MUST thank the wonderful irrelevanttous because if it wasn't for her reading this chapter over and giving me notes, it might have never come out. I always struggle with angst, even when it's mild, so luckily I have this amazing wifey friend to help me get chapters out for you all.

TFR has been my NaNo project, so by the end of the month I should have it all finished and the updates will be more frequent then. So stick around cause there's a roller coasted about to start!

Good reading!

Jasper hadn't cried in over a decade, but he recalled distinguishably the last time. Unexpectedly, it wasn't during his transformation to the beast he was now. The bite and the venom had caused excruciating pain, but he hadn't cried. Jasper endured every second until it was over because it was a different kind of pain that could make him cry.

The last time had been in Texas, he was already serving the war when it happened. He had been assigned another evacuation detail, already a Major, and he went off on his horse to get the city cleared before the battles and the invasions. Jasper had hopped off the steed to aid a family in need, the mother had four children with her—a teenage girl, a seven-year-old boy, and twin babies. She could barely hold herself together, the woman was injured, bleeding. The oldest child had informed Jasper she was losing yet another baby. She had to be taken to a hospital fast, or else she wouldn't make it. He told the girl to take care of her siblings and wait for him there. The mother protested but they all thought it was the best idea. He rushed her to the next town so she would be under medical care, and she was fine from what Jasper learned later on. But he didn't make it to the children fast enough. He found them all later, but it was too late.

He had never before failed any of his missions to evacuate the cities. Jasper was good at his job, but he had failed that family. In one day a mother had lost all of her children, and he blamed himself for not doing them better, for not thinking that plan through.

That night he cried himself to sleep, questioning his own purposes and what war had brought upon people. What was the point of fighting? He couldn't answer that question, he just knew he didn't want to aid any further deaths. Jasper wanted to protect people.

A week after that he was turned, and he killed more in his first years than he did his entire life.

The memories of that happening were surfacing now, as Jasper felt a gutting guilt. It wasn't normal for him to feel that way anymore. It pained him to feel the fear and panic in his victims, it was an emotion that would haunt Jasper on the days that followed his feeding. But guilty wasn't something he had experienced in a very long time. Perhaps because he knew Alice's disappointment was imminent—she would at least see him from what he was: a beast, a loose and unchangeable predator, and she would leave. If that was her decision, he would accept it. They had known for a very short time and although he could feel the strength in their connection, Jasper also knew he would survive. He had learned with time how ephemeral eternity could become, people would come and go often—some by his own hands even—and he knew for a fact that if Alice decided it was too much to handle and left, he would survive.

Long before, Jasper had come to accept the monster that he was. If anything, now was proof of it. He was struck with such strong emotion of guilt and regret and he couldn't do so much as cry—like he had done when he couldn't say the children of the poor lady. Not because he didn't want to cry, but because physically he wasn't able to, he wasn't allowed. In his forever frozen haunt, it was all guilty and no outlet to pour out such emotions. He had to drown in them, live forever with the pain, without ever being able to expel all with human simplicity.

What Jasper wasn't prepared for was the striking worry that he felt a mile away. He thought for a moment someone might have come looking for the hiker, but as the waves grew closer to the house, he was able to differentiate them as Alice's. Like the sound of a voice, emotions had their own tone, like they were a different type of wave for each person. He had been able to distinguish all his previous coven's feelings after spending time with them. Maria's was obviously the easier to tell apart, as he had spent longer with her. Jasper had expected to need some time to be able to read Alice's as her own with more clarity, but that had happened almost instantly. Although their relationship was still at it's tuning phase, he could read her better than he had ever read Maria. It impressed him how easy and quick it had happened. He knew so little of the woman and yet it felt as if they'd been together for a lifetime.

The same way he wasn't expecting to know her aura so well, he was equally surprised by her concern. Jasper had expected disappointment and regret, but not the deep sadness. Perhaps she was sad he had failed and worried they might be exposed, he tried to reason as her emotions kept growing stronger. He was dreading it, knowing she was close, not ready for the disappointment in her face.

She didn't say a word when she walked through the door, it was like Alice could also feel what he felt. He was strongly holding it all back and that was what she felt when she walked in, the lack of his emotions emanating toward her. In the last few days, they had been pouring all over the house and Alice appreciated the sudden rushes of being around an empath. Now that there was nothing, it was clear he was withholding things—which concerned her deeply. Jasper was standing by the kitchen counter, not able to face her. In a rushed movement she was in front of him, hand cupping his cheek to bring his eyes to her.

"Jasper." Alice didn't have to be an empath to read the regret in his red eyes. She had never seen them so strongly bright—not in person, at least. Sometimes, during the visions, she'd get flashes of his eyes. When they first met Jasper had eyes darkened with thirst and then what followed his feeds on animal blood was a faded red. This was a bright red. It still took her breath away for a moment, how even in his worst form he could still be the most beautiful creature. Alice knew then she'd always be drawn to him.

"It's alright." She whispered quietly to him, tiptoeing to press her forehead against his—an easy movement now that he was bent down. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

Alice wouldn't press, not now at least. She knew giving him space would be the best option. But not all the space. She had played it all in her mind as she ran home, fishing the possibilities according to his thoughts and choices. His concern for her leaving was palpable, but what hurt Alice was his ease of walking away if she was the first to do so. She knew with certainty that she'd never leave him over a slip and it bothered her that Jasper didn't realize it. But that was a talk for another time.

"Take the time you need." She encouraged, brushing a thumb against his cheek. "What did you do to the body?"

Jasper was bewildered by the question, frowning with a puzzling gaze. Alice figured it out without him having to answer it.

"Was I supposed to do something?" It hadn't occurred to her that Jasper might just leave it there. When she had her own slips, Alice was careful enough not to leave traces behind, to dispose of the human properly so it couldn't backtrack to them.

"I'll take care of it." She sighed. Now that was something she was dreading, already playing it off in her mind as the decision was made.

"I'll go with you."

"It's alright, I've had to do it before too." Alice gave him a kind smile, but Jasper could tell she wasn't quite happy about it. She still leaned up to meet his lips and he obliged, kissing her back. "It won't take long."

She whispered and before Jasper could protest the need for disposing of a body and grasp her by the waist, Alice was gone and out the door. At least for one thing he was grateful and it was that she hadn't in fact left him.

When Alice returned, Jasper was sitting by the fireplace anxiously waiting for her return. It felt awkward in the room for a moment but Alice got past it.

"Relax, Jazz. I took care of it." Like she had told him she would have.

"I still don't get the need." He clarified his uneasiness at last.

"We're taking residence here. I'd prefer not having to flee for a while." Alice walked up to him, hand spreading across his chest. "There's still blood on your shirt." He simply nodded.

The realization made Alice suddenly too aware of it, the smell taking over the house, even now that it was dried. In her own hunger, Alice recalled, for a brief vivid second, the taste of human blood sliding down her throat, filling her mouth with its sweet flavor. As satisfying as animal blood was, it had a bitter aftertaste that human's didn't.

It made her mouth water, her thoughts drifting for a moment to the last time she had drank human blood and the memory far too painful for her, since it had been someone she cared for and knew. Alice reminded herself why she chose to be a vegetarian, all the lives she could spare in eternity and all the homes she wouldn't tear apart. She might not be the perfect vegetarian vampire out there, but she was trying her best.

Not only that, but Alice wanted Jasper to succeed as well, so she tried to push aside the rush of hunger wanting to take over her, holding her breath so the smell of blood wasn't intoxicating and clouding her thoughts. At least one of them had to hold the balance of control in their home.

She held the hems of the fabric and pulled his shirt up slowly, untucking it from his pants. Jasper watched her with a slight frown as she took her time undoing the buttons. It wasn't the movement that caught his attention but the fact she wasn't looking at him. Her emotions so incredibly contained, it felt as if she was trying to hide something.

"Did I upset you?" Jasper wasn't used to feeling so helplessly out of control like this, unaware of what was going on.

"No." She pushed the fabric down his shoulders and arms, removing the stained shirt. With careful eyes, she stared at the blood on it and not the shirtless cowboy in front of her. Jasper felt both confused and slightly hurt. He had grown accustomed, in the past days, to see her eyes so full of appetite toward him.

"It feels like I did."

"Does it?" She eyed him with a raised eyebrow then, the neutrality of her emotions killing him little by little.

"Alice, please."

"You have not upset me, Jasper. I'm just giving you space, for when you're ready to talk." She busied herself with bringing the shirt to the sink, trying to wash it off. But he felt somehow a hint of something more she was trying to contain.

Then it hit him, the emotion strong like a tsunami when she brought the fabric to her face and smelt it. It wasn't the act itself that was bothering her but instead the blood, the smell of it taking over the house.

When Jasper walked up to her, he made her stop her attempt to save the fabric.

"It's ruined, leave it. You know the smell would never come out." Not for beings like them. Jasper could walk into a room and know when blood had been washed off any surface, no matter the chemicals used to remove it. "I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for," Alice told him, a kind smile over her shoulders as he held her elbows, stopping her on her tracks. She let go of the shirt and allowed Jasper to turn her around to see her dark onyx eyes.

"I do. I put you through it." He understood the hunger, the burning on the neck, and the pain it caused to smell and resist human blood.

"I've been doing it longer than you have." She told herself it shouldn't upset her this much, yet it did and now that he figured out and he was so kind trying to make her feel better, Alice wasn't holding it back any longer.

"Still, we are what we are. I know you want the vegetarian lifestyle more than I do." Jasper confessed, he wasn't the only one who knew it and Alice confirmed with a nod. "Still, I made you endure the hunger unnecessarily."

Alice shook her head letting her hands trail up the scars that covered his bare limbs until they were wrapped around his neck.

"I'm not blaming you, Jasper. It's not an easy habit to break and you were doing splendidly." She was careful with her next words and although it came naturally, Jasper caught up on that too. "I just realize we see humans differently and that has taken a hit at me, I fear."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you don't care so much for them." It was no lie, for Jasper they were preys.

"I guess I see them how they should be for us."

"Food." He nodded in agreement and that made Alice sigh, walking off his arms. It left him there confused and lost, watching as Alice brought the shirt to the trash. "To me, they're not. They're people, with lives and souls and feelings."

Alice halted seeing how rigid Jasper got, all of the sudden.

"You think I don't feel remorse for killing them."

She bit her lower lip, staring at him for a moment. "Well, no."

"I can feel everything they experience before I kill them, Alice. I try to make it less painful as possible. Believe me, I'd give anything not to feel their pain." She could see the hurt he was holding back from her in his eyes, so she sighed, walking up to him.

"Darling, I know. That is not what I'm saying." She brushed his cheek and then the dimple on his chin, waiting for him to look at her this time. When Jasper finally did, Alice carried on, "I'm saying you do see them differently. They're meals for you. And I have been approaching all this as I see them. Now I know it won't help you if I continue. We just have to uh, change strategies." She smiled, knowing that was a term he'd be able to relate to. "I'm not condemning you. I know just how hard it is. I'm upset for not being on guard, for not seeing it coming, not knowing we'd have to do things differently than it was with me."

That last part sparked his curiosity, but first, he said, "You shouldn't blame yourself like that." The guilty washed over him again, Jasper hated this, seeing her blame herself for acts that were solely his own fault.

"Well, what are my gifts worth for if I can't use them to help you?" There was a grumpy frown on her forehead that Jasper so willingly leaned forward to place a kiss there, brushing off her concern.

Because she didn't look up to him even then, he raised her chin up to him.

"This is not your fault. I killed that human, you had no way of stopping me."

"If I hadn't—" He stopped her immediately, shaking his head, radiating the most sublime relaxation toward her. "Not fair." Alice sighed, her head leaning against the shelter of his touch and the welcoming warmth his talents brought her.

"How was it with you? Stopping to feed on them, I mean." Jasper asked, at last, giving in to the need, the urge he felt to wrap an arm around her, but Alice pulled back, bringing them to the couch instead. Like they had done so many times that week, he sat down first and she slipped on his lap, taking her rightful place where she belonged, right there in his arms. Only then she let him wrap his arms around her again.

"I tried to give them stories when I didn't know them when I knew I was on the verge to kill. If I didn't know who they were I'd try to picture them in a happy home, with a family and a warm meal. I'd imagine them coming home to hugs and cheers. That helped put me in the mindset that I didn't want to be what prevented it." Jasper nodded, he could see how it made sense for her but just how odd and excruciating it would be for him to do the same.

"Already sharing their emotions, I think that would be even worse for me." Alice nodded in agreement.

"I see that now. I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for." He copied her words from before and they both smiled. "Can I ask you something?"

"Fifty-three." She already knew the question but it was the answer being so low and not itself that shocked him.

"Only?"

Alice nodded, "And you?"

"I don't think I—"

"You don't have to lie." She encouraged, knowing that was his first reaction—not to lie, but to deflect from the answer. "You're not going to scare me."

"With three big wars… It was a few thousand. I don't know the exact number." The silence sunk into the room. Alice knew there as a number, but she accepted what he wanted to give her for now. "I regret every single one."

"You don't ever have to do that again." She brushed her thumb against his lower lip before leaning to peck his mouth.

They were lying naked on the floor when the conversation came up again.

"How did you deal with the rebound of drinking human blood?" Jasper asked, making her lift her head from his chest to look at him.

"I fed on animals more often, for one. I tried to stay away from humans as much as possible, you know how the lure can be, even when you just fed." It was almost like an instinct, an imprinted memory, but even talking about it made Alice's throat ache a little. "In the beginning, the incidents were more frequent, but with time I was able to spread them out a little more."

Jasper seemed to think for what was a long moment, longer from vampires especially. Alice waited patiently, although the question had appeared in her sight right before he voiced it out, "When was the last time?"

"A little over two years ago." Placing a peck to his chest, she moved a little up so their faces were at the same height on the made-up bed on the floor by the living room fireplace. "Would it help if I told you about it?"

He suspected she already knew it would be good for him to hear it, so he nodded.

"I'd like that, yeah."

Alice recalled it like it was yesterday. Considering time was nothing but a mark in forever to vampires like them, it wasn't so wild to think it had in fact happened not long from yesterday. She was in Vermont, spending some time in the North due to the summer suns that took cities in the South for more hours in the day at that time of the year. She moved around in the United States more so than other continents because Alice knew her meeting with Jasper could come at any given time.

Sometimes she would venture to Canada, but always areas with a lot of life and things to do. Alice hated being alone and bored. She believed the busier she was, the duller it would be to brave through those years before they met. Alice knew too that her encounter with Jasper was close, so for that, the vampire could be glad.

"I was in Vermont, I had befriended a few humans up there and I was working even. It was all very easy at the time. There had been a long time since the last slip and I knew our meeting was getting closer and closer, so I was more relaxed, you know? I told myself that it would be alright to join my human friends on a night out.

"The girls were having a ball, we went to this diner. I was pretending to eat here and there, they were all sort of used to me telling I followed a very strict diet for my health." Alice had learned then that all thought it was why she was so short, thin and pale, that she might have a health condition or something like that. She followed suit to often hint such confirmations.

"It was all going so well, but I saw it happening a millisecond before it did. This sweet girl that worked the front desk in the telephone company, she cut her finger with the knife while trying to demonstrate something to us. I was about ready to jump over Claire in the booth when it happened. The smell of her blood really took over me." Alice remembered the aching, the burning spreading down her throat while the girl tried to contain the bleeding. "I was able to hold myself, but Claire rushed up to get napkins for the mess on the table while Miriam rushed up to the ladies room, so I had a clear path. The animal in me spoke louder and I followed her to the bathroom.

"She didn't stand a chance, but the poor thing looked so relieved to see me there, coming to help her.

'Oh, Alice, I'm such a clumsy!' She told me with an apologetic smile. I said I was sorry and Miriam told me not to be foolish. I think she only grasped what was going on when I promised it wouldn't hurt. I couldn't keep the promise of course… I had to cover her mouth through it but the taste of the blood…" Alice felt her mouth water as she recalled the memory, the burning on the back of her throat coming back to life somehow. "I told myself I was being foolish, that we need some blood every once in a while, that her blood was worth the hassle. But after she was gone, I felt terrible. I knew her, she was a friend…

"Not only that, but I had to pretend I didn't know a thing. I put my own identity to risk there when I did that." Jasper, who had been listening to the story, seemed quite shocked by the revelation. Alice seemed always so controlled.

He could feel the palpable hunger arousing in her emotions, which worried him the slightest. If she was the controlled one of them, he couldn't quite picture what it would look like if Alice was the one to lose control.

"How did you get away with not being exposed?"

"I fled with her before Claire could find us and I took care of it. She telephoned Miriam's place that night and then me. I told Claire I had taken Miriam home but didn't know why she wasn't picking up. I lingered in town for a few months not to look suspicious. There was an investigation into her disappearance, but they dropped with the lack of proof that something had happened. I haven't been to Vermont since. I still feel terrible for how all went down."

He could tell the story upset her and he sent that relaxing wave toward her. Alice smiled, knowingly the sentiment wasn't originating from her own self, but appreciating that he had taken the lead to want her to be alright.

"It's why I chose not to feed from humans. I think how one could be a friend, someone I was growing to care for."

"Wouldn't it be easier if you stayed away from them in general?" She nodded to his question. Having no memory of her past self, Alice liked being around humans.

"It would be easier."

Alice didn't have to tell Jasper that she enjoyed and wanted to be among humans and although he might not understand that appeal, he accepted Alice because she did the same to him.

Still, he asked, "Why do you, then?"

Although it was quite clear to Alice herself, admitting it out loud felt shameful, embarrassing. Her eyes met his, the one she had so long waited for, the man she had accompanied in her visions for twenty-eight years, who was never really there until so recently.

"I felt lonely." She admitted quietly.

Jasper caught up to her emotions, the mix of joy and sorrow confusing him until he could separate their meanings. As difficult as his upcoming had been, he had had friends. He had a lover. Company. It wasn't like Alice's, all alone with no recollection of her past self or what she was even. All she had to rely on were visions, uncertainties of the future. He couldn't imagine how she had coped, it was hard for him to picture himself excelling it so well.

"You're the bravest person I know." He told her, honesty pouring over in his words.

She smiled small, looking down to his chest as her finger trailed it so gently, mapping the scars that covered it.

"I knew I would be alone for long and sometimes that was alright." The emotion that struck Jasper made his heart tighten, the deep and upsetting loss, the feeling of not belonging invading him from Alice. It impressed him because it was an emotion he knew too well of—not having a direction or purpose. "Sometimes you wouldn't show in my visions for months, even when I tried to look for something of you."

This time, the tightness in her throat wasn't because of hunger, but that scary realization she had had when those would happen.

"I would be so scared I had lost you, that you had been gone without me ever getting the chance to meet you." Jasper could tell if they were humans, her eyes would be watering, given the intense sadness he was now battling against. It was strong, bigger than the emotion of feeling her own self lost, losing Jasper was something that had haunted her for long.

He hadn't grasped until then how important he truly was to her, how pure and beautiful her emotions were. Every time more, Jasper felt more inclined to be at her side at all times—for eternity if that's what they had. The strongest want to protect that pure soul taking over him.

Jasper didn't care he was a monster, no. Because he was a monster that he could protect her more than the rest. And so he would.

"Then what would happen?" He wondered, caressing her lower back for a moment.

"You would show up again. With Peter or Maria." He felt the bitterness in the mention of his previous partner and he could understand why. Now that they were together he couldn't quite picture her in anyone else's arms but his own, so he could only imagine it wasn't exactly easy to actually see him in another woman's embrace. "And I'd feel lonely."

"I'm sorry you had to go through this." He said sincerely and Alice nodded. "Why didn't you come to find me?" That made her smile.

"I thought about it. Things wouldn't have been the same." That gave him a gut feeling that he might have killed her if it had happened and Jasper couldn't bear to even think of himself doing that. "The humans were my best option."

He had to agree, looking at that point of view, that things had happened between them exactly how they were supposed to.

"You're here now, that's all that matters," Alice told him quietly.

He lifted his body up to meet her lips, kissing her longly for a second. Jasper was surprised when Alice broke off the kiss.

"We should hunt though. I know you must be stuffed, but believe me, it's the best method."

"And you could really use it as well." Jasper pointed out, brushing her cheek. He could feel her starvation but Jasper could also gape the intense onyx orbs.

"I do, yes." It felt nice having someone who knew her so well, so thoroughly and easily, and the sentiment made her lean in to peck his lips. "And when we're back we can pick up where we left off this morning before I left."

"Isn't that what we just did?" Alice grinned and Jasper had to join in with a smirk.

"There's always room for more of that."