An Equal Measure
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"I'm thirsty."
Second's voice floats up to me through the howling wind, and his tone is not a whiny snivel, but instead a cold demand. He talks to me as if he is the one in charge now, and I am the servant simpering at his feet hoping for a scrap of goodwill. It seems obvious the sudden decrease in temperature and miserable weather conditions are due to his interference. And it isn't a childish fit this time — Second isn't acting like a spoiled child stomping his feet over a desired toy. He is acting like a man who will do anything, at any cost, to get his way. It makes me uncomfortable, this new persona of his, and it makes me wonder what he might be capable of.
Second has always been more defiant than my other lovers, but throughout our years together he always managed to retain at least a veneer of respect for me. And however fabricated it might have been, that veneer made his impertinence acceptable — because of it, I knew he feared me. Now though, something has been lost. He no longer holds me in the same esteem that he used too, and he is beginning to test the boundaries of his own power against mine; striking flint to see if he can start a fire. As if I'd ever let him have control over me. I ignore him, and simply toss my hair back in the wind, leaping lightly over the rocky terrain.
"Did you not hear me?" he demands, and hail begins to fling down with the volley of snow, bouncing against my hard skin like icy pebbles. "I'm thirsty."
Finally, I come to a halt and slowly turn around to face him. He standing ten feet behind me in a shaft of liquid moonlight, his hand gripped white-knuckled on the arm of Jasper's little tramp. Alice looks back at me blandly, and I wonder what she thinks of this: our constant bickering and power struggles. We have been running for several hours now on into nightfall, and Second and I have done little but glare at each other and snip like a pair of rabid polecats. But as I look into his eyes I can see that the thirst is not a lie; his irises are too dark for comfort, and Second has never been known for his patience when it comes to blood. "Well, what do you expect me to do about it?" I ask imperiously.
He tilts his head slightly, and the hail comes to an abrupt stop. "Let's pretend for a moment that Whitlock's coven does catch up to us. That it comes down to a fight. How much help am I going to be when I'm thirsty and weak?"
Jasper's mate turns away at the thought of that dreadful scenario, her delicate profile silhouetted by the moon. Her eyes glaze over slightly as she stares off into nothing — a constant habit of hers that I find every bit as annoying as I do disturbing. Second jerks at her arm to wake her up again, and she presses a hand against her temple as if she has a headache. Her flashing gold eyes are full of bewildered pain, and look startling unnatural against the pallor of her skin. How Jasper could stand to be with such a freak of nature, I have no idea. But there was no question that he would come after her: the villain had stolen his lady love —however odd and disconcerting she may be— and the heroic prince would stop at nothing to rescue her.
"Fine," I say to Second, with an arrogant turn of my head. "We can go down through the next valley and dine on whatever humans we find first. We can't afford be choosy." My gaze alights on Alice again, who frowns at this heartless discussion as if she's above the bloodlust that affects us all. As if she's never felt a human's heartbeat stutter to a stop in her hands. As if she's simply too good for any of this. Too good for me. "And I suppose you're thirsty too?" I ask her pointedly.
"No."
My eyes gleam in the darkness. "It would be a good time to cheat, you know. You could always say we forced you."
"No thank you," she says, all politeness and grace. Her poised resistance, even in face of such temptation, makes me despise her even more. Oh, how I would relish it if she slipped up. If Jasper's perfect princess was returned to him with blood on her hands. What would he think of her then? Could he even stand to look at her when her eyes were ruby-red and glinting like mine? But something in Alice's quiet refusal makes me think that I could never lure her into debauchery the way I did Jasper. She has her weaknesses, to be sure, and I would search out every single one of them before I allowed her to leave my clutches. But bloodlust wasn't her problem.
I scowl at her peevishly, and cross my arms. "You needn't starve yourself. I'm sure Second would be glad to skin a squirrel for you."
Second laughs out loud, and for the moment the two of us are connected again, bonded by a mutual disrespect for this yellow-eyed coven's way of life. But then he looks down at the tiny captive in his grasp, and even though his features are arranged in disdain, I am suddenly bothered by the physical closeness between them. He could kiss her, if he wanted to, only by yanking her other shoulder around so that she faced him. Jealously floods my stomach like poison. Not that I feel threatened by this short-haired, boyish little ninny. But if she dares to steal Second from me the way she stole Jasper, I will rip her throat out before her next breath. I watch with calculating eyes as she inclines her head slightly at my suggestion of squirrel meat, supremely unmoved by my spite.
"I'd rather not, thank you. I can fend for myself."
"Fine," I snarl ungraciously. "Have it your way then, you little fool. It makes no difference to me how Jasper finds you: starved, charred, or in a thousand shredded pieces. As long as I get my way."
If she's shocked by my behavior, she doesn't show it, and for some reason her indifference infuriates me even further.
Within the span of half a breath, I am at her side, and I note with pleasure the fear in her eyes when I grab her roughly by the arm. I pull her away from Second like a sprig of wishbone and carve my nails into the wool fabric of her coat. Second might have had mercy on her delicate limbs and fragile beauty, but I feel nothing of the sort. I drag her down the rocky hillside with savage elation, delighting in her every stumble. This is what happens, I say silently to Jasper, wherever he may be, when you choose a soft woman over a hard one. She can't keep up. She can't stay fighting. She can't hit you match for match because she's too weak and too timid to keep going.
I know my temper is out of control, but at this point things have gone too far and there's nothing I can do to snuff it out. The stress of everything: the Volturi trial, the loss of my territory, Second's attitude, Jasper's rejection, Alice's angelic flawlessness... it all piles on top of me until I feel nearly crippled with the pressure. How easy would it be to simply pack up and run? Without Second. Without a dime to my name. Without any sort of plan. As loathsome as the lifestyle of Jasper's coven may be, it also feels strangely appealing to me as I run down the mountain ridge with the weight of my every decision aching on my shoulders.
The snow closes down over us again like a white curtain, and Second follows close behind us at a run. Together, the three of us cut through the dark landscape toward the sleeping valley below, where a small city rests aglow in amber light.
***
Hours pass by and we find absolutely nothing. Not one scent. Not one footprint. Not even a hint that Alice or anyone else has ever passed through these mountains. The wind has disappeared within the hour, leaving behind a gaping stillness only broken by the rhythmic crunch-a-crunch-a-crunch of our footsteps. The snow has stopped falling as well, and the fresh layers glow an unearthly white beneath a low-hanging moon. We are at the top of a mountain ridge overlooking a series of cities nestled in a valley — all of them lit with tiny amber lights in a sea of black-blue shadows and brilliant white. If Alice were here looking at this moonlit view, she'd call it beautiful. But it looks like nothing more than loneliness to me.
I can feel Edward's eyes on my back as I trudge on through the snow, and something like pity thickens the air around me. My fists clench at my sides. I don't want Edward's pity. I don't anyone's pity. The last thing I need right now is some arrogant mind-reader feeding me baseless 'wisdom' as he tries to counsel me out of my grief. You can stop that right now, I order him silently, not even bothering to turn around and look at insulted face. Stop pitying me, goddamn it.
"It's not pity. It's compassion," Edward corrects easily. "And I'm not going to counsel you. You'd never listen anyway," he mutters under his breath.
No, I wouldn't. The only person who's opinion I'd even bother taking into consideration right now had been kidnapped. Because I was too selfish... too weak to stop it from happening. Cold all over with shame, I wonder if Alice actually saw it — if her visions had revealed to her the terrible atrocity I would commit. The thought makes me feel sick. Alice had always believed in me so thoroughly, so relentlessly. Even when I didn't believe in myself. What a wake-up call for her it must have been, to realize that I wasn't the good man she thought I was. To realize that I wasn't even a shadow of that man. Not today. Not now. Not ever. But maybe, I think with a stab of gut-wrenching, unbearable pain, maybe it's better this way. Maybe she will finally see that she is better off without me, that I never deserved her in the first place.
Behind me, Edward snorts.
"Something amuse you?" I ask curtly.
"Sadden me, actually," he says in a haughty tone. "You clearly know nothing about Alice at all."
White with anger, I whirl around to face him, my jaw clenched so tightly that my teeth crack under the stress. All of my hidden jealousy and spite rises to the surface, quickly followed by the murderous fiend that had killed far greater men for far lesser insults. How. Dare. He. Even. Think of saying a thing like that to me. As if I don't know my own wife. My own mate. My other half. As if I haven't watched, observed, and catalogued every single detail about her heart — a heart far too precious, and far too good to ever be held by bloodstained hands like mine. "Who the hell do you think you are, saying something like that to me?" I hiss, my shoulders arching back in hatred.
Unimpressed, Edward just crosses his arms and stares back at me. He leans into the shadows of an overhanging rock, and his eyes glow in the darkness like embers. "Alice doesn't care about any of that, Jasper. She doesn't. Not at all. She doesn't care what you were, who you were, what you did, or even what you'll do."
Out in the open, with moonlight beaming all around me and Edward prying uninvited into my thoughts, I feel volatile, defensive, like an animal backed into a corner. She doesn't care because she doesn't understand—
"Of course she understands. She's not stupid."
Rage rises to the surface again, and I advance on him like charging lion. "I know she's not stupid!" I roar at the top of my lungs, and my voice echoes off the empty landscape like a gunshot. No one knew better than I how intelligent Alice was, how intricate, how fragile, how utterly blinded by love. It was her love for me — this baffling, unbearable, completely incomprehensible love, that kept her from seeing the true monster within. She couldn't see how she needed to be protected. She couldn't see how much danger I'd put her in over the years. She couldn't see how much safer she'd be if I disappeared from her life forever. All she saw, all she felt, was love, and it had blinded her.
"I think it more likely that you're the one blinded by love, Jasper," Edward says, in a disarmingly gentle tone.
I visibly start at these softly spoken words, and Edward's face creases into a look of compassion that pierces right through me. The burning fiend within fades to nothing more than a dull ache behind my ribcage, and I hang my head in something like defeat. As much as I hate to admit that Edward is right — especially since he can hear the compliment — he is. With me, there has always been an equal measure of love and protectiveness when it comes to Alice. And the two opposite sides are constantly battling it out on either shoulder, fighting over precedent in my heart. For me, love has no other theme than this: Do I stay, or do I go? Do I keep her, or do I protect her? Do I stay beside her, or do I leave?
But Edward, for all his perceptiveness, is not capable of understanding the difficulty of these decisions. Things are not always black and white. Edward has never been in love — and he has no point of reference for these stern opinions. "Not that I discount your advice in this matter, Edward. I don't. I understand why you're saying these things. But I'd really like to see how well you react when you've put the woman you love in danger."
"Well, there's very little chance of that," he says bitterly.
His hardened face suddenly reminds me of myself, years ago, before I had ever met Alice or felt the certainty of her delicate hand in mine. Edward had been alone for a very long time now, an outsider in a family of happy couples, and I could clearly see that the isolation was wearing on him. But that was his choice, wasn't it? He had made his decision to live life this way. It wasn't as if Edward hadn't had chances. Tanya, for one—
"—Isn't right for me," Edward interrupts immediately, and he fixes me with a disapproving look. "Surely you could have seen that, with your gift. Her heart and mine share absolutely no semblance of compatibility."
I turn my face up to the moon, which glows down on me benevolently, almost warmly, and think... for the first time in a long time, that I am lucky. Even in my depressing struggle over what is right and what is wrong, at least I know with light-struck certainty that Alice is the one. However it ends, however I fall, I at least have that. But Edward hasn't even made it that far yet. He's never held anyone in his arms that he couldn't bear to let go of. Nevermind the struggle of keeping love — Edward has never even found it. And as I think these things, and as Edward hears them as clearly as if I had spoken them aloud, I feel a swell of emotions that rarely ever arise in Edward's stormy, impenetrable heart: Insecurity. Loneliness. Despair.
I don't tell him that he'll find someone. I don't offer encouraging words, or encouraging smiles, or even the slimmest possibility of hope. It isn't in my nature to be optimistic. It was Alice and Alice alone who gave me that. Without her, not a whole lot seems possible. But I do meet his gaze with the kind of frank honesty that I know he appreciates.
"If a man like me," I say, gesturing loosely at my scars "—a man who has murdered, and destroyed, and hunted, and lied, and sinned a thousand times... If a man like me can find love, even for the briefest moment, then anyone deserves a chance."
Edward deliberates this silently, and —not for the first time— I wonder what the Cullens must think of me. Scarred, monstrous, bloodthirsty Jasper, showing up at their doorstep with Alice. Alice, who is all but an angel of light. I wonder how they feel when they watch her chattering on animatedly, smiling and laughing as if she hasn't a care in the world, tied to the hand of solemn, uncooperative me. To them, Alice and I probably look like the most horribly mismatched couple in history: a butterfly in love with a moody old unpredictable lion.
"I know you all think I'm not good enough for Alice—"
"Not all of us," Edward corrects firmly, snapping out of his own dark thoughts. "Just me. And only— only— when you contemplate leaving her. If you could hear her thoughts, Jasper, if you knew how desperately she loved you, you could never bring yourself to believe that walking away would do her any good."
To that, I say nothing, and wordlessly, the two of us pick back up into a run, leaping over the fallen rocks and into the luminous, landscape of snow. I know that someday, far along into the future, if Edward ever falls in love with a woman who is capable of loving him back, he will see. And when he does, he will finally understand what I've said this night, not just on the logical level of a mind-reader who knows everything about everyone, but on the level of a man with the mixed of emotions of fear and love. He will know why I spend my days half sick with terror that Alice will one day leave me, and half desperately hoping that she would. For our kind, the desire to love and the compulsion to protect all too often go hand-in-hand.
And rarely ever do they agree.
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A/N: I've always wondered about Jasper's decision to stay behind when Alice went after Bella in New Moon. This conversation between Edward and Jasper is my answer to that. I think out of anyone, Jasper would understand and respect Edward's reasons for leaving Bella. Edward managed to do what Jasper always struggled with, but wasn't actually capable of: walking away from the woman he loved in order to protect her.
