Conversations

Chapter 3

The Gifted Ones

After my talk with Carlisle, I decided to get out of the house. Everyone else was gone, and it felt weird to hang out alone in the living room with Carlisle still in his study. Awkward. So, I was going to see my dad and have breakfast with him. It had been a while since I'd last gone home. As I opened the front door, I glanced back at the clock. 7:33 am. Carlisle had gotten home at 5:30. It didn't feel like we had talked that long.

I stepped into the yard and shed my shorts, affixing them to my leg. Letting the wolf take over, my bones realigned and fur sprouted. When my massive paws hit the ground, I started running for my dad's house. No other wolves were phased. We had little reason to patrol anymore, and most of us just tried to live a normal life, only occasionally going for a run for the fun of it. I was the only one who had a reason to keep doing it. Well, me and Quil. Since I was alone in my mind, I let my thoughts wander.

I was on a mission now. I needed to be everything I could possibly be for Ness, and that meant learning about her father's history, and maybe starting to care about him, to understand what he's about. The two of us had a lot of negative history...it was hard to reconcile those former murderous thoughts with the new goal of becoming family. Edward seemed relatively okay with me; then again, he was the victor in our feud. But I had to get myself to a place where I saw Edward more as an actual person than as a cardboard cutout villain. I didn't want to live forever with resentment and awkwardness. I wanted to understand him. Bella chose immortality for this guy. He must have some redeeming qualities, right? The talk with Carlisle solidified my goal. It was a good foundation, and had been way more interesting than I thought it'd be. And frankly, I learned a whole lot about Carlisle too, which was unanticipated and kinda great.

As I got closer to the border, that acrid, sickly sweet stench filled my sensitive wolf nose, and I recoiled automatically, even though I recognized the scents. It was Alice and Jasper. There were no other vampire scents in the area, so they were alone. It would be a perfect time to approach them, since we were far from the Cullen house and the other vamps. Dad would be awake soon, but he didn't know I was coming, so it didn't matter when I showed up. When would I get these two alone again? Now was the time, and I vowed to spend the rest of the day with my dad.

I followed the pair's scents to the tree line, where I knew the Quilayute River ran not far past the forest's edge. Breaking through the trees, I spotted them in the water, locked in a tight embrace. The sun glinted off their naked shoulders, and I swiftly turned my back. Oops, I guess I should have figured there was a reason they were alone together. Before I could run off in my embarrassment, Alice shouted, "Hey, Jake! Wait!" I stopped in my tracks and my ears swiveled back in their direction as I listened to water sloshing and the rustle of clothes being pulled on. While they dressed, I took the opportunity to phase and pull my shorts on; I couldn't exactly talk to them in my wolf form, could I?

When I turned back, the two of them were dressed and the only evidence of their little river escapade was their dampened hair. And Jasper's satisfied expression. Gross. I could feel his lingering pleasure leaking into the atmosphere and fought against feeling it myself. I wasn't too successful.

Feeling my internal struggle, Jasper chuckled and the unwanted feeling dissipated. "Sorry you found us like that, Jacob."

"No, uh, it's ok, man. My fault...I should have turned tail when I scented you."

"Nonsense!" Alice cried. "We knew you were coming. I saw a blank spot in our future if we came this way, so here we are! We got a little bored while we waited for you, that's all."

"It didn't help that we passed Edward and Bella out on a hunt on our way here."

Alice leaned in conspiratorially. "An abandoned hunt."

"They were having a rather...erotic experience," Jasper felt the need to add.

"Thanks for the mental picture." While I could begrudgingly accept the fact that they were intimate with each other, I really didn't want to know when they were actually doing it. Ugh. Gross.

Jasper just shrugged and grinned devilishly at my reaction. "So, why did you bring us here, Jacob?"

Alice clapped her hands together in excitement. "Oooo, I'm so curious!" Jasper and I chuckled, to which she replied, "What can I say, I love surprises!"

"No, you don't," Jasper murmured, trying to stifle his laughter.

"Shhhh!" She scolded, swatting her hand at him.

I couldn't help but be amused at their light-hearted antics. They really were the oddest match among all the Cullens. Bella and Edward, I got - silent mind, born to be a vampire, yadda yadda. Carlisle and Esme - Their mutual maturity? I don't know. Those two seemed right together. Rosalie and Emmett - hot blonde and jock - pretty standard. But Alice and Jasper, they were just a weird match. She was so tiny and delicate looking and it was unreal how cheerful she could be. Then Jasper was ridiculously tall next to her, and there was nothing delicate about his battle-scarred appearance. He was often quiet and kind of creeptastic with how he'd look at you sometimes, because he felt what you were feeling. It was as invasive, if not more so, than Edward's ability. Jasper and Alice were like night and day, but opposites attract, as they say. Alice seemed to soften up Jasper's rougher edges, and I knew there was nothing he wouldn't do to protect the little sprite, whose natural cheer seemed to take the edge off his emotional turmoil.

Alice raised an eyebrow and tapped her foot as she waited impatiently for me to speak. I didn't really know how to start. Jasper smirked and said, "Your emotions are all over the place. What's going on, Jacob?"

I guess the gift thing was as good a place to start as any. "Er, I was just kinda wondering what it's like to have a gift."

Their eyes met and they looked at each other for a few moments. Then Jasper shrugged, and Alice turned back toward me, smiling. "In some situations, it's helpful, but most of the time, it's a pain in the butt."

"If we could pick and choose when we could use it, I would be more grateful for the gift.," Jasper chimed in. "But as it is, I can't not feel everyone's emotions. It's all the time. I can't turn it off."

"And I can't not See whenever my brain wants to See. It's very inconvenient if I'm talking to a cashier at the mall, or sitting with humans in class or at lunch, and then I just go blank. My family is good at covering for me in public though."

Jasper nodded. "Your visions protect us so often, of course we would all protect you when you're having them."

"I know, baby, thank you."

They shared a quick kiss before Jasper brought the conversation back around to his own gift. "Mine has pretty heavy downsides. Imagine the lowest point of your life, and how it felt. If I was in your proximity when you felt it, I would feel your depression or rage or jealousy or lust just as intensely. It's the reason I couldn't continue to feed on humans - I felt all their fear and sadness, and it pulled me in an abyss of despair."

Good God, that sounded horrible. I tried to ignore the fact he used to drink humans, reminding myself he didn't anymore. "It must be hard to know which emotions are actually yours," I commented, encouraging him to continue.

"No, I know when it's my own emotion or I'm being influenced. The gift is part of me. I just know."

This was interesting, but it was heading into a cryptic area and I didn't have all day. Time to steer the conversation where I really wanted it. "Do you think Edward feels that way about his mind-reading?"

"Definitely," they said at the same time. They shared a smile, then Alice explained, "He hates it. He describes it like a constant buzzing in his mind, random words coming through the masses if he's in a crowd. Vampires use more parts of their brain than humans do, so he has more room to compartmentalize and have his own thoughts. A human would have gone crazy immediately."

"He doesn't like it, but it can be useful, especially in times of trouble or if there's town gossip about the family," Jasper added.

"Or when one of you has accidents?" I asked pointedly.

"Well, that hasn't happened in a long time, but yes."

I bristled, realizing that Jasper was likely the most recent accident-causer. It seemed brazen to me, to be discussing his past of taking human lives with a born protector of human lives. How old was Jasper? How many lives had he taken? His admissions were really aggravating my wolf. I had to calm down and change topics now.

Alice must have Seen something— I don't know what 'cuz I wasn't paying attention to her —because she looked nervously between us before trying to distract me by taking over the conversation. "Edward doesn't like it because he hears a lot of horrible or distasteful things in people's minds. He hears all the things you'd never say out loud. Even with us, the ones he loves and who love him, even we have horrible thoughts about each other. Imagine having to hear all those, and all the ones about yourself too! I don't think I could stand it."

"I couldn't. Sounds awful," I agreed.

"Yeah. I don't think it was that bad when it was just him and Carlisle. One other mind seems tolerable to me. But then came Esme, and Rosalie, and Emmett. And then we came along, two more minds."

"I bet Edward was glad to have some other gifted vamps around though."

Alice and Jasper shared a long-suffering look. "Yes and no," she said after a pause. "On the one hand, yeah, it was good for him to not feel like a freak in his own family. But the nature of our gifts is as intrusive as his is, and he didn't like being on the receiving end of ours."

"Particularly mine," Jasper added. I looked at him with interest, and he continued. "It used to be trying for me, living with him. Between the melancholy and the angst and the jealousy and loneliness… it was a draining few decades."

"Yeah, Jasper was always either trying to alter Edward's emotions—"

"—which would only make him angry when he realized it—"

"—or he would have to escape the house."

They shared a little smile over their sentence-finishing stunt. "To be fair, he usually took leaving upon himself," Jasper explained.

"But he'd done that for so many years," Alice lamented. "With three couples in the house, he had to make himself scarce a LOT if he wanted to escape the kind of thoughts couples have about each other. Jasper and I try to find places away from the house so he doesn't have to leave, like today, and Carlisle and Esme try to be respectful too, but Emmett and Rose lack control in that area." She chuckled. "Sex doesn't embarrass Emmett, and Rose has a chip on her shoulder about Edward's ability, and is very stubborn. She always tells him if he doesn't like what he's hearing, to turn it off or leave. Which inevitably ends with Edward saying he can't turn it off, and then leaving."

So, it seemed that when Edward was a very young vampire, he slowly became an outcast in his own family. He didn't have a mate, and was forced to listen to three pairs of mates think about their happy lives and their sexcapades. I would leave too if I had to watch my sisters or my dad having sex. Ugh. Gross. I was feeling really sympathetic towards Edward right about now. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

"So anyway, instead of trying to influence his emotions, I learned to just deal with them and compartmentalize to the best of my ability," Jasper finished.

"For a while, he sometimes asked me to search the future to see if he ever found someone. But I couldn't see Bella when she wasn't born. Eventually, he stopped asking."

"Resigned himself to always being alone."

My chest constricted and my heart ached. Damn, he's been so alone. For ages. It was just so incredibly depressing. When he finally found Bella, of course there was no way he could let her go.

Each of us already felt sad about the hand that life dealt Edward, but Alice and I were triple sad because our own emotions mixed with Jasper's memory of Edward's pain, and the pain Jasper felt because of said memory. It was just a big old misery-fest. Our bodies all just kind of slumped. My eyes started tearing up. I really didn't want to cry.

Slowly, the fog began to lift and I started to feel better. Jasper must have realized what was happening to the three of us and tried to affect a change. His efforts soon mitigated the effects, and we were soon feeling more normal.

Jasper continued. "But then, Bella came along, and it was like a light switch turned on, very sudden. He was completely changed. I never felt such happiness from him. I sought out his presence where I'd once avoided it. Bella too— her feelings of love and happiness were just as strong as his. Of course, there was a lot of anxiety around potentially killing her—"

'I knew he wouldn't," Alice commented. "I showed him constantly."

"You know he doubts himself All. The. Time."

She put up her palms, conceding her point.

"Then, at Bella's eighteenth birthday party, I almost killed her."

Dumbfounded, I managed to say, "Um, what."

Jasper rubbed the back of his neck, looking away from my emerging glare with guilt. "Er, yeah, see...Bella got a papercut from opening a gift…"

"You. Tried. To. Kill. Her?" I asked, trying desperately to contain my rage. I trembled as I reminded myself that he hadn't killed her; she was alive... well, sort of.

Jasper put his hands up to placate me. "I was...restrained and taken away. I didn't harm her."

"Nothing happened. Everything turned out just fine," Alice said, stating the obvious.

Jasper rushed to artificially calm me. It was annoying how well his talent could work, but I let it happen. I really didn't want to be mad at Jasper, especially since he hadn't actually hurt Bella. When he was satisfied I wasn't going to phase and tear his head off, Jasper explained, "That was the reason we left. Edward felt that being around vampires was simply too dangerous for her, and he loved her too much to destroy her soul by turning her, so he left to protect her."

I let that revelation sink in. Was I going to have an epiphany every time I talked to a new family member? I shook my head in surprise and disbelief. All this time, I thought Edward was the most selfish creature on Earth. Bella had tried to tell me he left her for her own good after she went to save him in Italy, but I always thought he brainwashed her to believe that. What did she call it? Dazzling her. Edward had been absolutely right to leave, of course. He WAS too dangerous for Bella. He would have stayed away too, for her safety even at the detriment of his own happiness, if only she hadn't been exposed to cliff diving by yours truly.

Ultimately, it was my own involvement with her that brought him back to Forks. And their reunion, while immensely painful for me at the time, came full circle when they produced my reason for living. Our lives truly were intertwined, the threads weaving in the strangest ways.

I think Alice could tell that my mind was blown, and she decided to put an end to our conversation. "Well, it's getting late, and I have a date with the new spring line."

"Yeah, I gotta go see my dad anyway," I muttered. "I'll see you guys back at the house later."

With a casual wave, Alice and Jasper zipped off toward home. I pulled off my shorts and phased, heading home to see my dad, my mind battling itself with new realizations.

Xxxx

What did you think? I'd love to know! Emmett is coming up next.