AN: Fair warning! From here on out, it's going to be dark. If you'd rather not wade through it, I'll post a summary chap when the fic is complete to give you the gist without the gory deets.
Unbeta'd.
Denial and Isolation
The house sat still and silent, a designer tomb in the middle of the wilderness. The expansive windows, the dark, haunted eyes in the cold face of the setting of her former nightmares. Until the moment they stepped into the clearing masquerading as a yard, he wondered if she remembered …
She was viciously proud that she could never forget.
Yes, this was the place.
And he was in there. Somehow, she just knew.
All of the self-inflicted bonds binding her to the coven during her weaker days had morphed into chains. She would tug and pull and lash until they each fell away with a satisfyingly gory clink and then …
Jasper slowed to be by her side, his hand twitching with the urge to touch her, soothe her. She knew. She could feel it.
She shooed away that slippery, blood red silk train of thought until the colors and psychedelic thoughts blended in a vast array of bolds and dulls, shapes and lines, too much and nothing substantial. Nothing had to be decided right now. There was an ocean of venom and pain to cross before resting. Those chains rattled, sensing revenge was near, and anchored her, providing a purpose. She concentrated on the peace that thought provided her and sent it out in apology to Jasper.
Jasper inhaled deeply, centering himself before opening his senses to the surrounding woods. A hint of smoke, sweetened with the ashes of vampire's past and spring's renewal, still floated in the air, and Jasper was grateful she'd never had cause to memorize such a scent. No small mercy that. He flicked away his concern easier than the memories of his surrogate coven mother and absorbed Isabella's powerful cocktail of peace, eagerness, and bloodlust. In so many ways, she was still just Bella.
Jasper turned his attention to the offering of less welcome emotions. There was pain, yes, touched with loneliness and despair. But every feeling was coated in a self-righteousness reminiscent of the overwhelming sting of bleach trying to cleanse unmovable stains. It burned his senses and fueled his anger.
This was a male who only thought he was mourning.
They'd have to see what they could do to fix that.
"The Volturi won't like it," Charlotte said. Bella noticed that she didn't often speak, but when she did the males listened. And without all of the whining and persuasive breast thrusts of some lesser females.
"No, but they're slow to move−especially against an unknown threat or potential recruit." Bella growled at Peter's words. Jasper slipped in front of her, a little too quickly to be the casual relocation it appeared.
"You're right, Char. So is Peter," Jasper said, reaching back to grasp Bella's hand and pull her out of her sudden crouch. How she had gotten there and why, she didn't know.
"Touchy." Peter smirked as she bared her pearly whites, a delicate trail of venom leaking from the corner of her mouth down her chin. He hoped it didn't hit the hardwood. Charlotte wouldn't think his prodding so harmless then. Bella's control was unprecedented but she was still just a newborn−albeit a very well-behaved one− and she had much to learn.
"Enough." Whether Jasper's words were meant for Bella or Peter, they both took them to heart.
Peter inclined his head and thought on his guilt by way of apology. He knew better than to provoke a young'un, but they had discussed this. The only way they could trust her outside is if she was tested inside first. Blood wasn't the only trigger for a volatile first year.
Bella straightened up and pressed behind Jasper, nuzzling her face between his shoulder blades, her breasts to his back, her nubile body flush against his at every possible point. Peter conceded; her apology was a better offering by far.
"Patriarch books. Cuts, takes. Forbids. Same."
Peter and Charlotte turned to Jasper for a translation. He was lost on this one too, but he could feel her trust, her mounting frustration, so he tried. For her.
"Something about his experiments on behalf of the Volturi, I'd wager." She'd developed a slight quirk regarding certain names after her change. He understood. Names had power, but only as much as you'd give them. On the battle field, he doubted many vampires would have tucked tail and ran at the first hint of Jasper. But when he was announced as Ares …
He felt her gratitude, a burst of love before her guilt smothered it. He'd have to deal with that soon, but for now … He turned to his babe to soothe her worries and his. "Peter believes as long as we don't expose our existence we should be safe for now. Your shield will protect us from the seer's meddling, but that's only guaranteed while we're here."
"Two birds stone." She missed a step verbalizing again. A common occurrence during the first few years when your thoughts are scattered and abundant; it's a harrowing feat to focus on one thread, let alone speak it coherently. Nevertheless, he thought that he knew where her thoughts had taken her, and it was pure genius.
She was magnificent. She amazed him at every turn. And she was his.
"Jac-" she growled and Jasper stopped, standing ramrod straight and very still. They were too close for her to lose it without casualties and he wouldn't have her feeling guilty on his behalf, not when he knew better. He damn well knew not to say the name.
"The dogs?" Peter asked, redirecting her focus. Jasper felt her cautiously nuzzling against his back again; her movements jerky, her stress palpable. "That could work … Let me see what I can come up with. I'll need an hour." He sped off with a nervous Charlotte, his words trailing him through the house. Peter would probably have an answer in minutes, but the bastard was smart enough to know that Bella and Jasper would need time.
When she froze and then stumbled back, he finally took a breath. That'd been a close call. She kept retreating until she hit the wall, her head flinging back and forth in denial even as her pain and guilt, sorrow and self-loathing, increased to dangerously manic levels.
"Shhh. It's okay, Babe. Isabella, it's alright. You didn't hurt me." What scared her, what increased her guilt and hatred was that he wouldn't have stopped her if she'd tried. She'd be his death.
"Noooooooo!" She howled. He winced at the pain screaming from her heart as loud as her mouth.
Then he'd had enough.
Newborns were faster and stronger physically. But their reflexes were slower. They were like gangly teens after a growth spurt; they possessed the height but not the coordination, the power but not the skill to wield it to the best advantage.
Emotionally distraught newborns were even worse.
He pinned her to the wall before she could register his movement. She growled but kept her jaws clamped shut against the urge to bite, to rip, and then felt guilty she'd had to. What good were her instincts if they hurt him?
"Enough," he said as he claimed her mouth in a brutal kiss and wrapped her in steel arms and tender emotions. She softened against his body, soothed by his strength, comforted by his love. His love!
Oh, how could he love her? Didn't he know-
A sharp nip to her full bottom lip cut off that thought and his roaming hands erased its path, so she couldn't lead it any further down the path to its conclusion. Oh, his love …
"Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. Trouble? What did he know? He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut, cut, cut down: withered away? No … he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not. Can I continue not, my sweet? Would that I could … And dost thou open thine eyes upon such a one, and bringest me into judgement with thee? I could stand next to you still. I know you never believed … Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. Certainly not I. What would you have me to do? It was unclean …
"But what is man that he should be clean? I am clean, even now, my love, see? And he which is born of a woman that he should be righteous? Righteous I have been except for the affliction of the venom in my veins." He muttered before he continued his bizarre prayer. Was he talking to his deceased mate or his Maker? Did it matter? He sounded as mad as a March Hare. "Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; no trust in even I who have proved my worth, my love. Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. Did you grant me heaven, and I failed to see it? How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water? Water? Should I …"
They found him kneeling in the center of the vast living room, as if he was paying homage to the white couch that was no longer pristine. Soiled described much of what she could see. The room, the atmosphere. His clothes, his ideals. He slowly lifted his head. Where once she'd seen a god, now cowered a pitiful excuse for a man. His dull black eyes widened in recognition as he tried to don his former mantle of dignity and pride, only to find it tattered and cracked like his sanity, slowly ebbing away. If he'd fed recently, it didn't show.
Had he always looked like a famine victim with his clothes hanging from his lank form? Bella wondered as his gaze slid past her shoulder and a thousand long, lonely miles away.
A shuddered breath drew his attention once more. The scent of Bella's last kill, clinging to her like a recent stroll past Macy's perfume counter, caused his pupils to dilate and the venom to pool in his mouth. He recoiled an inch, but it might as well have been a mile. They had his attention at last. Jasper could feel his pain, his longing, his anger kindled anew, but it was Carlisle's hunger that made him smirk.
"Jasper. Be-"
"You'll regret finishing that." Jasper interrupted casually. Carlisle deserved whatever she'd do to him, but this was her chance to work through her grief. He'd not let a trigger he'd yet to understand, steal her choices. She would always have a choice now.
"Son-" she growled but the Father continued heedlessly "what have you done? Why would you change her? And to allow her to …" Carlisle trailed off, apparently too horrified to voice his censure.
When Jasper looked into her bright red eyes, he felt only the briefest hint of guilt, but it was quickly overridden by disgust and disappointment spewing forth from another source.
"Don't." Jasper said. Bella wondered if he saw something in her own behavior that was objectionable or if he was cautioning the Father. Jasper gently syphoned away her guilt and sudden wariness, replacing it with his abiding love and ever growing pride. His words had not been for her. "You don't get to judge our choices, condemn our souls. Not anymore."
"Never. Again." She agreed. He sent another burst of pride and love her way. She tried not to talk these days, frustrated by what she viewed as her limitations in this strange, new body of hers. But she stood up for herself now. An action that came neither easily nor naturally for her.
"I only ever sought to teach you my ways…" he trailed off, mumbling disjointed scriptures and half realized prayers. He kneeled slowly, his head almost reaching the hardwood floors before Jasper cut him off.
"Your way is unnatural."
"All is not lost. You've returned your brother's wife-" Bella hissed, deadlier than any rattler, and slipped down into a crouch until Jasper used his gift to calm her. At least Carlisle hadn't been stupid enough to say his name. "You can try again. All can be forgiven."
"Never," she snarled with venom trailing delicately from the corner of her mouth down her chin. How could he speak of forgiveness, this demon in a demigod's form? He knew nothing!
His ways would never be theirs. What benefit does a heartbeat serve when other beings walk as gods among men? Jasper shared his pride, his confidence, with her again but stored the love, the blatant lust, the desire to taste and lick and then drink directly from the source, for a time when it'd prove more useful.
"Our diet allows us to hold onto our humanity− or regain it−" the Father added with a quick glance at her Jasper.
Maybe someone should tell him. Maybe someone should explain. Him sitting here all alone for the first time in a century, merely thinking himself broken but still cocooned in his own self-righteousness. Her humanity died with her child. The life he was duty bound to help nurture and thrive inside of her womb until it could survive on its own. The precious, precious life she would trade her own for without a thought; the life more innocent and worthy than a hundred of the pathetic being in front of her. He took what was not his for the taking.
No, words would not enlighten, would not satisfy nor fill the torrential hole in her soul. But the Father would learn.
In time.
"Show vengeance. Know mine."
Her fractured thought caused Carlisle's self-righteous propaganda to pause. For the first time since they entered his house, he felt a trickling of true fear. It would not be the last. Bella meandered closer, slowly circling Carlisle's kneeling figure, as if trying to decide where to start. But Jasper knew she'd had every detail sketched out in her infallible memory upon waking. His venom had seared the names into every fiber of her being. Deeper than his love or her grief could penetrate, the burn had branded her plan−her cherry-picked vengeance− and it would not be altered now. Not for all of the spouted scripture, pleadings, or prayers in existence.
"You're right, babe. We did not drop by for an ethics debate or nutritional advice. You owe a debt. It's time to pay up."
"They have gaped upon me with their mouth!" She bestowed a cruel parody of a gentle kiss to his forehead that left venom dripping from twin crescents and was circling again before his words died in the cold, unforgiving air between them. Jasper stood ready to protect, but content to watch unless Carlisle was stupid enough to harm his chosen one.
"They have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully-" she did. The deafening crack nothing to Jasper's fierce growl, a reminder of who he was to subdue any courage on the martyr's side.
"T-t-they have gathered themselves together against me," his breath hitched as her nails scored his throat, working their way over to his right shoulder. The fingers of her left hand laced into his right, sweetly, and she paused to stare at the contrast, crushing his hand with her newborn strength before thoughts of what might have been and the father she might have had could affect her. Face to face she watched his eyes for any expression of guilt or regret−anything of worth−but found none. When she could see the venom shining in his dead eyes and his lips drawn tight in pain, she sank the nails of her right hand into his shoulder, severing his arm at the joint. She tossed it aside nonchalantly and circled her prey once again.
She felt Jasper's approval, his pride in her strength. But she pushed it aside to focus.
Pain.
Pain is what she needed.
His to heal hers.
His because hers would never end.
Yes, pain.
So much to go around. It seemed wrong not to share.
"Go-god hath delivered m-m-me-" But not this time, she thought savagely as she put her knee between his shoulder blades, gripping his hair and his remaining arm, before wrenching herself away with her petty, worthless prizes of hair and flesh, howls of pain and venom spilled. Would it ever be enough?
"To the ungodly," Carlisle choked, his eyes pleading with Jasper to end this madness while his emotions condemned him for allowing it in the first place. He had yet to comprehend the seriousness of the situation it seemed. "And turned me over into the h-ha-hands of the wicked."
Finally the father's head bowed and his armless body slumped to the ground. Jasper's smirk matched her own.
"He'll lose his mind from loss of venom."
After a few quiet seconds of introspection, Charlotte corrected her mate. "No, his idealistic way of life has ended rather abruptly, culminating with the loss of his mate and his first sired. I doubt there's much left to lose."
"What do you take from the man who thinks he's lost everything?" I wondered aloud. Isabella wouldn't be satisfied with a simple death. No, as head of the coven who had so wronged her, he deserved more …
"Soul." Bella's thrill of anticipation and hunger for blood was contagious.
Soon, the plan was set. Jasper felt her raw desire and hatred as if it was an independent entity occupying space in the room. Her revenge would be just as tangible.
Soon.
Isabella slipped outside to fortify the perimeter while Carlisle's venom flowed along the seams of the Calamander wood planks.
"Where …" the pitiful patriarch trailed off as if he didn't care enough to finish his inquiry. The question almost startled Jasper; he'd begun to block out his prey. Beneath his monotone prayers and spouted scripture was a blank thousand year stare where intelligence and compassion used to shine so brightly. If Jasper hadn't seen the aftermath of his latest leadership foible, his eyes might have moved the soldier and sinner in him to mercy.
But Jasper had held her in his arms as she'd cried and he'd felt her hatred for them battling her fledgling love for himself while he was buried inside of her. Jasper would forever remember every hateful word Isabella flung at him and he'd charge each and every one to their account. Because he was the patriarch of this coven and I'd begrudgingly submitted to his authority time and again when my instincts begged otherwise. He proudly wore the mantle; now he could bare the shame. He'd claimed the coven, now he could own the consequences of their actions.
"She is no longer your concern."
"What about …" he trailed off, staring into a void only he could see and Jasper was almost content to leave him be. He owed the male no explanation. "Please, son-" Bella's growl could be heard scattering birds and deer through the woods. "Please."
"Times of trial are a grand opportunity for personal growth," Jasper drawled, his mocking tone reminiscent of sometime before … but the thought kept fleeing in the wake of her own excitement. She hated to leave Jasper alone with Carlisle but it was time to implement the second phase.
When Bella neared the limits of his sixth sense, Jasper leaned down to say his piece.
"I read your journals, you know. Did you think that we wouldn't discover the truth, that our loyalty to you would blind us? You knew it was possible. What's more, you experimented during your time with the Volturi. But your history is none of my concern; I have a dark past of my own to wrestle. But from the moment Isabella was bitten in that godforsaken ballet studio, you knew she'd never be able to have a 'normal' life. She'd have to be sterilized or we risked serious exposure. That's why you were keeping tabs on her while we were in Alaska, wasn't it?"
Carlisle, the man he'd once grudgingly respected that he now looked down on in every sense of the word, drew in a pained breath to deny what his emotions confirmed as truth. "Edward-"
Jasper cut him off.
"Save. Your. Breath. You'll need it. I'm just curious how you planned to accomplish it. A fake cancer scare … No, that could involve too many outsiders … An animal attack? No, her ties with the shifters were too tight … An accident?" Carlisle's guilt spiked, briefly eclipsing his pain before it was brought to heel under that despicable righteousness.
Damn hypocrite. So very willing to ruin one life on his spoiled son's whim, but judged his own kind for fulfilling their vital, biological needs−often by much kinder means.
"I'm coming back for you." Fear, cold and honest, shone from his darkening eyes and Jasper nodded grimly. "This here is Bella's moment. But me and you will be having a come to Jesus moment someday soon. You have much to answer for." He was almost afraid of what sins of the good doctor's he'd uncover before the end. But Jasper had never been one to shy away from the truth because it was unpleasant. He'd made that mistake with Alice once; he didn't plan on repeating it.
Jasper felt her long before he could hear her footfalls. She was carrying a heavy load, whistling Amazing Grace as she fenced in the area and plastered signs reading "Beware of Dog!" and "Condemned. Trespassers will be shot."
Once he recognized his pleas for mercy would find no fertile ground, Carlisle turned to threats. "Al-" At Isabella's distant growl, Carlisle stopped and took a deep, longsuffering breath. "You won't get away with this. She'll see and they'll come. She'll see."
Isabella stopped and cocked her head just on the other side of the glass door, considering. Would it be better to let him hope? To allow him to spend hours, days, months even nurturing that hope and then to kill it dead? Or would it be more devastating to rip that fledgling away before it even has time to grow roots?
"Insurance."
A crease in Carlisle's brow was the only sign of his confusion, but Jasper could feel it just the same. The confusion, the panic; they were real. And they were strong.
Almost as strong and rancid as her scent now.
"Perhaps it would ease your mind to know that we've come ... prepared."
AN: Much of Carlisle's babblings are from the book of Job: the most likely source of comfort and commiseration for him, I thought.
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