Title: Disillusioned

Genre: romance / hurt / comfort

Pairings: alice/jasper, edward/bella,

Warning: i'm in crisis, but it's spring break and i got a new tattoo

They do, in fact, need an attack plan because a newborn army is causing trouble in the Seattle area. They need Jasper.

He answers the first ring when Alice calls.

When he returns his clothes are worn as if from wear and travel, his hair is long and tangled against his nape, and his eyes are deep umber. Bella is a little more less enchanted when she sees the way Jasper looks at his wife, careful, fearful. As if she might disappear in a cloud of smoke and leave him behind.

He is a husk of a man, dead on his feet and in love with a woman who loved another.

"How do you know so much about newborns?" Bella asks.

Jasper looks a little bashful and his gaze darts across the field to where Alice is sparring with Edward; the two of them lightening fast sparks across the circle. Alice predicting every move Edward will make. Edward listening every move Alice will make.

She would have thought it may render them motionless like when they played chess, but the two, it seemed, had some baggage to work out. In front of the wolves no less. Needless to say, Jake and Paul were enjoying the little show.

"It's a long story." Jasper tusks, his Texan accent thicker in his voice.

"Tell me," Bella presses and so, he does. He tells her about his human memories, his days as an officer in the South—"Believe me it was better to be dead than a deserter." "I think the yankees would say differently." "Yeah, I see that now."—and how he met Maria, the vampire who turned him. This seems to cause the shift in Jasper's mannerisms. His body turns tight. His bearing drawn as he describes the beautiful woman who wished promises and professes of love into his ear like poison. "Thought she was the one."

There are other things too, meeting Peter and Charlotte, his friends and comrades, getting away from Maria and beginning his life as a vampire for real—alone, confused, and angry.

Jasper could influence the emotions of a person, but he could also be persuaded by the ones around him. So, on Christmas Eve, in a family diner filled with excited children, parents, and friends, Jasper was grasping a cup of coffee, soaking in happiness, love, and familial affection; when someone stepped close, close enough to whisper in his ear, "I've been waiting for you."

Jasper says he sat there, dumbstruck and confused as this angel, this saving grace, peered over him with wide goldenrod eyes and a fluffy fur coat. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, ma'm." He said in return.

A distance way, the fight between Edward and Alice is called to truce and the two walk away.

Alice's gaze settles on Jasper.

When Bella goes home, she catches sight of Jasper and Alice in the clearing where they fought. Jasper takes Alice's hand in his and presses a kiss to her palm. Alice doesn't move for a moment, but then she is gone, darting like a fairy through the trees.

"So," Jessica drawls during AP English. It's a free reading period, but Jessica does not look interested in her biography of Katherine Hepburn and Bella was slowly losing interest in her battered copy of Wuthering Heights. She perks at the sound of a voice, nervously glancing over at Jessica who is picking her nails and trying to look exceptionally nonchalant. "What are you doing after graduation?"

That one sentence has been floating around her mind since her college catalogs started to arrive. She had turned in a bulk of them during the high times with Jake last year, writing exceptionally worded essays and with brimming letters of recommendation. She had been elated to do it.

Now, she sits in the living room, going over catalogs with Charlie, worrying her lip near bloody as the anxiety builds inside her. She hasn't really thought about her future since she had been with Edward. Well, not a future that didn't involve diamond-encrusted skin and impervious to most disasters, but there had been a time, not too long ago, where she had pondered over something else.

"I think I might go into teaching, but I dunno." She says, finally. Probably putting too much thought into Jessica's question for question's sake.

"Yeah?" Jessica looks up, her eyes alight with some flare of interest. "What grade do you think?"

"I dunno."

"Well, I think I'll become a professor because there is no way I am teaching anyone who doesn't really want to be here. Like, I have a four-point-oh. I don't have the time." Jessica digs into her pencil case for a nail file, then proceeds to shape her nails while chatting her up about the colleges in the area that specialize in teaching, grad assistantships, and her cousin's friend who is subletting an apartment. "But, you're probably gonna got an apartment with Cullen, right?"

That makes Bella pause.

She has always been so confidant in her school work, it was the one sure thing about herself that got her any recognition. Her sparkling grades that flashed her brain and a deeper understanding of the material she absorbed like a sponge.

Now, college would just be a thing she did with Edward. Attached to him.

She turns back to her book.

"Hey," Jessica says and pulls out a bottle of dark maroon polish. "Let me do your nails and you can tell me about that book? I think the main character and that Heathcliff dude are half-siblings."

"Heathcliff and . . . Cathy?" Jessica nods.

She lets Jessica paint her nails and listens to her insane theory about the former Lord Earnshaw and his affairs with other women before the beginning of the book, vague textual evidence, and how Jessica had written a whole paper about it and pissed off their school's meager English department.

"Did you go to college?" She asks when Emily finishes pulling a tray of macaroons out of the oven. The homey little kitchen smells like coconut and burnt sugar, a welcoming mix against the unexpected cold snap in late March. Then again, this was Forks.

It occurs to Bella that she should be more concerned about more important things—Victoria, for instants—and if she will even live to walk at graduation, let alone make it to a college dorm. Currently, Jake and Jared are passed out on the couch, snoring like bovines after being up all night patrolling the area around her house. Jasper and Emmett are scheduled to pick her up at the border in two hours.

Emily kicks the back of the oven door, attempting to shut it. It creaks and fall back on her heel, making her almost drop the pan. "Ouch! Shoot."

"I'll get it." Bella leans down to shut the oven and barely dodges Emily's pan.

"What were you asking?"

"Did you go to college?"

"Oh, yeah, I went to culinary school with a business minor." Emily gestures around the kitchen which is littered with the fruits of her labor. "I'm cooking for wolves now, but soon I will have my diner and I am making all of you help me run it as payment for eating me out of house and home."

Bella regales in the idea, a cute little diner where Emily's herb-filled burgers and avocado dip are the norm. Heaven. Even the creamer she makes for the coffee would be heavenly.

"Did you like it?"

"Did I like what?"

Bella sighs, "College."

Emily flashes her a smile, the scar of her upper lip tugging against her skin. It's oddly charming. The more you see of Emily's face, the less you see the scar. "I'm just messing with ya, relax." Emily grabs two mugs from the cabinet and then her French press Bella prepared on the counter. "Sit. We'll talk."

Bella, determined to annoy Emily now more than ever, sits on the counter, nudging aside another pan of macaroons and six Tupperware containers of cookies for the La Push daycare center which Emily volunteers at three times a week.

Bella noticed early on that a lot of Emily's kitchen is charity work, giving back to the community that raised her. Emily has two bake sales to prepare for, one for the library and one for scholarships, a color-coded organization for the food drive, and an abundance of community projects filling up her calendar. Date nights with Sam are circled in red ink on the wall like bright target points.

On top of all that, Emily supplies baked good for the diner in Forks and waitresses there four times a week. Sometimes doubles. Sometimes weekends.

At first, Bella wonders how Emily can stand not to be near her imprint every second of every day, but she feels that the more time that she spends with Edward, that she gets it. Although, Emily and Sam hardly look like a couple who want space when they're together.

The moments they are together seem . . . lasting.

"Okay, kid, I'm all ears and answers," Emily presents her with a bright yellow mug, foaming and frothy at the top from Emily's culinary magic. Bella watches her pull a stool around from the kitchen island and ease into it, the creaking legs threatening to give, but not today.

"Did you . . . have fun in college?"

"Well, yeah. It was my first time away from my family and my sisters, I missed them like crazy, but it gave me a chance to be me for a while. I got to know myself better, what I liked, what I didn't like, who I wanted to be. I had a girlfriend for a while and she helped me get my own place and declare my major."

Bella blinks, she wonders if that's too much information.

Emily smiles, knowingly. "Her name was Liz. We thought we were going to get married and open up this itty-bitty bakery. It was disgustingly cute. We were disgustingly cute."

"What happened?"

"Well, life just pulled us in different directions. It does that some times. Trust me, I was completely torn up when this was happening, its just—well, it's not as painful now. I like my life now. Hell, I love my life now. I love my fiancé. I love my family. I love this pack. I love having these girl talks with you," Emily gestures between them. "I'm the youngest of three so Leah was always kinda my little sister, but she hasn't wanted to talk to me much since, well, you know."

"Yeah," Bella curls her fingers around the mug. "I like talk to you too."

Emily smiles again, that genuine, impossibly pretty smile that makes hearts rattle and shatter before piecing them together again.

"Were you scared of going to college?"

"Yeah, I was scared of going and scared of leaving. My problem was that life moves on and at the time I had found my safety niche. When I graduated, I tried to stay in that college town and fit myself back into it, but I would never fit the same way again. Life moves on. People do change and I changed too much to be a part of it anymore."

"You know what else I realized?" Emily asks.

Bella scratches her nose, blotting her sleeve against her undereye. "What?"

"I made six batches of coconut macaroons and I think I might be allergic to coconut."

That night, Edward asks her to marry him.

Bella says no.

i'm sorry, did you not click on this clearly marked Alice/Demetri fic for some quality in-depth character arc about Bella liberating herself from Edward? Emily and Jessica having actual character moments? no? i'm sorry. i'm in crisis. i will be adding demetri to the main cast again (just not as quickly as i did jasper).

also, i love driving home the point that you can be a bi person in a relationship with the same sex and then date/marry the opposite. you're valid as fuck bitch.

i'm just working through some things so the college convos and the macaroons thing did happen. i also used to sign my friend up for bake sales bc i am That High Maintenance Bitch who knew she could sell lemon squares for three dollars and get the library the new books they needed. it worked didn't it? (it did, there's a plaque in the local library) anyways, i will get serious soon. hopefully. review and i might ;)

- cafeanna