions, Alice! I know that she needs this!" He clutched his shirt, right over his still heart. It wasn't even beating and it was in pain. "This guilt has been hurting her and when she sees Edward's face when we tell him... It would forever be on her conscious. I can't allow that." He knew it would. There was no way out of feeling pain. They were trapped, they had always been trapped.

There was a sense of pride of being able to do what Edward could not. He let her make her own decisions. And that was her decision, what place of it was his to decide for her? He couldn't take her away... He could feel what she felt, the unhappiness but he knew that she was still human. She could change, she could be happy. Alice could be wrong, she had been before. He'd known her long enough for that.

"Jazz..."

He loosened his fist. He had to know. "She'll marry him?"

"Yes."

He fell to his knees in agony.

***

Jasper and Alice were gone from her sights but she didn't stop glaring at the woods where they disappeared to. How dare he! How dare he look at her like that! Like he was a man - a human man - at the stake! How dare she care...

"Bella," Edward said softly, barely a breath to break her trance.

She nodded, letting him know she was listening. In truth she barely was.

"Tell me what you're thinking, please."

"What's wrong with Jasper?" It was possibly the wrong thing to say. She couldn't even tell if that was something she would have asked before. It didn't have the same meaning it would have had. She wished she could care about that, but she really did want to know.

"I don't know. He's been muddy lately... I haven't heard any true thoughts of his in quite a while. I assumed you would know. You may have accepted my proposal, Bella, but I know that there is something you all are continuing keeping something from me. Can it be that bad?"

He had no idea. She looked to him, but saw Jasper in her mind. "I love you."

If she cut herself would he do her the favor of killing her?


A/N: I can hear the complaints already. The "why's." I hope this will make sense as it does to me.

I know not many of you will understand this. Jasper and Bella are, yes, going about this the wrong way. They fear the hurt they will cause other people and so they keep it a secret until they gather the courage, until they feel ready to face up to it. Jasper (though he obviously knows better) is respecting Bella's choice to make it up to Edward, because she feels guilty. Love and guilt can do a lot of things to a person. They don't always make sense on the surface, people go with their emotions a lot, they don't think things through. Jasper was feeling so terrible about what he had done that he went with the first solution, but unlike Edward he was quick to realize. You can say that they are being stupid, and they should do this or that, it is true, but we all do things that are undeinably stupid.

I apologize for so many author notes, and this particularly long one.