A/N: I don't own Twilight. I just like to play with the characters. Jasper as the God of War and Peter just knowing shit are characterizations that were developed by idreamofeddy. It does not belong to me.
Hello, everyone. I'm back! School is over for the summer, thank God, so I'm finally able to devote some time to writing. I'm really excited about it.
As promised, this chapter wraps up the Savannah storyline for the most part. It has been a long time coming for both you guys and for me, so I hope you enjoy it.
I want to thank my pre-readers Juliangelus, shelljayz, Laurie Whitlock, and Tammygrrrl. They were absolutely instrumental in this chapter coming together and getting finished.
I am changing my penname from JoyfulyetHesitantPen to WrittenWithJoy, so don't worry if you see that in my next post. No one will have stolen Longing or anything like that. I just feel I have outgrown that penname both as a person and as a writer and wanted something that reflects that.
Trigger Warning: Nonexplicit depictions of sexual assault and the aftermath of torture are in this chapter. For people who may be triggered by these things, you can skip the part that begins in bold font and is underlined. It both starts and ends bold and underlined.
oOo
Thursday, December 31st, 2080, Late Morning
JPOV
"Leaving Savannah alone was a stupid idea," I grumbled, voicing this opinion for the first time, thinking it for the 107th time. It had been just as stupid the first time too.
Esme had unilaterally decided that we all needed a break from the bullshit, one that did not include hunting. Since Savannah was literally the figurative bullshit, she was not invited and had, therefore, been left to her own devices.
Said break happened to be a private whale watching excursion—whale watching, Esme? Really?—off the coast of Port Angeles which was just on the cusp of too far from Forks. She'd figured it was the most soothing and innocuous of our activity options. But still—whale watching? She wouldn't have been wrong under other circumstances: the scenery was beautiful, the ocean was the perfect mix of serene and chaotic, and five Orca had already graced us with their presence. But it wasn't other circumstances and the last thing I was, was soothed.
"Is that you talking," Rosalie asked quietly, "or her?"
I sighed heavily, pressing my thumbs into my temples until it hurt. Being away from Savannah, both distance and time-wise, was tearing at my insides no matter that it was also a relief.
"Does it matter?" I returned, weary. "It doesn't change the fact that the idea is stupid."
The only upside was that my gift was my own again.
I expected Peter to speak up in agreement but he remained quiet, pensive. He'd been troubled since he returned from his little tête à tête with Savannah. He was doing an admirable job of hiding it, but Charlotte and I knew him too well. Something was wrong, but I didn't know how to ask him about it. How could I be there for him when I couldn't tell my ass from my face as he had so eloquently reminded me? Then again, that didn't mean I couldn't try. He deserved that much but now wasn't the time. I would have to trust Charlotte to take care of him for now.
Esme cut in before I could anyway. "I couldn't spend one more minute in my house with that—" she spat, huffing, "—that bitch, and I wasn't about to leave any of my family there with her either, not when I know every single one of us can feel exactly what it is she's doing to you, Jasper. It's just stuff."
"And if she decides to go exploring and just happens to cross over into Quileute territory?" Charlotte remarked, eyebrows raised. "What then?"
Esme smirked, a spiteful gleam in her eye. "Let her."
"Our relationship with the wolves would be destroyed," Carlisle pointed out.
"Let it be destroyed then," Esme declared, tone fierce, "as long as Savannah is destroyed with it."
In the space of a blink, I found myself in a crouch, snarling like a rabid dog, teeth bared and ready to attack. Just as quickly as I fell into it, I fell out, knees hitting the deck of the boat with a muted thud.
Everything was crashing down around me, again, just when I'd started trying to piece them back together, invisible walls shrinking bit by bit. The crowding inevitability of it, the crushing terror swooped in like a bird of prey intent on devouring me. My chest hurt, heart racing. Why was my heart sprinting fit to burst through my rib cage? I couldn't breathe, I couldn't feel my hands. Why couldn't I feel my hands? Was I supposed to feel them? Why was the world spinning? Everything and everyone else was faint, distant…
There was a vague, incoherent thing I knew I should remember but it was like grasping at soft, already scattered smoke. If I wasn't shaking so hard, I might have tried anyway. I didn't care enough to bother.
Blood was pounding in my ears, rushing through my veins, deafening me with its relentless roaring, the tha-thump of my pulse the sharp beat of a snare drum.
I was trapped, I was lost…
I can't do this…
I can't do this… I can't… I ca—
"You can," a voice, muffled and nearly indistinguishable, floated amongst the throbbing beat I could hear over everything else.
A brush of fingertips I could barely feel against my numbed cheeks, hands framing my jaw and tightening, nudging upward, a blur of colors coming into view. "Jasper," the voice came again, syllables honed razor-sharp but not chastising, "focus."
The fog lifted, colors diverging: purple, green, mottled eggshell, liquid gold, flowing cornsilk...
Charlotte.
She was talking again but I was still a beat behind. She ran her thumbs over my cheeks, the touch grounding me and catching me up to the present. "Focus."
And now I could, at least enough to follow along. The more she spoke the clearer everything got.
"Are you with me now?" Charlotte asked, searching. Speaking was still beyond me but I could nod. She nodded back. "You can," she repeated firmly. "You can do this."
My gaze, my thoughts, drifted with the ebb of her voice.
"Come on, Jasper," she said adamantly, tone almost but not quite pleading. "I need you with me. Are you with me?"
Was I?
Focus.
Nod.
Was that to myself or to her?
"I need you to tell me what's happening," she said, and then all I saw was cornsilk strands.
I tried to find her eyes again but instead, I found black, blue, tan, white, gold, bronze...
Edward.
Distantly… "He's not blocking me. I don't think he can right now."
He sounded...scared?
"Then help me!" Charlotte demanded. Peter...where was Peter?
I want Peter! I need… I need Peter. I need Bella! Where's Bella?
"His thoughts are all jumbled!" Edward said.
"Just send me everything! I'll figure it out myself!" she shot back.
Chest hurts. Body Shakes. Can't feel. Scared. Lost. Can't breathe…
White-noise.
"Jasper," Charlotte repeated, snapping her fingers in my face to grab my attention. "Focus."
Focus.
"I need you to hear me right now, really hear me," she said seriously, stroking her thumbs over my face again. "This is important, okay? Are you still with me?"
Nod.
"Okay, good," she praised warmly, eyes boring into mine. "You're having a panic attack, but you are a vampire. Do you know what that means?"
I don't… I don't… My head shook on its own. Did I understand?
Charlotte continued regardless. "It means that the terror you're feeling, the loss of control? That's real. Anyone in your place would feel the same, honey, but your body is lying to you." She took my left hand and placed my fingers to my wrist. "Feel this."
It took a minute for me to concentrate enough to do what she ordered. There was nothing under my fingertips but cool skin. There was nothing... Charlotte saw the instant this registered.
"No pulse." She squeezed my hand gently. "Your heart isn't racing."
My heart isn't racing.
She took both my hands in hers and squeezed again but this time hard enough to crack my flesh.
"Can you feel that?" she asked.
Nod.
"Your hands aren't numb anymore, are they?"
Shake.
Once the numbness left one, it disappeared in the other.
Keeping one hand enveloped in hers, she pressed my palm to the ground, guiding it across the surface. Smooth but grainy…
The boat.
"Do you feel the ship rocking?"
Nod.
"Good, now, look into my eyes, okay?" I met her eyes, desperate for her to make things make sense. "Am I steady?"
Nod.
"The world isn't spinning anymore because it wasn't really spinning in the first place."
The world isn't spinning. It was never spinning.
She cupped my face once more. "And sweetheart, you don't need to breathe," she reminded me compassionately.
I don't need to breathe.
"But we're going to anyway, okay?" Charlotte said. "Can you breathe with me?"
Nod.
"Good." Next, "First I need you to exhale."
It took a few tries but I managed.
"Now breathe in through your nose, and hold for one, two, three," she demonstrated, "pause, and exhale through your mouth, one, two, three."
Inhale…
One, two, three…
Pause…
Exhale…
One, two, three…
It took seven repetitions before everything finally snapped back into place, coming into typical sharp focus.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm really fine…
Except for the metric ton of bullshit I was shortly headed back to.
"I'm fine," I finally said aloud.
I trudged aft to the stern, gripping the railing too tightly as I stared out at the waves and tried not to see my fucktastic shitstorm of a life in the unruly bedlam. I couldn't stand to endure the concerned gazes of the family right now. It wasn't so much about feeling weak—we were not human but reverting to human behaviors was a common enough occurrence in vampires.
Deep down, tucked firmly away in the brain—the amygdala to be specific—was the gateway to our subconscious humanity. It was here that vampires and humans were most alike, where all the basic survival instincts and subsequent aversive cues lived, the place in the brain where it didn't matter that venom flowed through our veins instead of blood, that oxygen wasn't a primary component of our existence. It just reacted and those reactions didn't always make sense to vampires or to humans. So no it wasn't that.
It wasn't even the overt display of tumultuous emotion. Did I like putting what I felt on display for the world to see? No, and I was pretty damn good at concealing them at will, but the fact of the matter was that emotions were my life in a way that no one else could understand. As an empath, I was practically emotion incarnate. There was no escaping it.
It was just that my emotions weren't the only thing on display right now. Every aspect of my life was spilled out in the open. There was nothing I could hide from anyone. Nothing was just mine, and it's not as though I was unfamiliar with that feeling, but couldn't I, at the very least, fall apart in peace? It was all I had left, only now apparently I'd lost even that.
"I'm fine," I repeated firmly, and it was true. It was true because it had to be. There was no other option.
oOo
Late Afternoon...
We headed back home just before sunset feeling no lighter despite the effort.
As we hit two miles out, I stumbled to a stop, so torn and conflicted I couldn't process. Part of me wanted to rush the rest of the way to the house while the other part was absolutely paralyzed with panic.
No. I'm fine. I can do this. I won't lose my shit.
Bella's scent pervaded the area, saturated it, which meant one thing and one thing only—she had broken her promise to Peter; she hadn't stayed away. A bigger worry was the fact that Bella's and Savannah's scents were intertwined.
Bella, the woman I loved, who was essentially the vampire equivalent of catnip, had met Savannah, my fraudulent mate. Savannah, who had only converted to the animal blood diet two days ago and was still struggling mightily with her lust for human blood, had been in the same room with the woman we'd all been trying so desperately to keep safe since Savannah's impromptu arrival. All the work I'd done to convince her to leave Bella alone the other day, all the work the whole family had done over the last several days, had been shot to shit by Bella herself.
Why am I not surprised? I muttered to myself, furious. Bella always did have a way of fucking with all of our carefully laid plans. The girl had a gift.
Painful pressure began to build behind my eyes and that feeling of being pulled in too many different directions came roaring back to the forefront of everything, the most intense it had ever been—a distraction I couldn't afford.
I'm fine.
Peter and Charlotte were at my side instantly while the rest of the Cullens had frozen, feeling the same panic that I did. I wasn't sure if it was because I was projecting or if their panic was feeding mine. It was almost certainly both.
Peter knew better than to touch me, even though I could tell he wanted to. "It's all right, Jasper. Her scent isn't strong enough for any blood to have been spilled."
Finally! Where the fuck have you been, Peter?
"That doesn't mean Savannah didn't hurt her," I growled, absolutely sick at the idea. My trepidation ratcheted up several notches. "There are ways a human can die without any bloodshed."
Rapid-fire images flitted through my brain: Bella with her neck twisted at a grotesque angle, brown eyes no longer sharp and infuriatingly intuitive but empty and unseeing, Bella face down and floating in the tub I never used in my bathroom, pale, bloated flesh peeking out from between the hem of her T-shirt and the waist of her jeans, and any number of other more and more elaborate scenarios, both realistic and outlandish, that made me feel so utterly lost that my head spun.
"Don't go borrowin' trouble, Jasper. Bella's scent wouldn't be the same if she were dead," Charlotte said calmly. "We'll find out what happened, and we'll deal with it."
Peter nodded, a fruitless attempt to reassure me. "Charlotte's right. Her scent isn't strong enough for blood to have been spilled, but it's also not strong enough for her to still be at the house. That means she at least left in one piece…" he paused for a millisecond because we all knew that despite how much conviction he said it with that didn't make it true. "I will track her down and make sure she's okay."
I swallowed thickly, unable to respond, and the pressure behind my eyes bore down a little harder.
Peter reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder, his palm and fingers holding a steady pressure as though he was trying to keep me together through touch alone. I found none of the comfort in his gesture that I normally would have, and he knew it, removing the contact with one last tightening of his grip before he let go.
"I'll take care of her," he vowed. "You know I will."
I managed a nod in acknowledgment to his retreating back. Peter never let me down. If I had faith in nothing else, it was that, and at the moment, and for all time, there was no truer statement.
"Now you have to steel yourself," Charlotte carried on, taking over yet again when it should have been me in charge of the situation. "You can't go home all wrecked because this—" she gestured at my general state of agitation— "what you're feelin' right now isn't the same as the separation anxiety you've been strugglin' with the past few days. Bella goin' home is bad enough. You can't add even more fuel to the fire, not if we want to keep her safe."
"She's not safe!" I roared, the nearest tree exploding as my fist met with it in a show of superb violence. It brought me no comfort. "Not anymore! Savannah already knew Bella's scent but she hadn't smelled it at full strength. Now that she has she's much more liable to go after her. She can track her if she wants to."
"She won't," Charlotte intoned confidently. "You tell her not to and she won't."
"And what if, if she does ask, I'm outta my fuckin' mind at the time? What if the part of me that loves Bella is locked away so deep I give Savannah my goddamn permission to hunt her down?" I bellowed, going utterly still.
I was afraid that if I moved even a millimeter all the panic and rage I felt would boil over just as it had only hours ago but worse—my last shred of control would be lost and the God of War would come out to play. It was an enticing idea in theory because even bonded to her, his appearance would not end well for Savannah, and there were a few reasons why that wouldn't be good, but that wasn't my primary concern. The problem was that it wouldn't end well for anyone else either, including Bella.
I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, hoping to ease the ache in my head as I continued to try to process our current situation, the damage control that needed to be done, and what I needed to do to accomplish it.
I had to work so hard to focus that I didn't hear Charlotte's response. "You won't."
I fell silent, repeating the breathing exercises from before in an effort to collect myself.
"Jasper?" Charlotte questioned tentatively after a while.
"Yeah," I answered wearily, not bothering to reopen my eyes. "Yeah, I just… I needed a minute to get my head on straight."
But there was no getting my head on straight because suddenly there was nothing but excruciating, blinding pain and the feeling of being torn apart from the inside out.
Then there was running...
oOo
Savannah's POV
Being left to my own devices by Jasper and his family wasn't unexpected given the stress my mere presence wrought, but I still didn't like it. Their faith that I would heed their warnings about the so-called wolves and stay put wasn't unfounded. I didn't know if the wolves and their treaty with them were fact or fiction, but it was certainly enough to keep me in line, confining as the house was coming to be. However, I found it a blessing to be alone when Paige dropped by. It was a splendid surprise and getting to enjoy her company without having to share her was more than I could ever have hoped for, but now that she was gone I was bored out of my mind. It had been such a blessed balm from the itch and ache of Jasper's absence. The longer he was gone the worse it became, and I wanted nothing more than for him to walk through the door with a smile for me. I would even take a scowl and his rage as long as he was here and made the itch and ache go away. It was easier to forget when I wasn't alone, and it was nice to spend time with someone who didn't actively hate everything about me and what I stood for, too many questions and too little personal space notwithstanding. I couldn't seem to help it though. Paige drew me to her like a moth to flame, and I found myself close enough to touch her so many times without realizing what I was doing that I felt possessed. What was it about this human girl that was so very captivating I forgot myself with every inhalation of her scent and glance in her direction? What I wouldn't give to spend an entire day with her, studying every little thing about her and basking in it all. She was just so lovely, slender but shapely, her neck one exquisite line from jaw to shoulder, and dear Lord, her mouth… it was such a gorgeous mouth. I found myself wanting to kiss it desperately, more than her delicious scent dared me to feed, and I found it rather odd considering I had never experienced sexual desire for another woman before. I had only ever wanted to kiss Jasper more. Those were only a few of the many things I found absolutely fascinating about her. Everything about Paige was like a drug. How Jasper could be so unaffected by her made not a lick of sense to me.
Of course, my musings on this ended as abruptly as if I'd been doused by icy water. I could feel the bond break as soon as it happened. It was an agony like I had never known before, like I'd been pulled apart at the seams and left shattered on the ground for carrion birds to pick apart as I lay waiting for a death that would never come, a gaping void opening in my chest. It took me out at the knees, grasping at my heart and leaving me shaking like a leaf, disoriented and weak, cheeks tear-stained. Despite the pain, I rallied. I pulled myself to my feet, my knees wobbly, and took a moment to calm myself, to find focus. After I did, I was rock-steady. I had to be. He would be coming for me now, and I had to act quickly. If I meant to live I had to forge a new bond but to create another one so soon after the first and its breaking, didn't solely require the use of his gift; I had to touch him. If he knew that he wouldn't dare come that close, but there was a chance I had managed to keep that a secret from him all those years ago. If I had, his ignorance would serve me well in this. I only needed an instant, but an instant was all it would take to end my life. I had to be ready. I had to be faster.
I ran to Jasper's bedroom and arranged myself near the window but just out of view. If we were doing this I might as well stage it in the place with which I was most familiar. He was there before thirty seconds had come and gone, each individual tick of the clock a visceral blow as I waited for death to come calling. Unlike any of his other displays of violence since my arrival, he moved on silent feet, like a ghost, the front door whispering open instead of exploding inward in a shower of destroyed wood, not a sound on the stairs as he ascended, and then he was there, standing in the open doorway taking my measure. Though he stood tall and motionless, he was very much a feral animal in the eyes, but there was cunning in his gaze still. Not quite the Major but neither was he the God of War, small comfort though that was.
The second he took to gaze at me stretched on for years as I stood pressed tight against the wall, just as motionless as he, but I knew it was coming. He was coming, and the anxiety of waiting was taking its toll.
Let him see. Let him see how afraid I am. They all saw me as a coward, and this time, I would use that to my advantage.
Come on, Jasper. Come on. Come and get me!
He was on me before I could blink, his teeth in my throat just before I released my gift, pouring every last ounce of power within me, and then it was done. The bond was reforged, and it was stronger than ever.
He froze as it took hold, and his misery and frustration flooded the room as soon as he realized what I had done. I felt them as surely as I felt his bite, but I remained unmoved by them in my relief. I was trembling with it, and it would be a long time before I stopped fully.
Carefully, he extracted his teeth from me, forehead resting in the crook of my neck as he took in a shuddering breath, lips forming words in my skin, shaping what seemed to be 'I'm fine,' and sagged against me like the emotionally exhausted man he was. "I can't keep doing this," he muttered quietly, broken.
Tentatively, I reached up and awkwardly patted him on the back in wordless apology, unsure of how well-received my touch would be. He flinched but didn't pull away, so I embraced him until he would no longer tolerate it. When he disentangled himself from me and put some distance between us, his eyes fixed on the imprint of his teeth in my skin, slowly weeping our mingled venom.
"I was going to kill you," he said, voice still soft, "and it was finally going to be over. I need it to be over."
I didn't say any of the multitude of responses I had at that, not even an apology. "I don't want to die" was a given, "please, don't hate me" would fall on deaf ears, "I want to do right by you" would earn a scoff, and "I wasn't ready to let you go" would bring only anger. Silence said nothing and everything. Silence could mean anything he wanted it to, whatever he needed it to mean.
When he brought his gaze to mine, his eyes were full of bitter, furious tears he would never be able to shed, and didn't that just sting like nothing else ever could.
Don't give up! I wanted to say. Fight! I wanted to say. Don't forget how to be the man I love! I wanted to shout at him. I looked for that man in those eyes, but I couldn't find what I was looking for. I loved him still, and if I waited long enough, the Major would come back. He just needed time.
"How did you break the bond, Jasper?" I bravely dared to ask, trying to appear composed and voicing the one true fear I had left. My gift might allow me to create bonds, but I couldn't break them. I certainly wouldn't break this one.
Jasper's brows furrowed, making it clear he was still in the haze of the new bond, during which very little made sense to him.
"I broke the bond?" he said, nonplussed.
"Yes, honey," I told him, albeit reluctant to admit it. My question bore repeating, "How did you break it?"
He concentrated hard but his brows remained furrowed, and I knew his answer before he gave it. "I don't know."
I sighed in disappointment and weariness. I should have known it would be useless to try to get it out of him now.
I couldn't help myself when I asked, "Would you tell me if you did?"
As disoriented as he was, he was still adamant when he replied, "No."
That was fair, I supposed.
"Maybe I'll have Peter kill you for me," he whispered after a minute or so, sounding marginally less miserable at the thought. "He'd be more than happy to."
Don't I know it, I grumbled.
I had to dissuade that line of thinking immediately. I had to give Jasper a reason to stay Peter's hand.
"You know the bond won't break when I die," I reminded him. "My power won't die with me, and you'll stay tied to me and mourning your mate's death for eternity. You would be in agony for the rest of your days."
He just stared for a minute, still slow. After a while, it seemed he wasn't going to say anything at all.
"Is being tied to me really so bad?" I couldn't help but ask, a little desperate. "I know all your worst secrets. I understand you. I know you. I know all of it, and I still love you. It's why I love you. You could do worse than to be with someone who loves you."
"I would rather be alone," he informed me tonelessly.
All of a sudden I was seething with blind rage. Our bond may have been counterfeit but Jasper was all I'd ever wanted. I needed the bond. I couldn't live without it, and to be denied so blatantly and powerfully time and time again was the last straw.
Fuck my good intentions! To hell with being a better person!
I was done being sorry when it would never make a damn bit of difference. I no longer cared about my reasons for coming here.
I had never asked for anything my whole life, but now I was demanding. If Jasper wouldn't give me what I wanted, then I was going to take it. Our bond was fake, but I would make it real, and I knew just how to do it. Luckily for me, he was still pliable just as he always had been when it counted, still susceptible to manipulation, and would be for a while yet. I just had to let this little exchange between us lie until my words blended into the background noise of the new bond. As long as I struck quickly and didn't give him time to think, he wouldn't fight me. He never did, and why should he? I was doing this for him as much as myself. It would be good for him. I was good for him. I was the only one who ever truly looked after him. I just had to remind him of that, and besides, a true bond would bring him the peace he so sorely needed. All I had to do was show him. Then he would see, and he would thank me for it, after it was done.
oOo
The Major's POV
Losing a mate hurt like a bitch, even if that mate was fake.
oOo
Thursday, December 31st, 2080, Evening
PPOV
The place I'd asked Bella to meet me was in the woods, close enough to the coastline for her to hear the crashing of the sea but, most importantly, deep in Cullen territory. After three clear perimeter checks I stood, looking up at the dusky sky peeking through the treetops. I attempted to gather my thoughts while I waited for her to arrive, but my attention was divided, dual desires warring in my head and heart. I needed to see her, to make sure she was all right, but I itched to be back at Jasper's side, having his back the way I always did. The trouble was, I couldn't afford for my attention to be divided, not now; not when so much was at stake. Savannah's presence here was difficult enough without having to field Bella's ability to be evasive. She was the only human I'd ever met who could potentially weasel her way around my careful, decades-honed ability to read people, gift or no gift, and manipulate them into revealing the information I needed or to do what it was I needed done. Very few vampires had that capability which just made this flesh-and-blood girl that much more baffling and infuriating. Needless to say, I had to be firing on all cylinders, so I had to get myself in the right headspace to deal with this shit situation.
It would have been easier and more prudent to merely drop by the Webers' house to observe Bella from afar to make sure she was okay. In this instance, after everything that happened, I needed to have her standing in front of me, so I could touch her if she would let me. Also, a tiny, childish, ugly part of me wanted to make her feel guilty for breaking her promise, and I couldn't do that if I didn't talk to her face-to-face.
I heard the whisper of brush and other forest debris giving way under Bella's feet as she approached minutes later. The steadiness of her rhythm and heartbeat allowed me to pull all my attention to her, temporarily putting what might be going on at the house with Jasper and Savannah out of my head for the time being. In preparation of this little one-on-one chat of ours, I straightened up to my full height and squared my shoulders, folded my arms across my chest and adopted a forbidding expression. She appeared through the trees after several minutes, looking none the worse for wear from her hike and the events of the day in general.
The wave of relief I felt at the sight of her, whole and unharmed, was a bodily thing, but now that I had physical evidence that she was fine, my anger over the whole situation came roaring back to the forefront.
I stepped forward immediately so Bella wouldn't have to search for me in the dim light, and once she caught sight of me, she scanned me from head to toe, just as I had her. When I didn't say anything for the next thirty seconds, thrumming with visible tension, she took it upon herself to jump-start our conversation. "You called. I came."
"You lied," I bit out sharply, not in the mood to play nice.
"Everyone lies," was her profound and blasé response. That and a goddamned shrug.
Definitely not in the mood to play nice.
My eyes narrowed dangerously, the only outward sign of my irritation, but I didn't comment on her words.
"You broke your promise," I said instead.
Bella showed no reaction to my accusation, no guilt, no remorse, nothing. Any hope that this would be easy vanished with her apparent apathy. Of course it wouldn't. Oh no, not with Bella. She had to be a fuckin' pain in the ass just like her thick-headed, currently brainwashed mate. I could only hope that when they finally got their shit together and got together, that my life would be easier. Knowing my luck and them, it would become twice as difficult. It was a damned good thing patience was one of my many virtues.
"It was a promise I never should have made," she replied, her gaze still holding mine, unwavering.
I didn't bother to contain my snort at that but chose not to address that gem of a non-explanation. Delving into the mysteries of Bella Crawfield's psyche was not on the menu tonight. I had too much other shit heaped on my plate to even be curious about the inner workings of her mind.
"Would you care to share why you broke the promise you never should have made?" I inquired, tone cool.
"I had my reasons," she said cryptically.
"Which were?" I prodded.
"Good ones," Bella answered.
I did my best to ignore how eerily reminiscent this conversation was to the one I'd had with Savannah the day before, letting out a long-suffering sigh and running my hand through my hair. Bella was just begging to be throttled, and in the frame of mind I was in, I would get no enjoyment from doing it myself, but Rosalie would. Someone should have fun with it.
"Not good enough," I growled through gritted teeth, arms dropping to my sides and hands balling into fists, three simple words strung together but with two meanings, stirrings of impatience swirling through my veins at her evasiveness. "Explain."
"The way you explained to me why you wanted me to stay away in such explicit detail?" she countered. There was no heat or accusation to her tone, but it was arch and challenging because Bella was Bella, and she just had to go and continue being a pain in my ass at the most inconvenient time ever.
"Bella," I warned sharply, what little restraint I had left abruptly dissipating. Now I was just flat out angry and not at the situation this time, though my anger at that hadn't diffused in the slightest. I had never been angry with her before and it threw me, probably because the primary drive behind it was this really primal sense of betrayal. She had promised me, and she'd broken it. It hurt more than I ever thought it could have.
Again, there was no reaction, no attempt to continue our tête à tête, nothing. She just stood there staring at me all casual-like, as though we had conversations about her monumental stupidity all the damn time. Grudgingly, I had to hand it to her—the girl was excellent at playing her cards close to the vest.
I'm too fuckin' old for this shit, and right now I felt the wear and tear of every single one of those years.
"I asked you to stay away from the fuckin' house," I reminded her, unleashing the full force of my disappointment and frustration. "I told you I couldn't explain. I told you it was dangerous, that you couldn't help, and whether or not you should have, you still gave me your word—"
Bella sighed, a flicker of indecision coloring her features. "Look, Peter," she said tiredly, "I had something I needed to do, and I couldn't get ahold of you—"
"Which I also asked you not to do," I cut her off irritably.
"—so I made a choice," she emphasized to counteract my interruption. "I did what I needed done, and I'm sorry I had to break my promise to do it. I really am. It wasn't to prove anything or to spite you, and I know you want to know why, but I don't want to talk about it." She looked much older than her seventeen years just then, older and harder and weary, but determined. "You can choose not to respect that and we'll both walk away angry or you can accept it and we can work past it. I don't want to fight with you."
There was that word again. Chose, choose—choice. It always came down to that, didn't it?
And what about your choice, Peter? Savannah's voice reverberated loudly in my thoughts, mocking and cruel, only it wasn't her voice. Not entirely.
I chuckled hollowly, my anger with her abruptly deflating. She wasn't wrong; she had a right to her privacy, and demanding answers from her, especially when I couldn't be forthcoming with her about Savannah, was incredibly hypocritical.
"I don't want to fight with you either, punk," I admitted. What I couldn't admit to anyone was that, for just a moment, everything that had been weighing on me from the second I realized Savannah was in Forks had come crashing down around my ears after my little talk with her in the woods the other day. I couldn't get that bitch's words out of my head, her accusations about my part in Jasper's fate echoing in my skull until it was all I could do not to just fuckin' lose it.
Unfortunately, I almost had just now. Broken promise or not, I had no right to take my frustration and anger over this shit show out on Bella.
I couldn't help the heavy sigh that escaped me or the utter weariness that descended over me like a fuckin' anvil tied around my neck, choking me with the heaviness of it. However, now wasn't the time for that, so I shook it off as best I could.
"You're okay?" I asked, getting back to the meat and potatoes of this meeting's purpose.
Bella gave a tentative, reassuring smile. "Yeah, Peter, I'm okay. Really."
I let out a breath in a whoosh, only just realizing I'd stopped breathing at all. It was the habit of it; that simple act so human that it helped ground me despite being unnecessary. Her smile turned a little less guarded, more genuine. It brought me out of my mini-pity party.
"So," I began after a moment, choosing my words carefully. I would have to be careful about everything I said from here on out. "You met Savannah."
"Yeah." Her smile faded and I couldn't read the expression on her face or interpret her tone as she confirmed what I already knew. That wasn't exactly an unusual occurrence, and it was just as frustrating as it always was.
"And you're really okay? She didn't try anything?" I repeated, not quite ready to believe it.
I didn't trust Savannah in general, but with Bella? I would sooner rip my own balls off and toss them into a fire myself than put Bella's life in her hands. If my little punk had so much as a hangnail I would not be able to stop myself from ripping Savannah to shreds.
"Yes, I really am," Bella reassured me adamantly.
She really did seem to be okay, so I chose to take her at her word. Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I went to my texting app and started a group message, sending a thumbs-up emoji to Jasper and the family.
When I returned my attention to her, her gaze turned shrewd and assessing. "Were you expecting her to try something?"
"She's new to the animal blood diet," I explained, keeping calm in every aspect of myself, even if I was faking it. "The possibility wasn't off the table. It's part of why we didn't want you comin' 'round."
I could give her that little tidbit at least.
"Other than her superhuman ability to obliterate my personal space bubble, she was perfectly well-behaved," she told me, clearly exasperated.
Unfortunately, her discomfort was secondary to the information she'd just imparted. Something about it pinged off my knower and I needed to figure out why without piquing Bella's skillful perception which was bound to go about as well as a kindergartener trying their hand at rocket science.
Can't you just make things easy for once? I couldn't help but grouse.
I gave her an odd, hopefully innocent, look. Well, partially innocent. If I oversold it Bella would definitely home in on it. "What does that mean?"
The expression that took over her face looked to be about the same as the one I currently wore, and I wondered if I'd blown it. Was that innocence real or was she faking it too?
Fuck! I was losing my touch. I was starting to lose it, period. Savannah had gotten in my head and I couldn't get her out. One little conversation and I was suddenly a worthless, guilt-ridden jackass immersed in an ocean of self-doubt.
"Uh," Bella wavered uncertainly, totally uncharacteristic, "she kept invading my space and hovering, sometimes without even realizing she was doing it. She said she was drawn to me. It was weird." She scowled deeply as she imparted this information, her tone losing a little of its composure before she realized how I might react to that knowledge. "But I'm fine. Don't get your panties in a twist just because Jasper's creepy friend has no manners."
I bristled at that, my figurative panties most definitely in a twist. Every word of her answer was telling, and I didn't like ninety percent of what it said. Its implications could, and probably would, be catastrophic. Of fuckin' course it would—it was Bella and Savannah, after all.
The pinging I'd felt for the last few minutes was now an obnoxious banging and if what it was telling me was correct, Savannah was drawn to Bella the same way Jasper was...because hijacking his bond to Bella was as good as Savannah bonding herself to Bella as well. She had unwittingly mated herself to two people, careless, ignorant bitch that she was, and that put our human in a hell of a lot more danger than any of us realized. Fuck!
"I want to ask if she's part of the situation you're so desperate to keep me away from," Bella said after a minute. "But I'm not going to."
I took a page out of her book and just stared at her, trying to unfurrow the disturbed crease from my brow.
"I just..." she floundered, reaching up to twist the chain of her phoenix necklace around two of her fingers. "Is he happy?"
And there went all the effort I put into the brow un-furrowing.
"What do you mean?" I hedged, almost positive I didn't actually want to know.
"Jasper," she said slowly, as if saying his name was difficult for her. "Is he happy?"
I frowned. While it was good to hear that Bella gave a shit about Jasper's happiness and admitted it—out loud, in actual words—what the hell did that… "Oh, you mean…"
"Savannah," she said, those ridiculous eyes that somehow managed to see so much but reveal so little piercing as she studied me, a frown of her own curving her lips. "Does she make him happy?"
It was as if asking that question broke something open in her, something raw and fragile peeking through her jagged edges in a way I'd never seen before, and…
Oh, I thought, suddenly understanding. She's in love with him.
It should have made me happy, knowing this. I'd been waiting for it since the moment I realized she was Jasper's mate. Hell, I'd been waiting for it since the dawn of my life as a vampire, since the first moment I just knew. But I wasn't happy. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
Did she even know? Did she understand? I would have loved to sit there for as long as it took for her to puzzle it out, but I didn't have the time.
I shook my head ruefully. "No, sweetheart," I reassured her gently. "He will never be happy, not with her."
Her frown deepened and she wove another finger into the chain, tugging it taut enough to dig into her neck. I wondered what it meant that she left her Wildfire necklace from Jasper alone, but that was neither here nor there. "But don't you want that for him? I mean, he and I are friends, right? And the two of you are family. We should want him to be happy… shouldn't we?"
She doesn't know. She doesn't understand at all.
It was almost adorable how awkward and insecure she was, and if not for the seriousness of the situation and her actual words, I might have teased her for it. As it was, I had to disabuse her of whatever nonsense notion she had in that fool head of hers; I had some other shit to attend to first though... "Punk, that is the only thing I've ever wanted."
Her expression turned speculative and confused, a little scornful. "What about Charlotte?"
"Jasper is the reason I have Charlotte," I confessed, the words escaping harsher than I'd intended, but this was a sore subject in so many ways. Actually saying it out loud to someone, Bella in particular, made the truth of it heavier, more tangible, despite my intimate acquaintance with it over the last century and a half. What was usually a bittersweet reality of my entire life as a vampire had turned to ash, and I couldn't even blame it wholly on Savannah. That didn't lessen my gratitude to Jasper. "He's the reason she and I are alive to be together at all. I owe him everything a thousand times over."
I watched as Bella mulled that over, closing her hand around her necklace and squeezing before she let it drop to rest on her breastbone, the phoenix pendant hanging just below the Wildfire of her other necklace. I was beginning to think I might be able to read her better by the way she played with the damn thing than I would ever be able to with anything else. The only problem was that she fussed with it all the time.
"I don't think that's how he sees it," she finally said, any lingering uneasiness over this topic diffusing with her words.
What was I supposed to say to that? What could I possibly say? The answer was zip, zilch, nada, zero. I was not going to be the one to enlighten Bella about the reality of vampire wars and whether or not it mattered if the person you owed your life to didn't agree about the debts they were due. I wouldn't touch that issue with a ten-foot pole. Nope. That shit was all Jasper...or it would be once the numbskull got a fuckin' clue.
And what if he never does? A little voice piped up again, more doubt seeping through the cracks in my arrogance. What if you went about this all wrong? What if you fucked things up so bad that he ends up tied to Savannah forever, as though Bella doesn't exist?
I wondered if this was what it was like for Jasper when the Major rode shotgun in his head. Some fucker in my own mind constantly shooting off at the mouth and with no way to escape it wasn't exactly my idea of a party, and it wasn't Jasper's either. Now that I thought about it, I couldn't help but wonder what the bastard made of this whole situation. I didn't imagine he was happy about it, so where the hell was he? And why wasn't he picking up some of the slack? The Major would have made an appearance by now if he had a choice in the matter, and the fact that he hadn't shown himself scared me. For all I knew, he was just as enthralled with Savannah as Jasper was.
You stood idly by for decades, and why? Because your gift told you to? Because you just know shit? If it were up to me, I would definitely choose a colder, more fucked up version of myself as a not-so-silent passenger in my head than suffer through the grating voice of one of my most reviled nemeses.
I didn't want to talk about who owed whom what right now. I couldn't. I needed a fuckin' break, and this was the only time I could get it—with Bella, who had no part in my complicated past and the history I shared with Jasper, Savannah, and of course, Charlotte. I didn't have to be Peter, the guy who just knows shit. I could just be Peter, the man… If only it were that simple.
"Peter?" I heard a tentative, concerned voice call, the words muffled by the darkness encroaching on me. "Peter?" Bella called again. When I dragged my gaze to hers I could see both plain as day on her face. At my acknowledgment, she asked, "Are you okay?"
If I told her I was fine, she would know I was lying and walk away from this meeting questioning what little faith and trust she'd dared put in me; it had already been shaken enough by recent events as it was. If I told her I wasn't fine, in the state I was in, I might say more than I meant to—more than I should. That was a risk I couldn't take, but I couldn't trust myself any more than she could trust me right now.
"Do you believe in fate?" I asked all of a sudden, the words springing from my lips without thought, dropping down in front of a tree and resting my back against the trunk.
Bella took a seat at my side, looking a little bewildered by this random change of subject, but she didn't let that keep her from responding.
"No," she said decisively.
A corner of my mouth ticked up. She reminded me so much of Jasper in that moment that my heart constricted sharply, like someone had taken it in both hands and squeezed hard before ripping it apart. The fondness I felt for her in addition to the pain was incongruous but no less potent.
"You don't believe that some things are meant to happen? That there are people you're destined to meet? Places you're meant to go?" I asked in all seriousness.
"I believe in choice," she told me, and there it was yet again; it was like the universe was taunting me, desperate to make me go crazy with the idea of it.
"So do I," I assured her, "but that doesn't mean I don't believe there are things that are planned for us, by God or Fate or whatever, that are just meant to be. I've lived too long and seen too much not to acknowledge that."
Bella raised her eyebrows in silent inquiry.
"If I had known, as a human, that becoming a vampire was a potential future, I wouldn't have chosen it," I began contemplatively. If choice was going to repeatedly hit me upside the head I might as well take the bastard and run with it. I just had no idea which direction I planned to head in. Not yet.
"Is it vampire storytime?" Bella cut in gently, the smallest of smiles quirking the corners of her mouth.
I huffed a laugh. "Yes, I suppose it is."
Her smile widened, expression soft and encouraging, eyes bright with interest. It was just what I needed to get myself together.
"The only thing extraordinary about me and my life before was just how damn ordinary it was," I revealed to Bella's apparent amusement. "Somethin' funny about that, punk?"
"No," she said, "it's just… there is no universe that exists in which you could ever have been ordinary, Peter, no matter that your life might have been."
I gave her a grin, feeling almost shy. "Thank you kindly, ma'am," I teased, tipping an imaginary Stetson. "I didn't mind it—ordinary. My ordinary wasn't boring exactly. It just was."
"Will you tell me about it?" Bella asked after a time.
It had been well over a century since I'd thought about my human life in any great detail, but I had no problem pulling the technicolor memories to the surface as if it had only been a day. They were vivid enough to make my chest tight with the sort of grief that never truly went away. Any other time it wouldn't be enough to rock me off my foundation, but it wasn't, and I was.
I could see Eleanor, Jillian, Elizabeth, and William's faces so clearly in my mind's eye, all blonde, blue-eyed and delicate-looking but all forces to be reckoned with in their own way. To this day I will neither confirm nor deny that they called me Petey up until the day I died. I could practically smell my mother's sweet potato pie fresh from the oven and hear my father's smooth baritone voice rising over his latest favorite jazz record.
"My life was pleasant before. I was the youngest of five, and I had a loving mother and father—Esther and John. I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to school, got good grades, made friends, played football, I was an attentive son and brother. You might even call it cookie-cutter for all its sheer, clichéd normality. If Jasper hadn't turned me, my life would have stayed that way. I would maybe have found myself a pretty little darlin' to marry and had a couple of rugrats, and I would have died an old man asleep in my bed. I would have been content, maybe even happy," I mused, knowing the truth of it like I knew the sky was blue. "But that's not what I was meant for."
"And what exactly were you meant for?"
"This life, even if I wasn't given a choice in it. I was meant to be Jasper's right-hand man and to belong to Charlotte. I may have ended up happy as a human but it wouldn't have been this," I said. "It wouldn't have been right."
"I don't want to be meant for anything," Bella said then, wistful. "I just want to be."
It was one of those times I wished my gift was all-knowing or that I had Edward's talent for mind-reading. If only I knew what it was that made her so old while simultaneously so achingly young. Why couldn't I just know everything? It was yet another of my many shortcomings. I understood though, why she would want to be overlooked by the universe's grand machinations. My gift, unfortunately, didn't allow me that.
I saw my father's face in my mind's eye and it reminded me of Bella in a way. He'd had the same air about him, ancient in spirit but young in age. I hadn't always seen that weight in his eyes. It was a gradual thing, a slow collecting of life experiences that bowed him until that was all there was to see.
"My father was a soldier in the Regular Army back before the government thought it was necessary to keep a large peacetime force," I divulged after a moment, not sure sharing this was something I should be doing at all, "so I decided that's what I would be. It wasn't even that I really wanted it, but I was never one to dream or hope or strive for anything more than I already had, not even as a kid, so that was that.
"I think my father was proud that I wanted to take after him. He took preparing me for that life very seriously at least. I spent a lot of my childhood learning how to be a soldier in all the ways he could teach me. 'Playing soldier' took on a meaning it didn't have for other kids."
Bella was listening raptly, brows drawn together and frown marring her lips, clearly considering every word that came out of my mouth with an intensity that almost took me aback.
"By the time I was twelve, I was a crack shot with both a pistol and a rifle and was pretty good at hand-to-hand combat and basic strategy. In other words, I could have kicked kiddie bootcamp's ass, but that was also the year the Great War broke out. My father got more intense about teaching me everything he thought I needed to know after that. In early '17, he was one of the commanding officers reassigned to Camp Shelby to help train folks in case we ended up goin' to war with Germany," I said. "That's where he stayed until he shipped out later that year."
I remembered that day more clearly than most but not for the reasons one might think. I never worried that my father wouldn't make it back home; I knew he would, and I think that was probably one of the only vestiges of my future vampiric gift that ever manifested while I was human. No, I remembered that day because it was the day I lost him…
"He wasn't the same when he came back," I continued. "He was one of the few soldiers we sent to the Front that had already seen battle on foreign soil, but the War was different. The things he saw… it was a different kind of fighting than anything he'd ever seen. We got lucky—he came back whole physically, he didn't lose himself to drink or raise a hand against any of us, he was functioning in a way that a lot of World War I vets that made it home weren't, but make no mistake, we lost him all the same. He was darker, depressed, had all the hallmarks of shellshock, and after everything he went through, he had no intention of seein' his youngest boy joinin' up. He said, 'Pete, there's always goin' to be a war to fight, and you got no business goin' off to kick it in the teeth. It'll kick ya right back twice as hard and you'll be strugglin' to get back on your feet every second ya live after.' It didn't take much to convince me to abandon what I'd spent my whole life working toward.
"I became an accountant instead," I said, the corners of my mouth rising in the ghost of a smile.
Bella looked at me pointedly, clearly under the impression that I was fucking with her.
"I have always been good with numbers," I explained matter-of-factly, shrugging.
She stared for a moment longer before the corners of her mouth started to twitch upwards. She tried to fight it for approximately five seconds before the smile took over, laughter erupting from her like the detonation of a bomb. Her entire body shook with it, arms clutching her sides in mirth, and that mirth slowly swept over me until I was laughing just as hard. I didn't know what I was laughing at but that didn't really matter. It was nice to laugh in joy instead of bitterness or regret.
"What is funny about being an accountant?" I sputtered helplessly.
Bella battled a fresh wave of giggles but managed to say, "Nothing!"
We laughed for several more minutes before we finally settled down, Bella letting her head fall back against the trunk of the tree with a thunk.
"Do you want to know something that actually is funny?" I asked rhetorically. "I became a soldier anyway, and all that training didn't hardly do me any good. In all the ways that mattered, I was just as green as anyone else."
"That isn't funny at all," she said.
I waited for her to ask about it but she didn't and the relief I felt as a result was immense. I still had no intention of broaching the subject of vampire wars with her despite what I had confided.
"So," she said after a while, "I know you can't tell me any details but do you want to talk about what's got you so down?"
"I'm not down," I immediately denied.
Bella gave me a look.
"Why do you think I'm down?" I asked curiously.
"Peter," she began seriously, "I haven't known you long but in all the time I have, you have always been nothing less than fiercely determined. Right now you look...defeated."
She wasn't wrong.
In all honesty, I wanted to take the opportunity she'd given me. I wanted to talk to her, to tell her every little thing that was on my mind. I wanted, for once, to give in and be something I wasn't, and for once, I decided that I would. For just a little while, I would let go of the me that just knew shit. I was going to just be a man with what felt like the world on his shoulders and hadn't the slightest clue what the fuck he was doing.
"Have you ever thought much about my gift?" I asked.
"Not really," she said.
"It's a funny thing, my knowing. I've never questioned it before, but now… now I'm doubting every damn thing I've ever known, every decision, every plan, every strategy I've ever made because of it. I'm wondering if maybe knowing shit has made me into the kind of person I never wanted to be."
Bella's gaze found mine again, her near-constant scrutiny turning even more piercing. I was starting to feel as though every time she narrowed her eyes just so and cocked her head at that precise angle, she'd stripped me down to the skin. By my count, I was buck-ass naked and she'd just peeled back the first layer of flesh.
"Why?" she asked.
I sighed heavily and steeled myself, eyes welling with tears I would never shed, voice choked with emotion as I prepared to say words I never wanted to say, "Have you ever stood by and watched someone suffer and just done...nothing? Just completely and utterly failed someone who meant everything, failed as a person and everything you thought you stood for?"
Bella shifted until we were again pressed together from shoulder to knee, her head tucked securely against my shoulder with an arm snaked around my back. She squeezed me in solidarity.
"Jasper," she said knowingly.
My whole body stiffened at the sound of his name. How could I explain all this to her? How could I tell her, his mate, the woman who was his everything and he hers, about my complete and utter failure? "Yes."
She squeezed me again, the slightest of pressure on my side.
"Tell me?" she implored eventually.
"We were in a bad situation for a long time, Jasper, Charlotte, and I. He had it the worst," I said, feeling very far away, in another time and place, another life, "and I didn't help him."
I could see it clear as day, all the times I just let Maria destroy him without a word, all the times I locked my jaw, gritted my teeth and turned a blind eye… no, never blind. I never turned my back. If I couldn't do anything to help I damn well wouldn't let him suffer alone, even if the only thing I could do was bear witness.
"You never tried?" she asked quietly.
"Once," I confessed. Those days were seared into more than just my head. My entire body remembered every minute of them. Some days I could still feel the pain of phantom wounds, feel the drip of free-flowing venom and smell the sweet stink of it thick in my nostrils, the way Maria's and mine melded until the only thing I could think to describe it besides sweet was wrong. On those days, my throat would sting from ghost screams, nothing but hoarse words spoken in my voice. Those days were bad days, the kind of bad that had a guy losing time, questioning what's real and what isn't, wondering if here is really here and not there. They were the kind that caused the shakes, where you jumped at every noise like you hadn't spent near half a century at war, where the idea of letting anyone touch you made you feel sick and panicked. There was no forgetting.
"What happened?" Bella coaxed, seeming to sense how shaken I was. If I held out my hand then, she would have seen the fine tremors.
"It didn't end well for either of us, and he asked me not to do it again," I explained softly. It was Jasper's face I remembered now. His expression as he told me to stay the hell out of his business, how he'd kill me himself if I pulled that bullshit again. He'd meant it too. We weren't anything to each other then. Not yet. "I shouldn't have listened."
"What would you have done differently?" she asked seriously, peeling back another layer of flesh in the process.
"I don't know," I said disconsolately, beyond the ability to reason it out. "I don't know, but I should have. I should have known. I should have known."
"You don't have to know everything, Peter," she told me softly, peeling off yet another layer.
"But I do!" I exclaimed harshly, twisting out of her embrace and burying my head in my hands. "I do," I repeated quietly.
"You don't," she repeated soothingly, laying a kind, compassionate hand on my back. "You don't have to be perfect. Not knowing doesn't make you less. It makes you human."
"I'm not human, Bella," I snapped without meaning to, frustration escaping through harsh breaths. Forcing myself back to calm, I reached behind me and squeezed Bella's hand.
"You know that's not what I mean," she said, patient but reproachful, "and what is so wrong with being human?"
I lifted my head out of my hands and stared at this girl, this flesh and blood human girl who was stubborn and sarcastic and mistrustful, but also kind and smart and accepting... "Nothing. Nothing at all."
"Savannah asked me if changing was as simple as not doing things you need to apologize for. I told her it was," Bella admitted, reaching up to her necklace again only this time it wasn't the phoenix pendant she went for. She ran careful, delicate fingers over the letters of Wildfire just once before her hand dropped to her lap. Her face contorted with regret. "I'm such a hypocrite."
"How do her failings make you a hypocrite?" I asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the bite out of my tone. I didn't think Bella noticed as caught up in her regret as she was.
"How many times have I hurt Jasper?" she clarified, brown eyes clouded with remorse as she met mine. "Sometimes it was even on purpose."
You're not her, I thought desperately. You're not them. You would never do to him what they did. You would never hurt him like that.
"Little hurts," I said, refusing to let her believe she was anything like Savannah and Maria even if I couldn't say it or explain who they were. Still, I couldn't deny the truth of her words. She had hurt Jasper a time or two.
"Pain is pain," she came back with, firm, unwilling to let herself off the hook. There was a cast about her that suggested there was nothing I could do or say to change that.
"That doesn't make you a bad person, Bella."
"I'm not saying it does."
"Then what are you saying?"
"You're not the only one who feels like you've failed him," she said softly. "You're not the only one who feels like you need to be better."
"Well, aren't we a pair," I mused.
"That we are," Bella agreed sagely, reaching out and taking my hand in hers.
As we sat there, fingers tangled together, I slid back on track. There was no room for self-doubt or self-pity. I'd wasted enough time and energy on it the past couple of days. It was time to get back to work.
oOo
Friday, January 1st, 2081, Morning...
JPOV
I sat on the edge of my bed, head cradled in my hands, fingers threaded through unruly snarls of blond hair.
I was such a fuckin' fool. I let the freedom I didn't even consciously realize I had at the time override my common sense and rushed straight back into Savannah's claws, and now I was trapped again. I hadn't realized the bond breaking was the source of all the pain and disorientation until after, when Savannah asked how I broke it.
But I knew now...and I knew how...or rather who.
Bella.
Of course, it was Bella. It always came back to her, didn't it?
She was the key to breaking the bond—Bella being in danger, specifically. I had two problems with that revelation. First, I was terrified of what it could mean, and second, it meant my hands were tied. I knew how to break the bond and couldn't do a damn thing about it because putting Bella purposely in danger was never going to fuckin' happen, even if, ultimately, it would save my sanity. My sanity was not worth her life, and I would die before I let any of this bullshit touch her.
Since I wasn't bringing Bella into this mess that meant there was fuck all I could do about the new bond except wait. I just had to be patient. It had broken with Maria and it would with Savannah just the same, so long as I bided my time and stuck close to Peter and Charlotte. Having the Major in my corner would have sped things along as well, but he was still missing.
Come on, man! I coaxed, hoping to bring him forth. Help me beat this, you know-it-all son of a bitch! I can do this if you help me.
I was so caught up in trying to get the Major's lazy ass in the game that I almost didn't hear Savannah emerge from the shower.
She came out towelling her hair dry, and it was clear that she was far more concerned with the state of her hair than she was with her body. There was a fine mist of water remaining on her skin with beads of moisture still trailing in places. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if she was wearing more than a pair of panties and one of my white wife beaters that was practically see-through and clinging to her obscenely. It left very little to imagination.
I sat there, transfixed, as I watched her smooth the towel through her hair, the grip of her fingers in the cloth, the flex of her arms, the jiggle of her breasts as she moved, dusky rose nipples brushing the fabric with every pass. The gorgeous bare expanse of her pale legs as she stood there drew my attention next, starting from her feet to the curve of her ass peeking out of the bottom of those black, silky panties. There were clusters of bite marks in strategic, telling places on her body right where I remembered putting them—the curve of her shoulder, the back of her neck, the insides of her knees and thighs.
My eyes shut tight at the thought, a sharp burst of pain tearing through the back of my right eye, but I didn't keep them closed for long, not with her standing there, wearing my shirt and little else.
"Hi," she said, drawing my eyes from her body to her face. She gave me a small, guileless, almost shy smile that looked so at home on her pretty features.
"Hi," I responded faintly. I didn't smile back.
With one last pass through her hair, Savannah let the towel drop to the floor and straightened her spine, the shift pushing her breasts out noticeably. She stood there for a beat, watching me, her smile widening as she took me and what her near-nakedness had done to me in.
When she finally closed the distance between us, her gait was steady, confident, subtly seductive. Standing before me, her smile shifted from shy to sly, and she reached for me without hesitation. Like someone else was controlling my body, I let her.
One hand fell to my collarbone, tracing the jut with a light fingertip and then circling back to map the hollow before dipping into the space between the two. Her other hand went to my chest, four fingers to the left of my sternum, her pinkie dancing over my nipple. It sent a jolt through my body, pooling in my groin, a sensation both heady and unwelcome.
"You can touch me," Savannah told me casually. "I want you to."
I swallowed hard, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides as I fought the impulse.
She smiled knowingly. "You want to," she observed, voice gone throaty. "I know you do. It's okay to want to. You know it'll feel good."
My lips pressed together in a thin line, and I shifted my gaze away from her face because it was true. I knew exactly how it would feel to touch her; her reminder wasn't necessary. The shame that knowledge brought with it was like a punch to the gut. That my hands still itched for it desperately made it all the worse. What kind of person did that make me?
My fingernails dug into my palms, my stomach in knots. I closed my eyes so forcefully it added to the ache in my head. Maybe if I closed them hard enough I could pretend this wasn't happening. Maybe I could pretend I was somewhere else for a while, but this was happening, and I would let it just like I always did. I had never been able to say no to her; the bond had always been just strong enough to take the choice away from me, and she knew just when to press it—when I was at my breaking point, so fuckin' broken I was just too tired to fight anymore, when I just gave up. What else could I do but that? What else was I going to let her take from me?
Everything, a little voice inside my head said. You're going to let her take everything, just like you always have.
This was what I was afraid would happen when Savannah showed up here, that she would run me down until I could no longer fight. I hadn't wanted to acknowledge it there in that clearing when I was so determined to be defiant, to grapple with this until I won for once. But when had I ever won, defiance or no? I hadn't. It was always Maria, it was always Savannah. That's just how it was, no matter what I did or didn't do.
I wondered how ashamed I should feel for breaking so quickly. Right now I felt nothing—I was too numb and tired for panic—and the Major wasn't here to fix it. It was too bad I didn't have enough control over the God of War to summon him at will, but he couldn't stop this anymore than the Major could. He'd never bothered. My pain was never enough for him to come out and play.
"Come on, Jasper," Savannah said, cupping my cheek. "I'll make it good for you. It'll be so good, and you need it. I know you do. You don't have to fight it anymore. Let me make you feel good. I'll be so good to you, you know I will. Let me take care of you, just like always. I'll take such good care of you."
Let me take care of you… I'll take such good care of you…
Pain.
Everything was slow, gelatinous, like trying to hear underwater. Everything but that.
"You...later...amor…" Maria's voice faded in and out the way it always did after. There was a muted thump near my ear, just far enough out of sight that I couldn't decipher what had caused it, a little cloud of dust mushrooming at the edge of my vision.
Pain.
Everything was pain. It always was when Maria was done with me. It was all that existed, until it wasn't. I just had to wait for a little while, then it would fade into white noise for a time, and I craved that—the calm before the storm. This was nothing compared to what was coming.
I'd been torn apart completely this time, like so many before. I lay there, twitching, looking at the pieces of me strewn all around without really seeing or comprehending. I didn't need to; this happened often enough to be routine, so I knew, even if I was mostly incoherent. In a distant sort of way, I noted that it would take quite a bit of doing to put me back together this time—Maria had been especially thorough today, if not particularly creative.
I was floating, disconnected as I looked up and let the light of the sun blind me, but still idly wishing I could take it a step further and dissociate. It would make things so much easier to bear. The torture had brought me to the edge of my limits, just shy of triggering the God of War. Maria was always so good at riding that line between the Major and him, how to inflict the maximum of hurt without the consequences of taking it too far, though it was a little harder to, to bring the God of War to the surface these days, in Peter's absence.
Right now, what I knew was that I was neither the Major nor the God of War. I didn't know who I was in this moment or what it meant, but that's always how it is after, and it didn't matter anyway—the Major would come back, he always came back; whoever I was now would be hidden away again, and the Major would be furious at everyone and everything, including me—my memories were his memories and vice versa. At any rate, I was done for the day, but just because I was done didn't mean the day was done with me. It wasn't over yet, I wasn't done suffering, so I floated, trying not to let the anticipation of what was to come make what was actually going to happen worse than it had to be.
I never knew how long it took her to come to me, I just knew she always did. With Peter and Charlotte gone, there was no one else to put me back together. If left up to Maria, who knew how long I would have been left in pieces. The other newborns were too afraid of Maria and me both, even when I was dismembered, to try unless she ordered it, and Maria would never allow another vampire's venom to heal me. Except for hers, and only because it was another way for Maria to play her mind games. Maria knew every little thing that went on in her camp, down to the littlest detail, and she was cocky about it, so yeah, Maria knew what she got up to and why. Maria allowed her this, if only to remind her that I would always be Maria's and never hers. She could want but she could never have, not truly. Maria relished the pain this knowledge caused her, and she knew it. She knew that everything she had was given at Maria's whim, always with the aim to hurt, but that didn't stop her from going to me after. Her pain was as much her fault as it was Maria's. In this, she didn't seem to care.
My vision was hazy with injury and black spots from staring at the sun too long, but I could pick out the shape of her boots easily, and I always knew they were hers even though there was nothing to set them apart from anyone else's.
Savannah always chose to stand in my line of sight when she came to me. She never wanted her presence to come as a shock after everything that always happened before, the before that made it necessary for her to come to me at all.
Crouching, she ran cautious, tender fingers over my cheek. Part of me wanted to lean into it, craving the touch of gentle hands. I didn't remember what it was to be touched with kindness. I hardly remembered kindness at all, but Savannah always tried to remind me; she was kind. She touched me with gentle hands. I was having a hard time understanding why the bigger part of me didn't want her touch at all.
She was saying something, but I couldn't make sense of her actual words yet—my brain was rebooting more slowly than usual. Knowing what she was saying didn't matter much to me; it never did. I was too busy bracing myself for the first blow.
For a crazy second, I imagined smuggling her a book of matches after I was back on my feet. Would she light one and toss it on my broken body when next Maria tore me apart if I asked her to? She always swore she loved me when she thought she wouldn't get caught saying the words, but did she love me enough to put me out of my misery?
Her first move was so slow to come that I wondered if Savannah had changed her mind about helping me and just left me there without me realizing. But then the pain began anew, pain so much worse than being tortured and torn apart. Being pieced back together with another vampire's venom, there was no other pain like it. Nothing else compared to that agony.
She started from the neck and moved steadily down, reattaching body parts slowly and carefully, hands shaking as she handled each new piece, fighting unsuccessfully to keep them steady as she tried to soothe my seizing muscles, every tremor, jerk, and twitch with each subsequent attachment. She thought she was saving me pain by moving so unhurriedly through the process, but in actuality doing it so inefficiently made it worse. Her venom was different than most other vampires. It was more diluted in some ways somehow. One would think that would make using it as the glue to put me back together would make it hurt less. It didn't. It was soon discovered, after Peter and Charlotte's departure, that whatever part of her venom was diluted, it was stronger where it counted in this—it hurt more and for much longer. It took three times as long for my wounds to heal with her venom as it would have if it had been Peter's or Charlotte's, though Peter and Charlotte always found ways to use my own venom for the job. At least, Savannah's didn't leave scars—another queer attribute of her uniqueness.
The pain always sharpened before plateauing into a steady agony that stood firm until the slow healing completed. At intermittent intervals, my pain-fried synapses blew their gaskets trying to reconnect to each other, to nerves, and muscle, and viscera, and skin, and bones, and I had one hell of a seizure. It put a temporary pause on the healing process, and my misery spiked for however long before it plateaued again.
It was enough to keep me dizzy and out of sorts, a second or two behind everything else, just a little delirious, out of it just enough to be susceptible, to be pliable, but cognizant enough to understand what was happening to me.
"This is gonna hurt real bad, darlin'," I saw Savannah's lips move a second before her words hit me, and I knew. I knew exactly what her warning meant. There was only one place on my body, the place that was always left for last since Peter had gone, that didn't hurt in the same way everywhere else did. That was about to change.
And oh, how it would hurt. It would hurt the worst. The humiliation of it wouldn't hit until later, after it all was done and I was mostly myself again.
I started to struggle, feebly, brain and body aching with dizziness and panic.
No! I don't want it!
Hell, I would live without it if it meant I could avoid this. Later, after I was healed, that particular thought would bring no little amount self-scorn.
"But I'm here with you," she comforted softly. "I'll hold your hand the whole time."
Just as my struggles reached the point where Savannah could no longer hold me down easily, calm spread through me like a balm, snapping tight around my skin, squeezing my heart in a vise-grip. For a second, I forgot what was going on. This was so familiar and yet so foreign.
I was still so confused…
I'm not hers! something in me screamed. I'm not!
...but the panic eased a bit.
"Jasper, shh," Savannah admonished, taking hold of me.
She laved her tongue over the last, most intimate piece of the warped puzzle that was my body and grabbed my hand, squeezing hard—my own hand was almost healed enough to squeeze back—and pressed that piece gently into place.
I screamed until I couldn't...and then I floated, not disconnected from the pain but from reality, as the agony coursed through me.
…
…
…
There were murmurs on the outskirts of where the pain spread, nothing I could make out, my ability to separate sound from speech gone again.
There was a shape kneeling next to me, clutching my already injured hand hard enough to hurt me even more. I couldn't make out the details of the features, but I didn't have to. Even through the fog of pain, I knew who it was. Her features had been burned into my memory like a brand.
I could barely feel her hands on my tender skin, ghostly and indistinct. The light touch did nothing to dull the fire of her venom spreading through my veins as it attempted to seal my wounds, both internal and external. My groin was last on the list, and goddamn but the agony of it stole my wits from me.
…
…
…
I came to, still stupid and muzzy from the pain, only to feel gentle hands running over the planes of my body, skin and muscle and bone still painful to the touch, nerves gone haywire with the overstimulation. The compassionate, soothing sweeps grounded me somehow. I was still just a little delirious and the neurons in my brain must have been switched because the easy, familiar pleasantness of the feeling screamed…
Wrong
Wrong
Wrong
Don't
But my tongue felt too big for my mouth, and every time I opened it to speak, my voice broke on the words I tried to say or my body decided to vocalize its discomfort on its own—groans, screams, moans, whimpers.
"...so sorry, darlin'...wanted to stop….couldn't…" she said. There was a tentative and then more confident touch to my groin…
Stop
Stop
Stop
Don't stop
"...don't worry… let me take care of you… I'll take such good care of you…promise...gonna take the pain away…"
And she did...mostly...for a little while. And I was hers...for a little while.
My brain was fuzzy with the memory, shame, revulsion, and humiliation welling up from the core of me and seeping through each individual scar on my body, burning me from the inside out.
I hurt so much I hardly even noticed when she kissed me. It was a soft, searching sort of kiss, turning more bold the longer I stood there, frozen, without pushing her away.
No
No
No
"No!" The Major and I shouted together, shoving Savannah off and sending her to crash into the wall.
I felt something snap, like I'd been torn open, a great agony, but the pain barely registered.
Red tinted the edges of my vision, slowly encroaching.
Red
Red
Red
Everything went red, there was a roaring in my ears, and then there was nothing.
