-Chapter Twenty-Four-
The more his family argued, the more Jasper wanted to stab his eyes out.
Rose was mad, but that really wasn't anything new. Specifically, she was mad that Maisie had acted quickly and pulled Bella Swan out of the grip of what surely would have been the girl's death.
"She should have just let the girl die!" Rosalie was truly on one of her tirades. When Emmett tried to catch her wrist, to calm her down, she flung herself away from him. "There would have been so much chaos, nobody would have noticed if Edward and Jasper left!"
"That's exactly why Maisie didn't want Bella to get caught between two cars and start bleeding everywhere." Jasper pointed out. This was different for Rosalie, too: usually, the two of them agreed on things more often than not.
They really weren't so unlike one another, Jasper had to admit. There was a reason that he and Rosalie so easily passed for twins, and it went farther than their shared golden hair. He tried to push calmness onto his sister, but with a withering look and a flare of her anger, Rose threw it back at him.
"Who is to say, Rosalie, that we would have left? Jasper's come a long way, but he also hasn't been around fresh blood in years. And I've never encountered blood that called to me the way the Swan girl's blood does."
"Emmett could have stopped you!"
From the couch, Emmett snorted. "Okay, sure, I could stop Edward, maybe. Jazzy has always been able to kick my ass, and you know that, babe."
"You think a fight breaking out between three brothers wouldn't draw attention?" Alice chimed in. "Especially when those brothers were snarling and hissing and growling at each other? When those brothers were acting like vampires?"
"Aside from that, if Bella Swan had been pinned between those two cars, it would have been horrific, Kitty. She would have been shorn in half, likely, and most probably wouldn't have died immediately." Carlisle's logic only made Rosalie madder. "The girl would have been lying on the ground, suffering."
"Do you think I care if a human suffers if our secret is safe?!"
"Rosalie!" It was rare that Carlisle raised his voice. Even rarer was Carlisle exercising his position as leader of their family and coven. "That's enough!"
That was enough to shock Rose into stewing silence. Edward pinched the bridge of his nose, his facial expression mirroring the frustration roiling inside him. Emmett barely spared Carlisle a glance; he had never been one to go against the current, preferring to literally go with the flow.
Alice shrank beside him. She hated fighting. Jasper was thankful that Esme wasn't there to witness it; she was in Port Angeles, donating a portion of Alice's wardrobe she had decided to reject.
"If this girl happens to die of her own accord, then so be it. We will leave that to fate. The same thing for Edward's thirst. While I have complete faith in you, Edward, and I know you can abstain, if it becomes too much, so be it. We are not going to pressure anyone to commit a deed they don't want to, whether they be a vampire or a human. We will not intervene unless Alice sees something or Edward hears something that would warrant it."
Never mind that Alice could hardly see anything around the Quileute wolves.
In the quiet that ensued, Jasper took the opportunity to blanket all of them in calm. Rosalie didn't push it away this time. Carlisle nodded his thanks.
"Can I just ask one question?" Edward looked up through his hair, which had fallen in his face when he bowed his head. He looked very much like the seventeen-year-old kid he was when he was turned. "For the school breaks, could we go to Alaska? For a reprieve?"
There was Emmett's snort again, quieter this time. He pulled Rosalie down to sit beside him, so he could whisper to her. "Reprieve, my ass."
"Alaska, huh? What do vampires do for Thanksgiving, anyway?" Maisie's joking questions made Jasper's mood shift. All the fighting the evening before had left him stiff, wired. He almost wished he could have slept the night before, just to escape it.
"Oh, I don't know. Emmett always finds things for us to do in Alaska. There's not as many people, so we can get away with all of his plans to act like fools."
He had told Maisie some stories of Emmett's schemes—racing across thin ice to see who would fall in the water first, for example.
"I would tell you not to get hurt, but I'm the breakable one, as you like to remind me."
Maisie never used the word 'vampire' unless they were with his family or alone—like they were that Friday night. She was still wearing the makeup she had put on to go to Port Angeles with her friends, but she had changed her clothes to pajamas. Now, the two of them were folded into Maisie's window seat, as they often were when Jasper snuck in to spend time with her.
"You are breakable. What is it your friend told me the other day? Be ready for her to be covered in scrapes and bruises when softball starts."
"Not because I'm clumsy, though! I just get really…into it." Jessica Stanley had phrased it a little differently. She had shared that Maisie wasn't afraid to get hurt in the name of winning the game. Sliding to take a base, taking a ball to get a walk if it meant advancing the Forks High Spartan softball team on the scoreboard.
Jasper hadn't yet shown Maisie how they played softball—conflicting weather, since they needed the thunder—but he had a sneaking suspicion she would love it.
The first thunderstorm available, Jasper decided. It'll be good for everyone.
"When are y'all leaving?" Maisie asked him, shifting to settle herself as closely to Jasper as she could manage in the little seat. "And are y'all taking a plane or being adventurers?"
She was teasing, because Edward had taken it upon himself to come back from Alaska just weeks prior on foot.
"Tomorrow morning. We're flying like civilized people, thank you very much. Carlisle's not going with us; he couldn't get time off on such short notice."
"Oh, I thought y'all had been planning to go. Didn't you say y'all have family there?"
Family. Yes, Irina, Kate, Carmen and Eleazer—they were all solidly cemented as their cousins, for all of the Cullens. Tanya, on the other hand, had become something…different for Edward in recent months.
"We do. Edward wanted to go, though, to get away from Forks for a week." His words made Maisie's face cloud over, part worry and annoyance that reflected in her moods. Worry for Edward; annoyance for Bella.
"Will he be okay?" Her voice was softer even than the whisper she typically used when he was in her room at night, even though Honeybun the dog was the only one around to listen. The worry in Maisie's eyes had turned them soft, too.
Jasper tipped his head down and kissed her. He hated to see her upset over anything. "He'll be fine. Edward's stronger than he gives himself credit for. Even with his 'rebellious phase', as Esme calls it, where Edward was targeting and doing away with criminal humans, his self-control is second only to Carlisle's and Rose's. If he had weaker control, Bella would already be dead."
"And Alice? Are her visions any clearer?" All the searching and trying to see through fog left Alice exhausted, with her head hurting. Jasper didn't share that, though; he knew how much Alice was frustrated with herself about being unable to use her powers.
"She's annoyed more than anything." That was still the truth. "But she's pretty sure she's pieced together as much of her human life as she can. When she gets it all set straight in a timeline, she's excited to share it with you."
That made Maisie smile at least, right before she yawned. Her pre-season softball workouts had started and getting back into the swing of it was tiring for her.
"One day maybe I'll be able to stay awake longer than an hour when you come over." Jasper kissed her forehead and began to extricate himself from the tangle of limbs.
"Seems pretty time consuming, this whole sleeping thing."
"I don't know, it is like eight hours of being unconscious." Maisie let him lift her from the window seat, crossing the room with her in his arms to lay her in bed.
"Have fun in Alaska," she told him sleepily. Jasper leaned down and kissed her softly on the mouth.
"Have fun in Oregon." The Thompson family, he knew, would be travelling as well, to Maisie's aunt and uncle's house. Maisie settled into her bed, pulling her covers up under her chin.
"Have you ever been to Oregon?" She asked, her eyes already drifting shut. Jasper ran his fingers softly through her hair.
"No, I can't say I have."
"Then I'll disregard your last statement." He tried not to laugh, so he wouldn't run the risk of alerting any of her family members that he was there. Instead, Jasper kissed her one more time, softly on the cheek, before giving Honeybun a quick pat on the head and ducking through Maisie's window.
If he were being honest, Jasper loved Alaska. The population was so low that the scent of human blood had no chance of overshadowing the clean, crisp cold air and snow. Life, for him, was always easier in Alaska.
It seemed, to himself and Emmett, that the same was now true for Edward.
"That's why he really wanted to come. Think it's serious?" They were sitting in a snow drift, waiting for Alice and Rosalie so they could go snowboarding. Why the girls needed makeup and accessories was beyond Jasper; they had planned the afternoon to avoid humans, so they could do whatever they wanted on their boards without drawing attention.
"Doubt it," Jasper whispered back to him. "Edward's known her longer than any of us and nothing's ever happened until now. It feels like infatuation."
What was happening, before their very eyes, was Edward mooning over Tanya while she ice skated across the Denali Coven's private lake in their back yard.
Emmett rolled his eyes—nearly black; he hadn't bothered to feed before they came, and they were already three days into the Thanksgiving break. He tugged his beanie down further over his ears. Though the cold hardly affected them, Emmett still hated the chill.
"It's like a rebound, but we both know he's never even touched the Swan girl. He won't dare. He doesn't want to lose control. Jazz, seriously, it would be so much easier if he just gave in."
"There hasn't been enough time, Em." He meant between James, Victoria, and Laurent's feasting in the general area and now. "Not that it wouldn't be believable that the clumsy girl could die in a freak accident, if Edward framed it right."
If Edward was listening to them at all, he gave no indication. His eyes were glued to Tanya.
The girls were taking forever. Carmen had taken Esme with her into the tiny little town, to do some shopping. Carlisle, Eleazer, and Laurent—who had apparently paired off with Irina since the Cullens had last met him—were holding a roundtable discussion of sorts, talking about vampire lore. Even they sometimes had blank spots about their own kind, such as with Maisie's scar.
"I'm giving them five more minutes, and if Ali and Rose aren't out here by then, we're leaving them, bro. I can't take watching Edward watch Tanya for longer than that."
"Rose will have your head if you leave her," Jasper pointed out. Emmett only shrugged.
"I'll just take her for a tumble in the snow and all will be forgiven." If he had the ability, Jasper was sure he would be blushing.
Luckily, that 'tumble in the snow' was something that Jasper would at least get to pretend that it didn't happen, because Alice and Rosalie came sauntering from the house just seconds later.
"They're disgusting," Rosalie tossed over her shoulder, surely loud enough for Edward to hear. He still gave no indication that he heard. "Let's go before I go crazy."
"You think you're gonna go crazy, babe? We've been watching them forever so you could have curled hair to go snowboarding."
"Forever?" Alice asked, extending a hand to help Jasper up.
"Time is a made-up construct," Emmett defended himself. "If I said it was forever, then it could have been."
Rosalie was already strolling away from them. She had left her board in the snow at Emmett's feet, for him to carry for her. Obediently, Emmett picked it up and started to trail after her.
"And Rose said Edward and Tanya were disgusting," Alice rolled her big eyes so hard that it was a wonder they didn't disappear. Jasper laughed and threw his arm around her shoulder. "Thanks for not being disgusting with Maisie."
"I think she'd risk breaking her hand to punch me if I tried."
A/N: This is pretty filler-y, I KNOW, and I apologize, but I had to figure out what to do with Edward and Bella, and that changes a lot of the story depending on their roles. So, basically, I'm trying to honor everyone's wishes and get rid of Bella while also getting Edward some ;). Will he stay with Tanya? I don't know! But for now she'll be a nice distraction for him, at least.