Chapter 20 Word Count: 3164; First Published about 12:15pm, 5/Oct/18.

Not beta'd, so for all excess commas and other mistakes, mea culpa.

And as always, thanks to Ms Meyer for permission to play in her world.


Chapter Twenty – Visitor

When Bella awoke the next morning, the first thing she saw was Jasper's golden eyes gazing at her.

"Mornin', darlin'," he said with a warm smile.

"Morning," she croaked back, closing her eyes and snuggling into his embrace. He was lying on top of her covers, so that his cold body wouldn't chill her. She also remembered him disappearing suddenly a few times during the night, just before a nurse came in to check on her. But right now she just wanted to be close to him, and pulled her arms out from under the blanket to grip onto his shirt.

"You okay?" he asked, cautiously.

"Yeah, just...bad dreams." Her dreams had been broken up all night, an unsurprising mix of images—unknown vampires attacking her and her father, doctors forcing her to undergo surgery she knew would kill her, her mother crying at her funeral—until they had finally morphed into a dream of her past.

It was only three days until her wedding now. She hadn't seen Mr Johnson since he'd visited the previous week, and was struggling to accept that in three days she was meant to promise her life to him. Her mother had finally noticed her weight loss and was constantly berating her for letting grief control her.

"This is such a good opportunity for you, Isabella, " she'd said. "It's not only your father who gains from this connection you know, you will have a much better life with Mr Johnson than you ever could have with that boy you're wasting your tears on." That comment brought the tears, always close to the surface, into her eyes, and she could see her mother's face soften through the blur. "I don't mean to be insensitive Isabella, you know I don't like to see you suffer. But you have to embrace the life you have, not starve yourself away."

Now that Bella knew she had cancer, Isabella's symptoms all made sense. But in her dreams, she felt that it probably was her fault she was feeling so ill: her inability to accept the life God had given her. At the same time, she didn't want to accept that life. She prayed, repeatedly, that God would bring Jasper back to her somehow. She never once prayed that he would help her accept Mr Johnson.

Bella couldn't help but wonder how she would be feeling now, if Jasper hadn't come back into her life. How did Isabella Dawson and Arabella Reilly feel, when they realised they were sick? Did they have people in their waking lives to help them through it? That was assuming they too had dreamed of a past life, which maybe they hadn't, who knows?

"Don't you think it's odd," she said out loud, a sudden thought arresting her, "that both my previous selves were also near Carlisle when they got sick? The last one—Arabella—she was so close to you! You would have been with Carlisle by then, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," he said. "I've been thinking about that, too."

"It makes me feel a little sick," she said, "thinking that she—I—was so close to you but missed you. But also, a little bit jealous. You're mine, not hers! And if you'd met her. Ugh! I would never have existed!"

He chuckled, and she could feel the rumble through her cheek against his chest.

"It was always you, Bella. Always and only you. And yes, I can't help feeling bad, so guilty, that you've gone through this three times now, without me there with you. But at the same time—everything that's happened has brought you here to me now. How can I regret that?"

"Good," she said. "Stick with that thought, because I don't want to feel jealous of my former selves, but somehow, I'm able to!"

He laughed again. "God, I love you, Bella Swan."

She smiled and moved back to tilt her head up and kiss his chin. "No more than I love you, Jasper Whitlock."

Suddenly, Jasper was disentangling himself from her. "Nurse coming," was all he said. And then he was gone—into the bathroom, she thought, though she couldn't be sure—just as a nurse popped her head into the room.

"Ah good, you're awake," she said. Leaving a trolley in the hallway, she brought in a tray and placed it on the bedside table, pressing a button on the bedhead to raise the head end of the bed, and helping Bella into a sitting position. "Here you go," she said, swinging the mobile arm of the table over the bed. "Just some yoghurt, jello, soft fruit and a cup of tea. See how you go with that."

"Thank you," Bella said, though as usual her stomach rebelled at the idea of eating.

"You're welcome, dear. Now, Dr Cullen should be in to see you on his rounds a bit later, and I'll come back to collect this tray in a bit, but you just take your time and eat as much as you can."

"Yes ma'am." And the nurse was gone, and Jasper back by her side.

"I spoke to Carlisle not long before you woke," he told her. "He said he'd come and talk to us some more before his shift starts, so he should be in soon."

"Okay. Has he got anything else to tell us?"

"Not much, I think. He spent the night reading up on the form of cancer you have, and also looking through the literature for previous cases in people your age."

"Because it's different when you're younger?" she asked. "Is the treatment different?"

"Not so much that, I think," he paused, as if wondering whether to tell her something.

"Just say it, Jasper."

"I think he wanted to see if he would find anyone else that matched your description."

She gasped. "Any other past versions of me you mean?" He nodded.

"He didn't find any though. So as far as we know, this is only your fourth time having to go through this hell."

"It's not hell with you, Jasper. And don't beat yourself up about not being there the other times, okay? We've talk about this! Don't make me jealous!"

He smiled weakly, obviously aware that she was trying to make him feel better.

.

Bella drank her tea and ate most of a tub of yoghurt before she determinedly pushed the table away. He frowned at her, but she just frowned back.

"I promise you, I can't eat anything else," she said. "If I do I'll just bring it back up."

He hated seeing her so unwell. It had been bad enough when he thought it was just stress. Now, knowing that it was so much worse than that...

"Carlisle's almost here," was all he said out loud, hearing his pseudo-adoptive father murmuring for him to warn Bella of his approach.

"Great," she replied, not quite sarcastically.

Carlisle's presence was always soothing to Jasper. He was almost unfailingly calm, and always compassionate, which was like a balm, surrounded as he was by a seething mass of human emotion, especially in a hospital (or school, he thought, wryly).

So when he arrived, Jasper soaked up his calm and compassion, and just wished he could project it onto Bella, like he could for anyone else.

There wasn't much new for him to tell them, but he went over the options they might share with Charlie, and they told him what they had decided so far. Bella wanted to try chemo and radiation, if Carlisle thought it would extend her life in a worthwhile way, and when Carlisle recommended she have a stent placed in her esophagus to make eating easier, she was happy to agree. She also suggested they tell Charlie that she had forth stage cancer, even if it turned out she didn't.

"That way we're...we're starting to prepare him for the loss," she said, pausing to get her breathing under control. He could tell she was struggling not to cry at the thought of Charlie's pain.

"And that will also mean surgery wouldn't be recommended. Yes, I think that is the best idea," Carlisle agreed. "He may still want you to get other opinions though, and it wouldn't be wrong of him."

Bella argued that he trusted Carlisle—he'd told her they were lucky to have such a good doctor in a small-town hospital—which Jasper could feel made Carlisle both pleased and uncomfortable. He felt guilty, presumably that they would be lying to Bella's father, even though he knew it was the best way to keep her safe.

"In any case," Carlisle added, "I will have to refer you to the oncology department in Port Angeles to get any treatment. But I will edit your files as needed to make sure you get the options you want."

"Okay," she said quietly. "But—does that mean you won't be my doctor?"

"I won't be the one to prescribe the treatments," he agreed, "but you can have oral chemotherapy, which you can take at home. So you won't have to keep going back and forth to Port Angeles for that. Though the radiation therapy will need to be done in Port Angeles. But if you happen to be stubborn and insist that you'd rather be treated by your boyfriend's father aside from that, well, I will happily argue that as a teenager with stage four cancer, we should focus on making your last months as happy and stress free as possible, and so if you just want to deal with me as much as possible, I will talk with the oncologist on your behalf."

"Thanks, Carlisle, I would really appreciate that."

"No thanks are necessary, Bella. Anything I can do to make this easier for you, I am happy to do it." Jasper could feel his sincerity and squeezed Bella's hand, making a note to tell her about it later.

The whole family were so happy for him to have found his mate, almost unbelievable as her story was. Carlisle had said on the phone that he'd already had to warn both Alice and Esme away from visiting today, saying she'd most likely be discharged before school was out anyway, and would probably not feel up to visitors. Esme had insisted she would bring some soup around for dinner though, and Alice had begged to be allowed to visit on the weekend. "Maybe you can talk to Bella and see if she'd like that," Carlisle had added to Jasper.

"Jasper said you'd been looking for evidence of other cases...other times I might have been reincarnated," Bella began, hesitantly.

"Yes, but I didn't find any," Carlisle told her. "It's a very rare form of cancer in one so young—though it's increasingly common in the over fifty age group—so they tend to be written up quite thoroughly. Of course, Isabel Dawson hadn't been diagnosed, as far as I know, and there could have been others, maybe between then and your original life. But you are still only the fourth incarnation that we know of."

Bella gasped suddenly. "Lives four times!" she said quietly.

"It looks like you have," Jasper replied, confused. "But do you mean something else?"

"Seth said—the Quileutes have a prophesy," she said. She looked up at him momentarily, but then seemed to look right through him. "Beloved of the tribe, called 'beautiful'... And then something about lives four times." Her eyes focused on his again, and he could feel her wonder. "That's all I know," she said. "Seth mentioned it one time. I kept falling over but not hurting myself, and he said I could be the girl who lives four times. My name means beautiful, and I'm not a member of the tribe, but they've practically adopted me, he said."

"You don't know what it said about this girl?" Carlisle asked, and Jasper could feel his concern. If the Quileutes felt they had some claim on her, it could make things even more complicated.

"No. Jacob told Seth he wasn't supposed to talk about it with 'outsiders'." She made air quotes with her fingers. "Seth laughed it off, but Jacob was obviously uncomfortable, so I didn't ask anything else about it. At the time I thought the same as Seth—that it was a myth, just like their stories of the cold ones." She chuckled quietly, lightening the atmosphere a little. "Now I know that was wrong!"

He loved that she could still laugh. Hopefully the prophecy wouldn't turn out to mean anything. "Charlie's coming," he warned then, feeling his emotional signature approaching.

.

After Charlie had left for work, and Carlisle for his rounds, Bella had snuggled back into Jasper's arms, taken a deep breath of his scent (at least, that's what he thought she was doing), and drifted back to sleep.

Carlisle had organised her scans for later that day, hopefully just after lunch, but it was a bit dependent on what emergencies might come up. She could come back in and have them as an outpatient, he'd said, but this way it would get done more quickly, and she could go home, knowing she was done, for the time being.

He'd book her in for the following week to have the stent placed, and also send a referral to the oncology department in Port Angeles. They would call her to make an appointment, but he would ask them to include him in it also, as per her request.

Charlie had told her he'd call Billy and tell him and Jake not to come over tonight, which they had planned to do, but Bella had told him not to worry, she'd enjoy seeing them. Jasper had frowned at that, and been hard pressed not to growl, but she'd just squeezed his hand and smiled at him.

After Charlie had left she'd reminded him that Jacob was actually a good friend of hers. "I might be a bit mad at him—or at Billy anyway—but they are family to us. And I might not have very much longer with them. Plus, I need to know they'll still be there for Charlie after I'm not. I know he seemed very stoic, when he was here earlier, but..."

"No, I get it," he'd told her. "What he was feeling didn't match what he was putting out at all. He's terrified for you, and you're right, he's going to need support."

"I had hoped that maybe he and Sue Clearwater...they've been spending a lot of time together. I hope me being involved with their mortal enemies doesn't ruin that for him. Do you think she knows, about the myths being true?"

"She does. She was at the last meeting we had with them."

He thought about that now as he held his sleeping mate. Charlie would need support to cope with his daughter's cancer and her passing. It was just like Bella to be thinking of that already, trying to take care of him, and he really did hope that the enmity between his family and the wolves wouldn't ruin it.

Would she want him to hang around tonight too? It went against the grain to leave her in a house with an adolescent werewolf, but at the same time, he doubted his presence would make things easier for her, in this instance, or for Charlie.

.

Bella was relieved to finally be able to leave the hospital just after three. She'd not particularly enjoyed the feeling of being stuck in the tube for the PET scan, especially after having to drink some awful fluid to have a CT scan at the same time. She'd ended up throwing half of it back up after trying to force herself to drink the full amount, and having to start again, but they said just to drink as much as she was able, the second time, without throwing up. It delayed the whole process though, which had frustrated her no end.

She was so glad Jasper had stayed with her all day. Somehow just a simple touch from him was enough to calm her down, every time.

It was cold in her truck, so she turned the heat right up as soon as they got in.

"So," she began, "do you want me to take you home, or...?" She let the sentence trail off, hoping he would say no.

He gave her a startled look. "Oh, I was sort of hoping you would invite me back to your place actually. Of course, if you want to be alone that's okay, but I'll still want to be nearby."

She couldn't help grinning. "I guess the closer you are the safer I'll be, right? So you'd better just stay with me then. At least..." She felt her smile falter a little. "I suppose you'll have to leave before Jake and Billy get there though, won't you?"

"I don't have to—we certainly didn't agree to their ridiculous demands—but it would probably be a good idea, yeah," he said. "I won't go far though."

When they pulled up outside the house she still thought of as Charlie's, Jasper was around the truck and opening her door almost before she had the keys out of the ignition.

"That's going to take some getting used to!" she said.

"Sorry." He reached up to help her out of the truck, and she was again forcibly reminded of the Jasper of her past. She smiled and took his hand. The Southern gentleman thing really wasn't so bad, she thought.

"That's okay, let's go in." She wanted as much time with him as she could get before he had to leave.

"I know Charlie mentioned pizzas, but I think I'll make a casserole for dinner," she was saying as she unlocked the door, "that way I can—" Suddenly she was being pushed behind Jasper's growling body, his arm holding her tightly to his back.

"What's wrong?" she gasped out.

"Vampire," he growled. "There's been a vampire here. Recently."

"In—in the house?"

"Yes. They didn't come through this door—they must have come through the back, there was no scent out the front. But the smell in here..."

"Are they gone?"

"Shh," he breathed, a finger to his lips. He held up his phone and showed her what he'd just typed:

There's no breath or movement, no sound, but they could be upstairs, waiting. Vampires can be very still.

She nodded against his back, to show she understood, and he tapped some more on his phone and hit send. It was too fast for her to make out the message, but she saw the words "backup" and "NOW". He must be asking Edward or Alice to come.

He turned, bringing her into his arms, and showed her the phone to see another message he'd typed.

They're probably gone, but we'll wait for Edward and Alice.

She nodded again. God, please let them be gone, she prayed.


A/N

Reviews, as someone else said recently (or at least, I read it recently), are not only motivating, they are candy! Let me know what you think! One more chapter in Part 1...

Recommendations

I'm giving you three this week, because there's been such a long gap between updates. There actually probably won't be such a long gap before the next chapter, since it is complete AND proof read (though only by me!) and just waiting for one of my betas to hopefully have time to look at it. But still. You'll like these. All Bella-Jasper this week. :)

Recent:

Call me Little Bit, by Spudzmom This is a lovely little one shot that I discovered a few weeks/months ago – I thought I had recommended it already actually, but I can't find it, so... I think you will all like it, since you like this one :) Bella-Jasper
This one was only published this year, but according to the author note it had been published previously in 2014. s/12964149/1/Call-Me-Little-Bit

Older:

Scarred, by jascat Jasper is horribly scarred by a vindictive Maria. He decides to live alone in the forest around Forks, certain no one could ever love him now.

I'm amazed I never discovered this one before, as it was written in 2014, and has over 1000 likes... but there you go. Hopefully it is new to some of you as well. Bella-Jasper. s/10230143/1/Scarred

WIP:

Lost Cause by IvaChism Jasper is a relic of a lost time. His mind is shattered beyond repair and he is labeled feral, dangerous. A lost cause. Dismissed by all... except one.
This is being updating slowly – last update was in August. Who knows though, maybe a bunch of you hopping over and leaving REVIEWS might inspire another update? JxB s/12982756/1/Lost-Cause Edited to add: Just updated today, shortly after I first published this :)