No grownups told me to stop, so I'm still playing in the time machine. But Stephenie Meyer still signs the gang's permission slips.

Bella

It took every ounce of strength I had and more to walk steadily back toward my home. If I could just keep my head facing straight ahead, keep my chin up, not look back…

I clutched my skirts with my fists so hard I could feel my fingernails digging into my palms through the coarse fabric. Tears continued to stream down my cheeks, but I hardly noticed them anymore. All I could feel, aside from the sheer force of will I was exerting not to turn back, not to run to him, not to scream to him not to go, was the lingering feeling of heat on my lips from his kiss.

Without realizing it, I released my skirt with one hand and touched my lips, half in wonder, half in shame. Part of me was scandalized; I was a widow – it was a certainty now, I had to get used to the term – and a new one at that. I'd just kissed a man I'd known for scant hours, and worse than that, the man who had only moments ago become the face of my Jacob's death. And I kissed him, not the other way 'round.

And it had been the most intense, most exciting, most feverish, most passionate kiss in my short life.

Jacob and I loved each other before we even knew what love was. We were intimate, of course, just as every husband and wife should be. It was natural and I wasn't ashamed to think of my late husband that way. I'd loved him very much, and I had loved being with him in our bed.

But when I kissed Edward, it was as though a lightning bolt shot from the sky straight into my heart and sent sparks radiating out through the rest of my body. My lips tingled and burned where they had joined with his. His taste, all coffee and molasses and sweetness, lingered on my tongue. I blushed at the thought. It had taken many a kiss with Jacob before I could kiss him open-mouthed without feeling dirty or shameful, but one kiss from Edward and I was practically behaving like a harlot!

Except it hadn't been like that at all. I hadn't meant to kiss him, not really. I only meant to tell him to be careful, that I couldn't stand it if he died. That much was true. I feared his death almost as though it was my own. In a way, if he died, it would be like my own death. I'd already lost Jacob, even before the return of Edward's locket – of my locket – confirmed his death at Chancellorsville. I'd felt his loss months ago, when I waited in vain for weeks for some small sign that he lived. In a way, I'd felt it when I let him leave two years ago without telling him goodbye.

I couldn't lose Edward that way too. I had to tell him that despite everything standing between us, I couldn't bear for him to die.

That was all I meant to tell him when I tore from the house across the yard to catch him as he walked away with Emmett. I thought I meant it when I told Emmett and Jasper I didn't want to see him again. But Jasper seemed to see straight into my soul. He knew that decision would haunt me should some disaster befall Edward in the battle ahead, and he had courage enough to tell me so. I'd been angry, but as much at myself for denying what I knew to be true as at him for arguing the point.

So, I went to tell him, to say goodbye properly. Yet somehow, standing there, clutching his lapels while I tried to catch my breath, I got lost in those green of his eyes. I got lost in the lilt of his voice, in the heat emanating from his body, and all the words left my when he took my hands so gently in his and spoke my name, begging me for an explanation, I did the only thing that seemed right in that moment.

It was shock enough that I kissed him, but when I pulled away, flustered and prepared to apologize for my indecency, prepared to run away, he did the last thing I expected. He'd seemed so surprised at my kiss, so reluctant. Had he not felt the blaze of heat that passed between our lips? Was I mistaken? I'd felt my cheeks color more deeply, shame rising through me as the magnitude of what I'd just done really settled in my mind, and only worsened as I thought perhaps he didn't share my feelings.

But when I stepped back and finally looked up, my God, the look in his eyes was unmistakable. And when I felt his grip strengthen around my hands on his coat, it felt as though his blood was coursing through me too, and mine through him. When he pulled me back up for a second kiss, I threw all propriety to the wind; I'd been alone and felt so lifeless for so long. For just a few moments, I allowed myself to feel again, to want again, forgetting, for just those moments, about Jacob and the war and everything else in my life.

I could have stood there in that field forever clinging to his fingertips and melding his lips with mine. The urge to beg him to stay with me was overpowering. I wanted to bury my face in his collar, to breathe him in and find solace in his arms. My heart was beating so hard I thought Rosalie and Alice and Jasper could probably hear it back at the house.

In the end, fear overpowered desire, and I pushed him away.

I still felt the thundering in my chest as I walked around the side of the house and beyond toward the barn until I reached the back side where I knew I couldn't be seen by Edward or Emmett as they left. Abandoning all outward pretense of calm, I stalked back and forth, my mind whirling in different directions each time my feet spun in the dirt.

You're a widow. You should be in mourning.

Turn.

That kiss was the most passion you've ever felt.

Turn.

Your husband is dead, how can you be thinking of another man?

Turn.

Edward made you feel safe. How long has it been since you felt truly safe?

Turn.

Edward killed Jacob.

At that last, I stopped. I drew a deep breath, then another and another. My husband was dead. Edward had fired the shot that killed him. Why was I not angrier? How could I not hate him? He sat in my kitchen, in my husband's chair, and called himself a killer, and I couldn't bring myself to hate him.

I couldn't even bring myself to blame him.

I could feel anger and sadness and frustration and fear roiling in my insides like a thunderstorm on a summer day. Absently, almost as if by accident, I bent to pick up a rock from the dirt. I held it in my hand for a moment, clutching it tightly. The edges were sharp and jagged, cutting into my fingers, but I just squeezed harder, trying to focus all the feelings I had into that one little stone.

The pain got the best of me though as one corner broke through the skin on my palm and I cried out, staring down at the offending object in my hand that was mingling with the trickle of blood it had drawn with its cut. I brought the hand holding the rock behind my head and flung it across the dirt, releasing a shout of frustration as I did so. I watched it bounce harmlessly to rest in the grass, which for some reason angered me further.

I threw my head back then and screamed in earnest, trying to shove the pain and worry and agony from my heart and mind.

I had no idea how long I stood there, wailing wordlessly at the sky. Before long I fell to my knees and my screams became strangled keening as my throat turned raw and hoarse. Suddenly I felt myself being encircled in a pair of foreign arms. My heart leapt into my throat for a minute – had Edward come back? But when I looked down at the arms wrapped around me, they were bare to rolled-up shirtsleeves, not clad in butternut wool. And then I remembered that only two had gone off to fight.

"You'll scream yourself hoarse, Miss Bella," Jasper's quiet voice was only just above a whisper in my ear. "And that's fine by me if it's what you want." He loosed his arms from around my shoulders to place his hands gently on my shoulders and spun me to face him. His grey eyes radiated sadness, but also calm and serenity, and I felt some of the tension inexplicably run out of my aching muscles under his gaze. The pain was still there, and the sadness, but the rage and the terror at being alone had subsided.

Of course, Jasper would be feeling the same sadness I was, in a way. The two men he looked upon as brothers, who he'd known for most of his life, or maybe even all of it for all I knew, had just walked away from him.

Maybe forever. Maybe to die. He knew what it meant to be left behind.

"But perhaps you'd like to talk a bit, and if that's so, you might wish to save your voice a little?"

I looked at him a moment longer, then nodded.

"I think I should like that very much, Jasper," I said. "Perhaps we could walk a bit?" I really wanted to go back to the house and fetch some water first, but I wasn't ready to speak to Alice or Rosalie just yet, and I thought perhaps Jasper and I should talk alone.

Jasper didn't say anything, just put out his arm for me to take. I giggled a bit in spite of all the pain I was feeling as I placed my hand in the crook of his elbow. These boys were so formal and seemed so polished. Perhaps it was Jacob's and my history together, our time as children that had made formality seem uncomfortable, or perhaps Pennsylvania was, just as this war would indicate, truly a different place than Virginia, although that seemed unlikely, since I knew that the ladies in town would be scandalized beyond words if they knew about what my home had been host to this morning. But we'd never been much for formality, even before the strange turn of events that left me living alone in my house with my two dearest friends and not a man nor a chaperone in sight.

But here I was, strolling through my own yard on the arm of a stranger for the third time today. I giggled again, despite the twinge I felt when I thought of Edward. When I had been on his arm only a few short hours ago, he was just a beautiful, kind, clumsy boy who was coming in for breakfast. He wasn't a broken soldier or the man who shot my husband. And I wasn't a wife who didn't know what had become of her husband, nor was I a widow.

He was just Edward, and I was just Bella.

Jasper's voice pulled me from my thoughts.

"They'll look out for one another," he said quietly. I looked up at him, but he kept his eyes resolutely downward. I wondered if he was reassuring me or himself. I nodded mutely, hoping he would catch the movement out of the corner of his eye. "It's what we do. It's what we've always done. We look out for one another, you understand?"

He still wouldn't look at me, and a feverish note rang through his voice. I watched him carefully as we walked, and I waited. It seemed he had something he was trying to say, and I didn't wish to be the reason he wasn't able to say it.

"Did you know I'm not related to them at all, Bella? That when I showed up alone in Providence Forge all those years ago, I'd never heard the name Masen or McCarty in my life?" He looked up at me now, and I was startled a bit by the intensity in his steely eyes. I shook my head. I hadn't known. I thought perhaps he was a cousin, or some sort of distant relation by marriage. Or perhaps a close family friend.

He sighed.

"I was born in Texas, Bella. I lived there until I was about six, I guess. My father was a rancher, and my mother was the daughter of a rancher in a nearby community. They married young and my father took over the family ranch from her folks when her daddy took ill. He died not long after that, and her mother followed soon after. I never met 'em." He spoke that last quickly, stilling the condolence that was poised on my lips.

"Anyhow, when I was six, we had a real dry summer. The grass was dry, and all I remember is big clouds of dust blowing across the plain. All summer long that damned wind blew. And it was so hot that when the storm clouds came through in the afternoons, what little rain that fell dried up almost as quick as it hit the ground. One afternoon, one of those storms blew through and some lightning ignited a bit of grass on our land. Grassfire spreads pretty quickly, Bella, and next thing anyone knew, that fire caught in the barn."

"My pa was in the barn when it caught. Mama was in the house with me. She saw the roof go up and ran out. I remember her telling me to stay put, and not to come to the barn no matter what happened." He sighed.

I noticed our steps had slowed, but he continued to walk, so I did too.

"I did as I was told and stayed put in the house. I stayed in that damned house until the sun went down, waiting for them to come back inside. But they never did." He scratched his head. "It's a mystery to me to this day how that fire took the barn and scorched the land, but it never touched the house. Eventually a neighbor came by looking for my folks to see how they could help. It probably wasn't really all that long, but I was little; a minute seemed like a lifetime when I was alone." He shrugged at me, and I nodded.

I had felt that way the first few days after I realized Jacob's letters had stopped coming, and I was an adult. Every trip to Chambersburg for the post felt like it took days; every moment I waited for Rosalie to come back from a trip to someone's house for news felt like an hour. I couldn't imagine what it must have felt like for a little boy, all alone and scared and waiting for a mother and father that would never come.

"I stayed with the neighbors for a few days, but they didn't want another child. It took a little time to arrange, but eventually it was discovered I had a distant cousin in Virginia, a spinster by the name of Maria."

"But you grew up with Edward, didn't you Jasper?" I was confused now. I felt certain that somewhere I'd gotten the idea that Jasper and Edward grew up in the same home. How could Edward not be related if Jasper grew up with his own kin?

"That I did, Bella," he smiled. "When I arrived in Providence Forge, I spent about a month living with Maria. She was a sweet old bird, but she hadn't the energy to keep up with a little boy. Not to mention she always said I wasn't quite right for a child my age. She meant well by me, and I'm grateful to her for taking me on, otherwise I never would have ended up with the Masens." He grinned at me before continuing on. His smile was catching, and I found myself smiling back despite the sad story I'd just heard.

"Edward's mother…truth be told I think of her as my own mother now too…she's a schoolteacher in Providence Forge. Both his parents are, actually. Mrs. Masen teaches the younger children." His smile grew soft and wistful. It was more than clear he had a great deal of affection for the woman who'd raised him.

"Maria enrolled me in school right when I arrived in Providence Forge. I think she hoped that being around children my own age might bring some of the child back out in me. Edward was my seatmate that first day, and we were friends from the start." Jasper chuckled, and again I found myself joining in, imagining the men I'd met today as little boys. "I spent a great deal of time at the Masens' after that. Maria took sick in the fall, and Mrs. Masen let me eat supper there, and stay there some nights if Maria was having a rough time of it.

"She was elderly, and like I said, she didn't have it in her to keep up with a young boy, so not long after that, the Masens offered to take me in. I think Maria knew that was the right place for me, and that my folks would have wanted to see me grow up with a family to call my own, so she allowed it. Looking back now, I know I'd never find the words to thank her properly for letting me go, God rest her soul. She died about three years after that, although I saw her often."

I felt my own brow furrow and the ever-present lump rise in my throat, but the beginnings of my tears at Jasper's tale were cut short when I looked up to see him smiling. Not a sad smile, a big, toothy grin that I couldn't help return with a laugh.

"You see, Bella, all the loss I've had in my life has led me to something else wonderful. Losing my parents was terrible, but it took me to Providence Forge. Losing Maria brought me to the Masens, and they're as true a family as any blood kin I could ask for. I've been lucky, you see?"

Suddenly I understood a little of what Jasper was trying to say to me, or at least I thought I did. He and I were kindred in a way, our lives marred by loss and death at every turn. He lost his parents, then the last kin he had. I lost my mother and a little brother, whose death I mourned as though I'd known him, for a bit of my father died that day as well. And then Jacob.

So much death for two people so young to have to endure.

And yet somehow, Jasper could look upon all the heartache and find…what? Hope? Peace? Contentment? I looked up again at the fair-haired man at my side. His face, darkened by the sun, showed lines around his eyes that only laughter could leave imprinted in a man so young. How could he be so accepting?

As if hearing my unasked question, Jasper spoke up again. "It's a lot to take in, Bella. If I just stand here and think of my mama and my pa, burning to death in that barn? It eats me up inside. Believe me. I wonder all the time, was he alive when she got out there? Did they find each other before the fire consumed them both? I'll never know, Bella."

"Your Jacob, he was a good man." Jasper's voice grew somber now, and softened in tone and timbre. "They were all good men, and their choice to fire on us wasn't one to be held against them, Bella." Jasper reached a hand up to touch his ribs, an indication, I thought, of where Jacob's bullet must have met his flesh. "But Bella, please understand, Edward's choice to fire back wasn't one to hold against him either."

I nodded mutely again. My head was still spinning with the effort of sorting out the knot of feelings in my head.

"It's strange," Jasper looked wistful now, and I abruptly noticed we'd circled the barn and yard completely and were almost at the back door to my house.

"After we…" he stumbled on the words. "After Christmas, Em and I noticed Edward drifting away. He wasn't really goin' anywhere, we knew that. He wouldn't just desert, hell, none of us would have. Until this morning, I guess." He smiled a little sheepishly as he realized what he'd just said.

"Anyhow, he just got farther and farther away from us. Do you know, he hadn't picked up that fiddle since Christmas? Not until last night in your barn. We thought the old Edward was gone, Bella, until last night. And then he played, and we thought maybe there was hope for him after all."

He stopped and took a deep breath, then turned to face me, peering down to meet my eyes. I blinked under the intensity of his gaze, but I didn't look away.

"He came back to life when he met you this morning, Bella. Just like that. I've no idea what you said to him in the yard when I was inside with Alice." He colored a little, which made me smile. How it must have gone against his sense of propriety to sit in my house alone with Alice. "But I told you once, and I'll tell you again. When the two of you came inside, there was something in his eyes again, Bella. Some spark of happiness or joy or light or…I don't know. Life. Something that had been missing since that god-awful day on that hill."

My chest constricted again at the mention of the field where Jacob died, but I kept my tears at bay. I stared up at Jasper, waiting.

"When I said they'd take care of each other, Bella, I wasn't lying. Emmett and Edward, they'll look out for one another at that battle, and one way or another, they'll survive. It's what we did. It's what they'll do now. And when they do, they'll want to come back here."

I lifted my eyebrows at him.

"Come now Bella," he laughed. "Don't tell me you didn't see Emmett making eyes at Rosalie every time she turned away!"

I giggled, surprised yet pleased that Jasper had seen it too.

"I don't know about Emmett, Jasper," I said. "But I watched Rose moon over Emmett all through breakfast. Don't tell her I said so though." I smiled softly now. "She looks out for Alice and me. I couldn't bear to upset her in earnest."

Jasper nodded, understanding my meaning. I suspected when he greeted Rosalie in the kitchen that Alice had told him about our Yankee visitors a few weeks back. I owed her more than my life, and if she wanted to make eyes at the handsome sergeant, I wouldn't begrudge her the chance. In fact I hoped for it.

"Jasper," I said quietly, and he cocked his head slightly. "Could you give me just a moment? I imagine you and Alice and Rosalie and I have a few things to talk about what with you staying and all, but I just need a moment to think first. Would that be alright?"

Jasper nodded wordlessly and turned toward the house. As he walked through the doorway, I called out, "Jasper?" He turned. "Thank you," I said.

He smiled and disappeared through the door.

My head still spun, but I noticed my fear had dwindled. I was still amazed at how much Jasper and I shared. So much pain and death.

But he'd found a way to get on with his life. To find love in new places, filling the holes left by the people that left him.

Could I do that? Could I patch up the gaping hole in my heart with something new?

I didn't know. I wasn't ready to close off the part of my life that I'd shared with Jacob, not yet.

But something Jasper said was stuck in the front of my mind.

"When the two of you came inside, there was something in his eyes again, Bella. Some spark of happiness or joy or light or…I don't know. Life."

I didn't know if Edward could make me whole again, if he could fix the broken pieces of my heart. But I felt it too; he brought the light back into me again as well. I felt alive for the first time in months. It had been so long since I felt that way, I'd almost forgotten how wonderful it was to feel joy and happiness. To feel content and safe, and to just be. It was wonderful, and I'd missed it.

Edward gave me that, with his stumbling speech and his piercing eyes and the spark I felt when his skin touched mine. I never wanted that feeling to go away.

And in that moment I knew. Just as he had for me, I'd given him back a sense of living, not just existing, not just surviving.

Of really being alive.

A/N: And there you have it…thank you all for reading! I can't tell you all how much your reviews on the last chapter meant to me. I cherished every one, really. Thank you all so much. I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well; please let me know what you thought!

This is going to be a slightly longer A/N than I usually write, but please humor me, I have a few extra people to thank today.

First, thanks as always to averysubtlegift for her superbeta skills. C, your help is invaluable, and your suggestions especially made this chapter better. Thank you so much!

Second, and I'm SUPER excited, heather dawn made me a banner for this story, and it's stunning! And Kassiah made me a thread on Twilighted, so the banner has a place to live too. It's brand new, but I'll post teasers and whatnot there, so stop by, and at least visit my banner, because heather dawn outdid herself. Thank both of you so much, I'm hugging both your necks right now! 3 My thread

Third, if you haven't already heard about The Twilight Fandom Gives Back, head over to www(dot)thefandomgivesback(dot)com. It's a fundraiser for Alex's Lemonade Stand to raise money for pediatric cancer research. There's an auction in the works, with some amazing donations and authors offering fics, banners, photos, cookbooks...all kinds of amazing stuff. Go check it out!

Finally, for everyone's adds, recs, tweets, and all other forms of pimping, thank you. Really. You humble me.

The boys are off to battle in Chapter 12…hold onto your hats, things are about to get a little heated! As always, leave me some love, I'll tease you in return. 