Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga
Remember how I mentioned that this story had mature themes, such as violence? The first part of this chapter is a good example. If you don't want to read it, there will be a summary at the end of the chapter. If this makes you uncomfortable, I have written a helpful haiku for you:
Yes, there is murder.
If you don't want to read it,
Skip to the line break.
A Very Unhappy Birthday
It was raining. It was the sixteenth day in a row it had rained, and frankly, she was sick of it. Sure, it always rained in Forks, but usually, there was at the very least a few minutes when the storm quelled. Even rainclouds had to run out of rain sometime, right? She traced a raindrop that ran down her bedroom window with a finger, her breath fogging up the glass.
She didn't turn around when she heard the door open, choosing instead to stay curled up under the blanket, cocooned in her window seat. She began to draw hearts into the condensation, trying to collect her thoughts. She tried to ignore his looming presence behind her, but he cleared his throat, making it impossible. He was so impatient.
"I got your message," he said. She could just make out his reflection in the window: he crossed his arms, uncrossed them, stuck his hands in his pockets, shifted from foot to foot. "You know you can't contact me."
"This is important. I didn't have a choice," she replied, still staring out the window. She lifted her arm and wiped away some of the condensation with her shirt sleeve so she could see out into the backyard. The leaves on the tree outside her window were flip-flopping in the wind, the silvery underbellies flashing themselves. She knew her silence was annoying him, but she didn't know how to say it, where she should begin, when to say it, if she should say it. Maybe this was a mistake, asking him to come.
"It better be," he huffed. His reflection shifted, reflecting his movements as he sat on her bed. "What could possibly be so incredibly urgent that you had to—?"
"I'm pregnant," she said, cutting him off. She barely recognised her voice. It was detached, cold. She was surprised her breath was able to fog up the window, with how ice her words were. She lifted her arm again to wipe away the condensation. "It's yours."
The room was silent at this, save for the pitter-patter of rain falling on the roof, hitting the window, smattering against the tree leaves outside. He had stopped fidgeting on her bed, frozen in… shock perhaps, though that didn't seem like quite the right word if he was feeling anything quite like she was. Surprise, terror, dread were similar, but all fell short, not precise enough, big enough, for the magnitude of emotions she was feeling.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive," she replied, just as the pregnancy test she had stolen from Mrs Mallory, the woman whose children she babysat, and who, unlike her, actually wanted a baby, had said.
She could hear him exhale and watched his reflection as it rose from her bed. He paced back and forth and back and forth and back and forth across her small bedroom. "How? You said you were on birth control." He had stopped, facing away from her. His breathing was heavy.
At last, she turned away from the window to look at him. "I was. Obviously, it didn't work."
"You have to get rid of it," was his sharp reply.
"Get rid of it?" She repeated, the words tasting foreign in her mouth. Her brain felt sluggish as it attempted to process what her ears had heard.
"Yes, Anna, get rid of it," he snapped, spinning around to face her, though she couldn't lift her eyes to look at his face. She kept her gaze focused on his light blue button-down shirt. "You can't be pregnant. You don't even have a boyfriend. People will talk."
Anna let out a cold laugh at this. "And what, they think they will suspect you? Besides, how would I even get an abortion? Where would I go? Are you planning on paying for it?"
He let out a snort of derision. "Of course not. How do you think that will look if I did? Think, Anna."
"Even if I found a clinic, how would I get there? My dad won't let me use the car without a good reason."
"Make something up," he replied. "I don't care what you do, just get rid of it. And don't tell anyone about this." He stepped around her, his shoulder brushing against her arm as he moved towards his door.
"Yeah, we can't have your precious wife finding out about this," she said before she was even aware she had said it. "I wouldn't want to have to explain to your kid that he has a half-sibling because Daddy slept around."
"Shut up," he snarled, stopping at the door and spinning to face her. "Don't talk about them."
"Oh, have I hit a nerve? I just didn't think they meant all that much to you."
"I said shut up."
She knew that she should, but she couldn't. Her mouth had taken over and she was flinging all of the anger filled vitriol she could at him. He was the one who had approached her, he was the one who insisted that he didn't have to use a condom. This was just as much as his fault, and he was acting as if she was somehow the cause of it all? How dare he act if she was nothing more than a troublemaker, a homewrecker, wanting to break up his marriage? As if she was just some silly little girl who got herself knocked up by an older, married man? As if he was somehow the only one who was affected by this, the only one with something to lose.
"You know, you were the one who wanted to start something up with a teenager. I wonder what your wife would think about our little hook-ups."
"I said shut up!" he roared, crossing the tiny room in two steps.
"Better yet, maybe I should just go straight to the police. I bet they would be really interested that you've been fucking your eighteen—" she didn't get the chance to finish because he had grabbed her by the neck and shoved her against one of the bookshelves that lined the bedroom walls.
"I said, shut up!" His grip was tight and she couldn't move, couldn't breathe. She tried to pry his fingers away, but he didn't seem to notice that he was choking her. He stooped his head, her eyes meeting his for the first time since he had entered her bedroom. "Don't you dare talk about them, and don't you dare talk to them. Do you understand what will happen if you do, you stupid girl? My life will be ruined if you say anything!"
Her neck was burning and his fingers were unrelenting. She clawed at the back of his hands in desperation. Her vision was going dark. Everything hurt, and she couldn't get away from him. He was still ranting, screaming in her face, spittle flying from his mouth and landing on her cheeks.
His eyes, such a beautiful blue, the colour of a pair of Levi's, or the sky on one of those rare sunny days, were the last thing she saw before everything faded.
She awoke with a gasp as she hit the floor, flailing as she tried to free herself from his grip. No, not a man. A blanket. Her blanket. She was tangled up in her yellow and grey comforter, which she had pulled off her bed. She glanced over at her bed, which was empty, devoid of any strange, faceless men. She looked up at the window seat she had been sitting in. The other she. Anna. Her name had been Anna. She wasn't Anna, though. She was Louisa.
Louisa had also been sitting in the window seat, in the exact same spot as Anna. She had been… she had been reading. Anna had been watching the rain. It wasn't raining at the moment. Louisa had been reading. Louisa pulled a book out of the tangle that was her comforter. She had been reading her science textbook and she had fallen asleep reading, in the window seat.
Louisa had had a dream. A nightmare of Anna, a girl who had been strangled, murdered, by her lover. Who was Anna? The name sounded so familiar. Louisa looked around her bedroom, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. Louisa had been in her room in the dream, she was sure of it, she knew because of the three walls full of bookshelves. She could see her bed on the opposite wall, which stood in front of the built-in bookshelves. Anna's bed in the dream had been in a different place, tucked onto the shorter side of the room, so that it was surrounded on three sides by the shelves, which had been covered in books. A lot more books than Louisa herself had.
Anna. Why was Anna familiar?
Louisa didn't get to chance to pursue this line of thought, however. There was a knock on her bedroom door and she jumped in surprise. She tried to rise to her feet, only to find that she was shaking so badly that her legs couldn't support her. The door opened and a man entered, having heard her fall. He crossed the tiny room and Louisa found herself enveloped in his arms before she could comprehend what had happened. Louisa stiffened and tried to pull away from the contact. Was her cheek pressed against his shoulder in a hug? Yes, she was being hugged, not strangled. By her father. This man was her father.
"Lulu, what are doing on the floor?" Her father asked, grabbing her discarded comforter and wrapping it around her shoulders when he noticed that she was shaking.
Louisa realised that at some point she had started crying, though she wasn't entirely sure why. It had just been a nightmare, after all. So why had it felt so real? Why did the tips of her fingers feel cold, as if she had just been drawing shapes on the cool glass window? Why could she still smell the strange man's spicy cologne when her nose was buried in her father's faded Stanford t-shirt? Why did it feel like her windpipe was being crushed? Louisa pulled away from her father to massage her neck, which didn't really hurt but felt like it burned.
"Does your throat hurt?" Mr Collins asked, sitting back on his heels, trying to take in his elder daughter's face in the dark room. He reached around his daughter to turn on the lamp next to her bed. "Or is it your head again?" He turned his head towards Louisa when she didn't answer, squinting as he waited for his eyes to adjust, only to startle when he realised her face was bleeding profusely. "Did you fall and hit your head?"
Now that he mentioned it, Louisa realised that she did have a rather large headache developing. "I don't know," she said, her voice scratchy. "I was asleep— I fell asleep. In the window seat." She couldn't recall hitting her head when she fell, though. Of course, she hadn't been able to remember who she was when she first woke up, so her memory was less than reliable. "I couldn't remember."
"Couldn't remember what, sweetheart?" Her father asked while he stood, searching for a box of tissues. He handed her one and instructed her to pinch her nose and tilt her head forward.
"Me."
Louisa felt her father stiffen next to her. "Elaborate."
It was a testament to her shock that Louisa answered honestly. "My name is Louisa," she said firmly. "Not Anna."
"And do you know where you are?"
It always rained in "Forks." That sounded right.
"Do you know when your birthday is?"
The first images that Louisa recalled were odd, like she was watching an old eight-millimetre film reel: a bonfire in the backyard, roasting marshmallows, a large group of teens sitting on logs; a pumpkin pie instead of birthday cake; a yellow lab wearing a blue collar eating the discard wrapping paper. "Soon."
Louisa looked up at her father, whose face, even in the dim lighting, was pale. "What do you mean by soon?" he asked.
That was a good question. What did she mean by soon? The birthday presents suggested that her memory was from a birthday party, and the bonfire and pumpkin pie led her to believe that the event took place in the fall. She felt like she was missing something, but the more she thought about it, the more the ache behind her left ear seemed to worsen. "November seventeenth."
If it was possible, Mr Collins' face grew paler. He rose to his feet and left the room. Louisa could hear him making a phone call, though she couldn't sure to whom. Louisa reached over to her bedside table and picked up her own cell phone, only to see that it was just after midnight. Just below the time were the words 'Friday, November 17'. Louisa frowned. It wasn't her birthday, was it? It didn't feel like it should be her birthday. Louisa placed her phone on the floor next to her and let her eyes fixate on the bookshelves that lined her walls. Bookshelves. Louisa had more bookshelves, somewhere. In her mind?
Yes, that was very correct. Louisa closed her eyes and tried to think of a library. It was the library her mother had taken her to when she was younger. There was a pretty blonde woman behind the front desk. Her mother. Her mother handed her a book, a thick, dark blue, leather-bound book, with 'Louisa' embossed in gold on the front. Louisa flipped it open.
"March seventeenth," Louisa whispered to herself. That was her birthday. Where had November come from?
"That took entirely too long," Mr Collins said with a huff, reinterring her room. Louisa's eyes opened and she watched her father as he drew closer, shoving his wallet into his jeans' pocket. He had changed out of his pyjamas. He was going somewhere. "I'm taking you to the emergency room. Can you stand?"
Louisa nodded, her head feeling like it was overstuffed with cotton. She grabbed onto her bed and tried to heave herself up, but her legs gave out. Her father seemed to be expecting this and scooped her up into his arms, and carrying her out to the car. Louisa rested her head on her father's shoulder, which was covered by a thick winter coat. Louisa wondered if she should have changed too. She glanced down at her pyjamas, her top covered in blood. She decided she didn't care too much and she doubted a doctor would care either. It's not like they were blood drinking vampires, after all.
No, Louisa didn't care much at all who saw her covered in blood and shaking like a leaf. Just as long as it wasn't Jasper the Babe. She didn't think her dignity could survive.
No Stone Left Unturned
When Jasper heard that Louisa was in the hospital, his first instinct had been to rush to her side to make sure she was alright, which he found to be as confusing as it was alarming. Louisa was only his classmate, after all, and he had no real reason to feel so concerned for her wellbeing. So he allowed Emmett to pull him back down into his seat and continue their game of chess, resolving to see her as soon as visiting hours began at the hospital.
"You need to go to school, sweetheart," Esme reminded him, amusement swirling around her. "You can visit her after." When Jasper pointed out that he didn't mind skipping, as he had already graduated high school many times, Esme laughed out loud and wandered off towards the kitchen, shaking her head.
He and Emmett had been playing a game of chess in the den when Carlisle had gotten called in for an emergency involving one of his patients. His adopted father hadn't said what it was for at the time, but he had taken an alarmingly thick medical file with him as he dashed out the door, a mixture of frustration and unease trailing after him. It hadn't been all that difficult to figure out who the patient was. Carlisle had done little else in his free time besides reading through Louisa Collins' medical file since it had arrived from Tacoma the month before. Jasper would be lying if he said that he had no real desire to read the file for himself, but declined, wanting to give Louisa as much privacy as possible. Edward, on the other hand, had no such qualms and assured him one day while they were out hunting that the bizarre contents explained a lot about the human.
"It will look weird if you visit her this morning," Alice said, appearing next to him and handing him his backpack, eyes glazed. "She'll want to know how you found out about her so quickly. Wait until after school. That way you can blame the small town rumour mill."
"You definitely don't want to look like a stalker in front of your age-appropriate love interest," Edward added, standing up to retrieve the car keys and his own backpack.
Jasper was rather glad that he no longer blush because if he could, his face would have been redder than a sunburned hog. "I'm over a hundred years older than her."
"A semi-age appropriate love interest, then."
Jasper looked down at the chess board, unable to keep his face neutral. "She's not my love interest," he mumbled, taking Emmett's rook.
Edward gave him an unimpressed look. "Liars burn in Hell," he said.
Despite being forced to endure a day of school, there was little any of his family could do to stop him from visiting Louisa when it was finished. Too impatient for Edward to drive him to Forks General Hospital, Jasper ran on foot the moment the final bell rang, where a helpful nurse pointed him towards paediatrics. Not that Jasper needed the assistance. He could just make out Louisa's sweet scent over the sterile environment of the hospital waiting room, which he followed down a maze of corridors until he was standing outside of the paediatrics wing. That was when his mind caught up with his body and he halted, his hand hovering over the door.
What on God's green earth had he been thinking? What was he doing here? He was a vampire, with poor self-control, unsupervised, in a building full of bleeding people. He could have killed someone. He could have killed Louisa. Coming was a mistake, obviously. A familiar burn was making itself known at the back of his throat, and Jasper stopped breathing. He needed to get as far away from the hospital as soon as possible before he killed someone.
A tug on his pants interrupted his thoughts. Jasper glanced down at a little redheaded girl with wide brown eyes who was looking up at him with determination. She was probably around eight, and her thin frame was swamped in a hospital gown covered in teddy bears. The hot pink band on her right wrist read the name 'Kelly Beckett'.
"Are you looking for someone?" She asked in a squeaky voice.
Jasper shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
Kelly's face split into a wide grin, revealing a missing front tooth. "Good! You can play the knight in dirty armour." She reached up and grabbed his hand and began to pull him through the doors, into the paediatric wing, rambling a mile a minute about how she needed a companion for her quest. He allowed himself to be dragged by the tiny human into a worn down playroom, where she pushed him into a child-sized plastic chair and placed a paper hat on his head. "What's your name, Sir Knight?" she asked while she dug around in a toy chest.
"Jasper?" he replied. He sucked in a quick breath, waiting for the burning in his throat to reappear, only to discover that it didn't. He took in another tentative breath, only to pick up a sour odour coming from the little girl in front of him that reminded him strongly of ammonia.
"Sir Jasper, then," she intoned. She extended a plastic sword to him as if she were presenting him with Excalibur itself. "Will you help the Dragon Kelly free the princess from her tower?"
The blond considered saying no, getting up and leaving the hospital like he had originally planned. Go home and wish that he was stronger, better at controlling his bloodlust. But the feelings of hope and excitement pouring out of the little body in front of him were persuasive. She was lonely. Jasper knew what it was like to be lonely. He reached out and took the sword from her. "Why is my armour dirty? Aren't knights supposed to have shining armour?"
Kelly gave him an annoyed look as if she thought he was asking an incredibly dumb question. "Knights who did anything had dirty armour. Only lazy knights had shiny armour. Nurse Mary said so."
Jasper couldn't argue with that logic. He stood and followed Kelly around as she crawled on the floor roaring and narrating a landscape only she could see. He awkwardly swung the sword when she instructed him, and she congratulated him for taking out a pair of nasty gnomes. At one point, Kelly grabbed Jasper's arm and managed to swing herself up onto his back in order to avoid walking in an acid river. When Jasper asked why he had to walk through the acid river, she reminded him that he was the one with armour, not her. Their game continued on like this for longer than he had expected, and while Jasper felt awkward lifting the little girl up so that she could reach the magical pears or army crawling on the ground to avoid the mad scientist's death ray, he couldn't bring himself to care too much, particularly whenever Kelly flashed him gap-toothed grin.
"I thought I recognised your dulcet tones," a warm voice said from behind him while he was trying to explain to Kelly why he wouldn't fit inside the toy chest with her, despite her insistence that it was bigger on the inside. Jasper jumped and spun towards the playroom door, probably faster than what a human would have considered normal, where a pale Louisa was standing. She was wearing a pair of black sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, her long blonde hair tied up in a messy bun on the top of her head. The skin under her eyes was shadowed like his were whenever he went too long without hunting.
"You look like you were ridden hard and put away wet." Brilliant. Insult her, Major. Women love that.
Louisa didn't seem to mind, though, because she let out a tired laugh. "Trust me, I feel even worse."
Kelly, stood up to get a good look at the newcomer. "Detective Louisa! Have you returned for our quest?"
Louisa shook her head sadly. "Alas, my horrific dragon, I have not. I've come to bid thee farewell."
Kelly clambered out of the toy chest and bounded over to Louisa. She grabbed the teen by her arm and tugged her down so that their faces were level, and she tapped on her forehead. "You're head isn't sick anymore?"
"Not that the doctors could find," Louisa replied, her eyes only briefly flicking to him. He could tell that she was embarrassed by his presence. "They're sending me home now."
"You'll come back and visit me though, right?" Kelly asked. "And you'll read me that book you were telling me about?"
The corner of Louisa's mouth twitched up. "How does next Friday sound?"
The eight-year-old let out a squeal of delight and hugged Louisa before zooming off out of the playroom. Louisa watched her go, straightening up before turning back towards him. "You made her week, you know that, don't you?" she said.
For the second time that day, Jasper was glad that he didn't have the ability to blush. "What do you mean?"
"Her dad bounced when she was diagnosed with some sort of kidney disease and her mom has two jobs to pay for her treatments. The nurses try to keep her as happy as possible, but it's not the same, you know? There aren't too many other kids here."
He was surprised by Louisa's bluntness, though upon reflection, he knew he really shouldn't have been. "She told you this?"
Louisa gave him a wan smile. "Not in so many words, no."
"I have a feeling that your detective title was well earned with our esteemed dragon."
Even in her exhaustion, there as a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. "You'd be correct."
Jasper found himself stepping closer to Louisa, drawn in by her amusement. He found himself wanting to lift up a hand, close the distance between them, and touch her face, realising he had never actually touched her skin before. He'd carried her in his arms, he'd offered his arm to her (like the gentleman his mama had raised him to be, thank you very much), and he'd placed a hand on her back. Yet he never had actually touched her skin, to feel its softness, its warmth. He wanted to trace a finger across her defined cheekbones and find out if they were as hard as they looked.
Okay, so maybe he did have a tiny crush on the girl.
"Maybe you could tell me about it sometime over coffee."
Louisa's eyes widened at his words. She recalled being in a similar position not too long ago. This time, at the very least, she wasn't distracted. She tried to think of something cool and witty to say, but everything sounded lame in her mind. Had she been silent for too long? What if Jasper thought she was going to turn him down again? "I drink coffee," she blurted out before immediately wishing she could take the words back. He probably thought she was stupid now.
Jasper's lips quirked up into a smile. Was he laughing at her?
"Maybe sometime next week then?"
Holy shit. That worked? Louisa found herself nodding and exchanging phone numbers with Jasper the Babe. He gave her another one of his tiny smiles before departing with a wave, leaving a dazed Louisa standing alone in the playroom.
"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Skippers, here is that summary for you: Louisa has a dream about an eighteen-year-old young woman named Anna, who is telling her lover that she is pregnant with his child. The man is married, and when she threatens to expose their affair, he strangles her. Louisa wakes up from the dream and unable to tell if she is Anna or Louisa. Papa Collins takes her to the ER.
(A/N: It took me much longer than I had expected to write this chapter. The first drafts were wildly different, but I'm really pleased with how this turned out. Jasper's narration was probably the hardest to write because so little is known about Jasper in canon, so I have to develop a personality for him. Let me know what you thought because I would love to hear it! What do you think is wrong with Louisa? Leave me a comment! -CheckAlexa)
