"Jasper! Abi!" Alice called out happily.
"Yes, Alice?" I turned to see her running into the room while Edward freezes where he was standing by the doorway.
"Peter and Charlotte are going to be in the neighborhood and they're going to come visit! Isn't that great?" She cried with a beaming smile. Jasper perked up and I smiled.
"Sounds fantastic." I replied, but Jasper's head was turned to look at Edward. I glanced in his direction to see him still next to the door, his hand frozen mid-stretch as he had been reaching for the keys to the volvo.
"Something wrong, Edward?" I asked, already annoyed with his erratic behavior.
"Peter and Charlotte are coming to Forks?" Edward hissed at Alice, but she rolled her eyes at his behavior.
"Calm yourself, Edward. It's not their first visit." Alice almost sounded like she was talking to a child. Edward's jaw clenched as he ground his teeth together. Alice's eye glazed over for just a moment before she sighed.
"They never hunt here. You know that." She reminded.
"When?" Edward demanded and I was becoming more and more frustrated with Edward's behavior. Since the Swan girl had come into town he had been acting like the world rested upon his shoulders and treating the family as if we were unneeded stressors. I was more than ready for him to get over himself.
Edward and Alice seemed to be having another of their silent conversations. Alice silent as ever with only Edward's half formed murmurs to attempt piecing together whatever they were conversing about. Though given Alice's comment about hunting I could assume it had something to do with Peter and Charlotte's diet and likely Edward's concern for the Swan girl, as if Peter and Charlotte were uncontrolled beast incapable of restraint. Jasper's hand on my shoulder stopped my train of thought as he pulled me closer.
May Alice's vision become reality soon! I thought to myself and was oddly satisfied when Edward turned to snarl at me. Edward's snarl was answered by Jasper's threatening growl. I wasn't the only one who's nerves were wearing thin with Edward's behavior.
"You ready, Emmett?" Edward barked. Emmett looked up surprised.
"I thought we were leaving in the morning?" Emmett asked confused. I scowled at Edward and took Jasper's hand before running out the back door and in the opposite direction Edward and Emmett would be going to get to Mount Rainier.
After I'd had time to calm down Jasper and I had returned to the house. Alice was waiting for us at the back door and I was no more enthused to talk with her as I was to speak to Edward again, she was as enraptured with the girl as Edward was and I didn't need another placating lecture about giving Edward time to sort out his emotions. He'd had nearly a century, a century spent in the minds of others to be able to understand the fundamentals of relationships and the emotions behind them.
"Alice." Jasper warned as we approached. Whether due to my emotions or Alice's I couldn't be sure.
"Whether you believe it or not Abi, I'm just as frustrated with Edward as you are. It's being able to see how it all works out that keeps me from smacking him upside the head." Alice said though it didn't nothing to ease my irritation.
"Do any of your visions happen to have a calendar in them?" I inquired and Alice giggled.
"I wish it was that easy." She said and then sighed.
"Edward's still mentally debating, caught between fighting his feelings and giving in to them, it keeps changing the visions. Sometimes I see them together while the weather's still cold and sometimes it looks closer to summer." I groaned at the thought of Edward remaining like this till summer. Surely one of us would just bite the girl before then, a purely selfish act just to end our collective misery, I pondered the thought for a moment but snapped out of it when Alice gasped.
"Abilene!" She admonished but I refused to be ashamed of the thought.
"Don't tell me you haven't given it a moment's thought! You know Edward's feelings about changing others, how he bemoans a soul's damnation! We'd be doing both of them a favor!" I hissed but Alice shook her head.
"I'll admit to the thought, however fleeting. But I didn't linger on it and I didn't give the thought enough merit to cause a vision!" Alice hissed back. Jasper gently laid a hand on each of our shoulders before cautiously putting some space between us till Alice huffed and marched back into the house.
"Do I even what to know what the vision was about?" Jasper asked lowly with a cocked brow. I smirked before shrugging.
"It was probably a vision of me biting the girl." I whispered and chuckled as his eyebrows almost disappeared into his hair. Jasper grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the trees and away from the house to prevent being overheard.
"Surely you mean to change the girl? Even you aren't cruel enough to kill her to spite Edward." Jasper said seriously and I rolled my eyes.
"Of course it would be to change her. And if Edward continues to brood as he has and pushes this off much more, you'll consider changing her too. You know as well as I Edward's propensity to be a masochist. Even when he does give in to his feelings, how long do you think it'll take him to change her? He thinks that being changed turns us all into monsters, damns our souls. Do you see him changing the girl while he believes that he'll be damning her?" I demanded and it only made me angrier that Jasper remained so calm.
"I know it won't be anytime soon, but I believe he'll change her." Jasper said after a moment and I looked to him inquisitively.
"And how did you come to that conclusion?" Jasper smiled and kissed my head.
"If he comes to feel for the girl a tenth of what I feel for you, he won't be able to tolerate the thought of a world without her. And if she comes to love him, changing will be something she'll want and ask for. He'll just have to get over himself for her happiness and I think that if anything would make Edward overcome his prejudice it would be selfishness." Jasper declared and I frowned.
"I don't like it when your argument makes sense." I pouted and Jasper barked a laugh before pressing a kiss to my lips and beginning to lead me back toward the house.
"Perhaps we should ask Alice where we can meet up with Peter and Charlotte before they reach the house? Maybe go to Seattle for the weekend and get to enjoy our time with them?" Jasper suggested and I hummed at the thought.
"That's probably as good idea. I can't see Peter and Charlotte reacting very well to Edward's outright distrust." I replied and Jasper nodded.
"Or his brooding. Can you imagine what Peter might contemplate to aid Edward in removing the stick from his ass?" Jasper chuckled at the thought I couldn't help but laugh as well. Peter tolerated the Cullens well enough, though he tended to stick close to Jasper and I while he was here. The only exception had been when Emmett had asked Jasper for help in a prank on Edward and Peter had tagged along. Since, Peter had grown a fondness for practical jokes. He didn't so much enjoy actually pulling the prank as much as silently tormenting Edward with his ideas while he visited.
Edward never knew which one of these idea's Peter might divulge to Emmett, or worse, Jasper. Jasper had a much better chance of actually pulling off the prank on Edward than Emmett did. Emmett tended to get caught up in his excitement and slipped before the prank could be put into action. Edward explained his dislike for Peter by saying that when Peter wasn't thinking about pranks or lewd thoughts about Charlotte, his mind was a dark place with many unpleasant thoughts.
Jasper was too good of a person to let Edward know exactly how sheltered he was, but I wasn't. I didn't like thinking about my human life, but I enjoyed the look of horror on his face as I replayed the memories that remained of my life in the whore house, granted they weren't the most scarring, those I kept to myself. Edward was pretentious and he needed to learn that not everyone came from such idyllic upbringings, both human and vampire. I made my intentions clear with a few more pointed thoughts before Edward managed to fumble his way out of further conversations and disappeared into the trees to hunt.
For most of Peter and Charlotte's visits Edward would disappear to prevent anymore incidents, most often taking a hunting trip that would have him returning just before they left. This would have been the first time since Peter and Charlotte's initial visit that Edward would have stuck around for the entirety of the visit and it was all because of his pretentiousness once again. I did love the boy, loved him just as I loved Emmett and Peter, like a brother. But like a brother he often had moments when I couldn't stand the sight of him and it was best to leave each other alone. It had been years since Edward and I had had one of our spats and I had a feeling that this one was going to be the longest one yet given his pigheadedness.
After speaking to Alice it seemed that Edward had no intentions of being home during their visit. Instead, he was going to stick as close to the girl as possible to protect her. I scoffed at the thought, conflicted between being angry at his callousness and excited at the prospect that we could ignore the changes that had been forced on our family and pretend for a weekend that the last month and a half hadn't happened.
Alice had already planned a shopping trip for the last day of their visit since the sun would once again be in its usual place behind the clouds. Charlotte loved the shopping trips since her usual company was Peter, she liked having someone to help her pick clothes and to be just as excited about a perfect outfit as she was. Charlotte had been very disappointed once we had left the wilderness only to find that I wanted nothing to do with the human stores. Peter and Jasper joked that Alice was the sister that Charlotte wanted but I was the sister that Charlotte needed and received to help tame her enthusiasm.
I was well aware that though Charlotte missed me and was excited to see me, she wasn't as excited about seeing me as she was about spending time with Alice. It was okay, I understood the feeling since I was more excited to see Peter than I was to see Charlotte. It had taken me a very long time to realize what Peter was to me. I came to care for Peter first, despite his scars and his laid-back demeanor, at the time I had thought of it as companionship, I thought that to be the name for what I felt. Then followed by Charlotte and later Jasper, I thought the feeling to be familial.
When my feelings changed for Jasper, I realized that what I felt for Charlotte and Peter wasn't the same. I knew it wasn't the same as with Jasper, but it was more than what I felt for Charlotte. Alice helped me name the feeling years later when she had declared Charlotte her best friend. Peter was my brother, he had done more than enough to earn the title, but he was also my best friend, I didn't just accept his presence in my life the way that I accepted Charlotte, I came to love him because I enjoyed his presence more and I was well aware that he was the reason that I was where I was today. While I had gently guided Charlotte and Peter on how to live outside the bounds of Maria, Peter had coaxed me out of my isolation and guided me on living instead of existing.
Beside his effect on me, his presence also helped to bring Jasper the peace he could only feel when he was with someone that understood him, understood what he came from and despite knowing better than most, I hadn't been there and hadn't been witness to his time with Maria like Peter had. Peter brought a calm to us just by knowing he was there and brought about the warm feelings that I had learned to understand because of him all those years ago.
Edward and Emmett returned from Mount Rainier in the early hours of Sunday evening and Edward left again shortly after night fall. By the time the sun was beginning to rise I was sitting on the back porch with my easel under the guise of painting the sunrise but couldn't focus enough to do much other than put down the base coat of paint.
Jasper and likely Alice knew what I was doing but no one else gave a second glance to my presence on the porch, it wasn't uncommon to find me in random places around the property with the easel set up. Despite this, if they could see how little painting was actually being done, they would know that something was up.
Alice said that she couldn't see exactly when Peter and Charlotte would arrive, that they hadn't made whatever decision it was that would determine when they arrived. I had been sitting for an hour before Jasper came out to join me with a book in hand. He chuckled when he glanced over my head at the easel before kissing my head and taking a seat. He didn't say anything, the fact he'd decided to join me showed that he was just as excited.
It was another hour before I could hear bodies moving through the trees and all pretenses of painting were lost as I dropped the paint brush and stood waiting at the top of the steps before they broke through the trees. Jasper was a step behind, his hand on the small of my back. I smiled as Charlotte rushed forward, hugging me tightly before moving on to Jasper and rushing inside to where Alice would be waiting, she'd rejoin us later. Peter was a little slower waiting at the base of the stairs till Charlotte stepped away before coming up the steps. He smirked at me and opened his arms, I smiled brightly as I quickly wrapped him in a tight hug that he reciprocated for a long moment before leaning back far enough to kiss my cheek before breaking away.
"Good to see you, brother." He greeted Jasper and the two shook hands before hugging.
"It's always good to see you, brother. Need someone to give me a challenge instead of landing on their back in five minutes." Jasper grinned as he spoke a little louder toward the end.
"You aren't that good!" Came Emmett's voice from the inside the house and I couldn't help the laugh at the conspirative look that passed between the two. I'm sure the next wrestling match would require a stopwatch.
Jasper led Peter into the house so the rest of the family could say their hellos and likely so Emmett could challenge Jasper and Peter to a wrestling match. I trailed behind the duo, soaking up the feeling that everything was to rights for the moment.
