A/N: Sorry for the long delay in updating. "Sleepers, Awake" continues to eat at my brain, and then I was traveling for a while, and then I broke my leg. Most of this chapter was written under the influence of painkillers, so if stuff doesn't make sense, that's why. Blame Byron.

Love to Ravelbitches, and OMG SHOUTOUT to AngstGoddess003, who completely made me crap my pants when she told me she actually reads this story. Holy fuck. Hi!

Disclaimer: Do not taunt Stephenie Meyer.

Chapter 21: I'm Your Moon

Let them think what they like, we're fine
I will always be right here next to you

- Jonathan Coulton [1]

I glance over at Jasper in the front seat of Fitzsie's car. Is he merely a trick of the light? I reach a hand over to touch his shoulder to make sure he is real. He catches my hand as I reach and brushes his lips across my fingertips. If this is a delusion, maybe being crazy isn't so bad after all.

I drive on autopilot, not even needing to look at signs or exits—it's like this path is part of my biological instinct. It's as natural and automatic as breathing or walking. It's a trip I've made so often before, but always alone. It is strange to make this drive in the daylight, and I keep thinking, seeing Jasper in the corner of my eye, that he is made up of particles of light. He can't be real. And yet, his lips on my fingertips are warm and soft and forgiving.

***

I woke up to the smell of eggs and bacon and to strains of music, muffled nylon strings under the calloused fingers I craved. He was still here. He hadn't snuck out in the night. I hadn't dreamed the encounter.

The floor was freezing under my bare feet, but I crept out of my room without socks. Breakfast was already on the table, and Jasper sat, waiting, playing "Here Comes the Sun" as soon as he heard me open the bedroom door. "Hi," I said shyly. "You didn't have to do that," I said, motioning toward the table.

"I wanted to prove I was competent at some domestic shit. I'm really sorry about that dishcloth. I know it must physically pain you to look at it."

He was right, of course, but it pained me for reasons other than its complete lack of resemblance to a dishcloth.

"You already made awesome barbecue," I reminded him, remembering our wonderful and nearly perfect night at his house. His house. Would I be able to step foot in there without losing myself again or wanting to die of shame?

He smiled and kept playing, humming to himself. I sat next to him on the couch, leaning against his shoulder, appreciating his Jasper scent. "You smell like home to me," I said, burying my nose against his shirt. "Not my house, but home, my heart's home."

He didn't say anything, but he curled his mouth into a private smile, never stopping his playing.

I gulped, deciding to open the floor to the Big Conversation again. "So," I said.

"Yes?" He continued to let his fingers play on the strings.

"So what happens now?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know we can't go back to what we were," I said, shaking my head and rubbing sleep out of my eyes.

"You're right. We can't," he said.

***

I drive through this practiced path, so familiar, yet every second of it different and new with Jasper next to me. It reminds me of the day he first came to my apartment, when his smile and touch swathed everything in bright bursts of color. He is transforming my sad, weekly pilgrimage into something else, something that doesn't emphasize my shame and my solitude. No. Now it is something I am doing with a partner, a companion, the man who sees me as I am and still loves me.

***

I was crushed. I should have been prepared for him not to want anything to do with me, but his notes and his letters, and, fuck, his presence here had led me to believe we could work things out. "Okay, so … I mean, I don't regret anything." I was ready to set him free, now that he seemed to forgive me for what I'd done to him. Goodbye, Jasper. Thank you for making me believe in hope again.

Jasper interrupted me. "We can't go back to what we were, but we can be something different, something better, something stronger. Because now we know; now our eyes are opened. And I still want you. I've always wanted you, even before I knew there was a you. I felt it, this emptiness." He stopped playing for a moment and brought my hand up to his heart. "I was always looking for … something, you know? I felt like part of me was missing. I mean, life has always been pretty easy for me, and my family is great, and I've always had good friends. And girls, it's always been fairly uncomplicated."

I ignored his comment about the girls who'd come before me, because of course he would have had girls, as many as he wanted. Instead, I relished the pressure of his hand pressing mine to his chest, remembering how beautiful and smooth his skin was under his shirt. His heart beat a secret message against my palm.

"But that's all it was," he continued. "Just easy. Safe. Boring, even. I wasn't complaining, and I knew I was lucky. But when I saw you, I realized that I'd never really been alive. It was all just a preview of what my life could be. Everything else was just practice."

Sweet words. Too sweet. "How can you want me that way after everything you know?"

Jasper sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. "Don't you see? It's not that I love you despite those things. I love you because of everything that made you into the person you are. You're so strong, Alice. You have no idea. To have gone on this long with no support, all alone, to have seen what you've seen, to have lived what you've lived … there is no one else on earth like you. You did more than survive. You thrived. You bloomed. You transcended."

"Pedestals," I said, shaking my head.

"No," he said firmly. "I can see your light. It's beyond your corporeal body. It's in you and around you. I see you clearly."

I looked at my hands. They seemed ordinary to me, not glowing or special or any of the things he was saying. "How can that be, when inside all I feel is darkness and fear?"

"Come to the table, and let's have breakfast," he said, leaning his guitar against the couch and leading me to the table with an arm around my waist.

***

We eventually make small talk. It feels awkward. This is the most private, most dear and most painful part of my life, and here he is, smack in the middle of it. I talk about the traffic on I-90. "It's never like this on Monday nights," I say.

"There's a lot of lunchtime traffic," he says. "You get used to it."

I still can't believe we've both driven along these roads in parallel lives, in parallel times, never running into each other. Of course we've never run into each other. I set aside Monday nights for Mom, and Jasper always had seminars or grading or office hours or something. Funny how it worked out that way. I wonder how long we've been living these separate but parallel lives. Maybe we would have met even if he hadn't been at the Unicorn on New Year's Eve. I kind of like thinking of that, that it wasn't just this chance encounter—no, we were slowly being drawn together, pulled toward each other like magnets, even if we did not know. If it didn't happen New Year's Eve, it would have happened another time, maybe. And if not in this lifetime, maybe another. We would have found each other eventually.

I like to think of Fate that way, not as a definite, unchangeable path filled with missed opportunities and regrets, but a pliable, benevolent one dotted with second chances. That if something is meant to happen, it will find a way. Love will find its way to you, no matter how many times you hide your face in your hands, hoping it will not notice you, that it will just pass you by.

"What do you think about when you drive out here?" I ask.

"Before I met you, or after?" he answers with a question.

"Both, I guess."

"Well, before I'd be thinking of the patients on the ward, hoping I wouldn't have to use force that day. I would be thinking about what I would eat during my break. Sometimes I'd think about poker games in the break room with the other orderlies. You know, mundane shit."

"And after … you knew?" I don't finish my sentence, but I know he knows what I'm talking about.

"I was as excited as I'd be to spend time with you, because I was going to see the woman who created you, who shaped you into this sweet, resilient, generous person I somehow was lucky enough to find. I hoped I would learn more about you by being around her. I hoped she would have a good day. I tried to think of ways I could make her more comfortable."

"Did you ever ask her about me?"

"She never stopped talking about you. It was strange. I'd known her for a while and had seen her picture, but it wasn't until I met you on New Year's that she started talking about you whenever I was there. As if she knew, somehow. As if your image in my mind triggered these memories in her. She told me stories of her beautiful Mary Alice, her dearest treasure, her greatest accomplishment."

I'm having trouble seeing the road as I hear his words, knowing that she remembers me when I am not there right in front of her. I thought only my physical presence could spark those memories. I feel Jasper's hand on my cheek, as light as a child's kiss, wiping away a tear as it slides down my face.

***

The eggs had already gone cold, but he'd fried half the bacon chewy and half of it crispy. "How did you know I can never decide what kind of bacon I want?" I asked.

"I didn't," he said. "But you gotta take the crispy with the chewy. It's, like, my philosophy."

"Okayyy," I said, picking up a crispy piece with my fingers. "Am I supposed to read something deep into that?"

"As much or as little as you want," he said, grinning.

"You're such an academic," I said, rolling my eyes and throwing the bacon at him.

It was strange sitting with him at my table, pretending as if everything were normal. I knew now that he saw me, everything in me. He'd seen my craziness, my violence, the way I ruined people's lives.

And he was still here. He knew exactly what kind of mother I had, what I could eventually become.

And he was still here. Why? Why should I be the lucky one? My mother certainly wasn't.

But I wasn't my mother. I didn't have to become her, did I? Jasper didn't believe so.

Still, it was a weird feeling knowing I didn't have to hide who I was anymore. He'd seen it all. He'd been inside me, both my body and mind, and he knew all my secrets now. All of them. There was nothing left to hide.

And he was still here.

***

"Do you want to talk about it?" Jasper asks, brushing the back of his hand against my cheek again.

I shake my head out of instinct, but then I think about it. "It's just … hard … I mean, it's nice that she remembers me, that she thinks of me when I'm not there. It's nice to, I don't know, to matter."

"I get that."

"So why am I crying?" I ask, not taking my eyes off the road.

"You carry so much inside you, baby, all that sorrow. It's like the mother you knew, the one who loved you and cared for you, is gone. You've written yourself a script of what she knows and what she doesn't know, and maybe it's easier for you to think she's forgotten you, that's she's so lost that she's pretty much gone, because then you don't have to hope. So when she deviates from the script, it's both wonderful and horrible because of the hope it gives. You've grieved for her, and this new information opens up the wounds again."

I think of all those times I've had those brushes of hope when she seems lucid, and I wonder how many of these insights Jasper has wanted to share with me since he's known. It seems silly now that I feared it so much, feared that he'd find out. He's put my feelings into tidy concepts that fit into the spaces in my head. I understand the push and pull, my desire and fear of wanting her to remember, of not wanting her to remember. I want to scab over and not feel anymore at the same time that I'm afraid of never feeling again.

I am both those things all the time, like Janus, looking forward and backward, like a Tarot card in position or reversed. Two sides of a coin.

***

Jasper refilled my juice and looked at me quizzically. "What are you thinking about, sweet Alice?"

"I'm thinking about Pluto," I said.

"The dog?"

"No, the planet. Or what used to be a planet. It was always a planet when I was in school," I said, looking down at the congealed eggs on my plate. "And now, now it's nothing. They looked closely enough and finally saw Pluto truly, not special, not worthy of being included."

"That's silly."

"Don't make fun of me," I mumbled, not looking him in the eye.

"I'm not making fun of you." He paused, drumming his fingers on the table. "Labels don't define us," he said, chewing thoughtfully on a strip of bacon. "Pluto didn't change just because of how a bunch of scientists decided to see it. Pluto was always Pluto; it was our shortcomings that prevented us for seeing Pluto for what it was."

"Or maybe," I countered, "scientists thought Pluto was special until they could see Pluto for what it really was, less than whole."

"But, Alice, I've known who you were. And it doesn't change how I feel about you." He was deep in thought, but then his eyes lit up. He got up from the table and fetched his guitar again.

"There's a song about Pluto that I want to play for you," he said. I folded my hands in my lap and waited for him to continue.

He began to sing:

"They invented a reason
That's why it stings
They don't think you matter
Because you don't have pretty rings
I keep telling you I don't care
I keep saying there's one thing they can't change

"I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are." [2]

From the first words, I started tearing up. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was all that mattered. "You will always remember who you are," I repeated.

"I'm your moon," he said, laying the guitar down. "You're my moon," he said, folding me into his arms.

"Can it work that way?" I asked. "Can we be each other's moons?" I murmured against his chest.

"We orbit each other, and it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks, Alice. All that matters is us. Let them think what they want."

I looked off in the distance, wondering if it was possible for the two of us to be enough, to make up the other's world.

Lost in thought, I jumped when Jasper asked me, "What are you doing today?"

I shrugged. "Nothing, really, just work tonight."

"I have to go to work," he said simply. "Why don't you come with me?"

"To Meadowview?" I whispered.

"Yeah."

What should I do? Could I handle this so soon? What was I afraid of?

"All right," I said, drinking the last of my juice. "I'll drive."

Jasper smiled and started putting the dishes away. I went to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, my feet flat on the ground, my heart pounding like mad. I'm his moon, I thought, and that gave me the courage to get dressed and prepare for this new phase of our lives.

***

I start to park the car in the usual spot, but Jasper says, "No, we have to park in the employee section." Right. I guess I'll be shadowing him all day, or maybe spending most of the time with my mom. I haven't seen her in the daylight in so long. I realize I've separated her in my head. In the daylight, she is still my mother, sane and wonderful and loving. At night, she's this transformed, bewitched creature, unpredictable, angry, violent, gentle, scared. It's like she's a roulette wheel of emotion, and I'm never sure which sliver of wheel will catch the marble.

I'm scared of seeing her this way. I'm scared of reopening these scarred-over wounds, as Jasper put it. My daylight mother is gone, but my memory of her is perfect. Now I will see her in the light.

But maybe it's the same way Jasper now sees me, all of me. I look over at him, and he's smiling so much, practically vibrating with happiness. I imagine he must be feeling such relief at not having to hide his knowledge from me any longer.

It's then that I realize that I, too, feel the relief of not having to hide my secret from him.

We are on equal footing as we exit the car on the far end of the lot, farther than I have ever parked before.

We shut our doors at the same time and smile at each other as we meet around the back of the car. I shyly take his hand.

"Let's go inside," he says, and I think I'll be all right.

I'm his moon.

[1] Jonathan Coulton, "I'm Your Moon," Thing a Week IV, 2006.

[2] Ibid. From Coulton's Wiki: "The song is written from the view of Charon, Pluto's moon. Because Charon is almost half the size of Pluto, the two do not have a traditional orbit where the small body basically moves around the center of the large body. Rather, both Pluto and Charon revolve around a point between them, like a bola or a spinning pair of skaters. In addition, the two celestial objects are tidally face-locked, meaning they keep the same 'face' towards each other ('like dancers,' according to Jonathan's blog of the song)."

A/N: Links to the Jonathan Coulton song as well as my own "special" version of "By the Waters of Babylon" (as featured in Chapter 7: Child of the Moon) are in my profile.

As always, reviews get a random excerpt from my eighth grade creative writing journal. Thanks for the nomination at the Twilight All Human Fanfiction Awards (under Best Alice and Jasper). Voting is open now!
http:// twilightallhumanawards(dot)webs(dot)com/voting(dot)htm