31: Part Three, Chapter Three

Word Count: 3097, First Published 9 May, Australian time

And as always, thanks to Ms Meyer for permission to play with her characters and mess up her sand pit.

Unbeta'd


Chapter Three - Frozen

Time passed slowly. Jasper had moved on to counting blades of grass sometime the day before.

His phone rang. Peter. He sent it to voicemail. It rang again. He threw the phone at the wall, shattering it.

It was all he could do not to head straight for Peter and send him to hell right now.

He knew Peter wouldn't steer him wrong deliberately, but how could he make a mistake of this magnitude? He'd never been wrong before.

Another phone rang, downstairs.

"Peter!" Alice growled in greeting. "You're not too popular around here just now."

"I know." Peter's voice sounded through the phone, and Jasper felt an involuntary growl rumble through his chest. "But I don't know why," he added. "All I know is somethin' has you all in a state of shut down and that if I show up now, Jasper's going to tear me a new one. That if I even called before now, it wouldn't have been pretty. And that you're still going to need us there in a few weeks, anyway. What happened?"

"Bella—" Alice began. Jasper's growl increased in volume, and he heard Alice start to leave the house.

"Victoria arrived unexpectedly..." she was saying, as she raced out of hearing range.

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"Peter and Charlotte are coming next month, or possibly April," Alice told Carlisle, when she returned to the house. Jasper felt himself growl quietly again.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Carlisle had obviously heard the growl.

"I think it's necessary," she said. "He's not sure exactly when yet, but he knows we'll need them. I told him about my vision—we're guessing he'll be coming the same time as Maria."

"And…" Carlisle hesitated, and Jasper could feel his indecision, as though he were unsure if he should continue. "Did the two of you... Did you come up with any theories as to why his last information was so unhelpful?"

"Ye-es..."Alice replied, hesitantly. "But I'm not sure—Jasper's not going to like it."

"No, I'm sure. But Jasper's not going to be happy regardless, until Bella's reborn, until we find her again. We need as much information about what's coming next as we can get. And that includes figuring out why Peter implied only a week ago that everything would be fine."

"Okay," Alice said. He heard her sit down, and the faint sound of skin on skin that was probably Edward taking her hand. The ache in his chest intensified, if that were possible. God, how he wished he'd just turned Bella the moment he realised who she was. To hold her hand again...just to look at her... He closed his eyes, and focussed on the conversation downstairs. Anything to distract himself from this longing.

"I told Peter about the Quileute prophecy," Alice was saying. "And we think—that is, we wondered if maybe Peter's knowing didn't save Bella because...well, because she actually needed to die one more time."

Jasper was down the stairs heading for Alice before he knew he was going to move, his guttural growl now at a higher volume. How dare she?

Before he could reach Alice, Edward was up and in front of her, crouched defensively. "Back off!" he snarled. Behind him, Alice stood too, and it was her heartbroken expression and feelings of complete remorse that reached Jasper, more than Edward's protective stance.

"I'm sorry," she said to Jasper, peering around Edward as he straightened up. "I know that sounds heartless. But she's special, Jasper. She's been reincarnated multiple times, she's the subject of a prophecy, for goodness' sake! So what if the prophecy's right? What if it's important to more than just the Quileutes?"

Jasper closed his eyes, and backed away. Could she be right? Was Bella not reincarnated to be with him, but for some other purpose? It hurt, to think that she wasn't just his.

"She wasn't reincarnated multiple times to fulfil that prophecy," Emmett said, speaking for the first time into the tense silence. Jasper opened his eyes and looked at him, tasting the certainty in his emotions, tempered by his ever present compassion. "Rose and I didn't have a chance to really get to know her, but it was clear she was completely besotted with you, Jasper. And everything you guys told us about her dreams, and the other times she came back, so close to meeting you, or Carlisle at least, that wasn't anything to do with the Quileutes."

"Besides," Rose added, "prophecies are supposed to foretell what's going to happen—or what might happen—they're not prescriptions for what should happen."

"We did have one other idea," Alice said, tentatively, sitting back down, and pulling Edward with her. "But I don't really think—well, anyway. It was just—what if you'd changed her earlier, and then Victoria got to her as a vampire? And what if those of us who believe we lose our souls when we change, what if they're right? And then she wouldn't have been able to come back!"

"That actually makes some sense," Edward said slowly, but Jasper didn't agree. Bella would never lose her soul, just because she became a vampire. He just didn't believe it. Besides, that wouldn't explain why Peter wasn't able to warn them about Victoria's attack.

.

Jasper stared out the window, trying to ignore the ache in his chest, along with the pull towards Italy and revenge.

He had already made the decision to leave for Volterra on three separate occasions since his first desperate attempt, but each time Alice talked him down.

"But what if you're wrong?" he'd all but shouted at her, the first time. "What if she's still alive? Still changing? She needs me to be there when she wakes up!"

It hadn't occurred to him, in the first shock of Alice's announcement, that she could be wrong. That his mate may still live. But Alice hadn't actually seen her die. Yes, she'd seen Marcus bite her, but she hadn't seen what came after. She hadn't seen them burn her body. Not having any personal knowledge of the Volturi, Alice couldn't see them either, once Bella and Victoria were gone. But what if there was another explanation?

"I'm not wrong, Jazz," Alice replied quietly. "She's completely disappeared from my visions. She has no future. That only ever happens when someone dies. And if you go to Volterra, your future disappears, too."

"But you don't actually see me die."

"All I see is, one moment you're approaching Aro, looking furious, the next you're gone." Alice looked sad, and he could feel her desperation to convince him. "Don't do it, Jasper! Bella is going to need you when she's born again. Which she may have already been. We don't know what will happen if you die too, but there's no guarantee that things will still work out. We don't even know for sure if we still have souls to be reborn. You can't assume you wouldn't be leaving her permanently."

"But what if you're wrong?" he'd asked her again the next time she'd had to talk him down.

"Okay," she'd said that time, taking a rational approach to convince him. "What if I am wrong? That means the Volturi decided to let her live; to let her change. That means she's safe, right? Of course, it's not ideal for you not to be there when she wakes up. But she's safe, and eventually—probably sooner, rather than later—she's going to contact you."

"But what if they treat her the way I was treated as a newborn? What if she doesn't remember anything?"

"Jasper! The Volturi are not Maria. You know that! They're not going to hold her against her will, and they're certainly not going to try to turn her into a mindless soldier."

"They'll make her feed on humans though."

"Yes," she said sadly. "They will do that."

They'd lapsed into a melancholy silence for a few minutes, before Alice had started up again.

"But just think about it rationally, Jazz. If she's dead, and you go there, you'll attack them and be killed. You know you will. Then you won't be here for her when she's reborn. If she's alive, and you don't go there, she'll eventually contact you, or just show up here. Even in the worst case, where she didn't remember you, you know she'll be drawn here by your bond, eventually. As a vampire, she won't be able to resist it, not with her mate being a vampire too."

The third time he'd decided to go to Volterra anyway, despite all Alice's rational arguments against it, she'd brought Carlisle up to work on him.

"What about this, Jasper," he'd said, "we'll deal with the threat posed by Maria coming to Forks, which we honestly need you here for, and then I'll go to Volterra myself. I shouldn't be in any danger. Even if Victoria convinced Aro that we'd broken the law by keeping Bella alive, as soon as he touches my hand, he'll know the truth of our intentions. What do your visions say about that, Alice?" he added, turning to the small vampire.

Alice stood still for a few moments, allowing her eyes to glaze over as she searched for a vision. She frowned. "I can't see anything," she said. "Are you absolutely decided to go?"

Carlisle frowned too. "Absolutely," he said. "What does that mean, then?" he added absently, almost to himself.

That had started a whole conversation about the future and Alice's visions. Her fragmented visions of Maria and her army had disappeared since the wolves had decided to help, but before that they'd become more and more disturbing, as she'd started to get a better handle on the numbers Maria was bringing with her, and her visions had moved from fragments of Maria arriving in the clearing, to fragments of the Cullens fighting her army.

It had all remained fairly blurry, and she couldn't get any sense at all of who lived or died or who won the battle, which they assumed was because there were too many variables, particularly during the battle itself.

Peter had assured them it would turn out in their favour, as long as they asked both the Denalis and the wolves for help, and of course, with Peter and Charlotte's help too. He couldn't guarantee that none of them would die though, and besides, Peter's assurances didn't hold quite the same weight with the Cullens that they had before Victoria's success.

So did Alice's inability to find a vision of Carlisle in Volterra mean he would not be around, after the battle, to go to Italy at all?

"I don't think that's it," Alice said slowly, thinking it through. "You know I've still been getting the occasional glimpses of all of us in the weeks after the battle. Nothing concrete-they all have the blurry quality of futures that are possible, but by no means certain. So they don't prove any one of us will survive. But if it's even a possibility, I should be able to get at least a glimpse of Carlisle in Volterra, and I get nothing."

"Maybe it's good news then," Carlisle had concluded. "Perhaps it means we'll have found the next incarnation of Bella by then anyway, and so there'll be no need for me to go."

.

A detached part of Jasper's brain knew that he should be putting time into training his family, and the wolves, in preparation for Maria's attack. He'd given them some basic training for dealing with newborns before Victoria came, but it hadn't stopped two of the wolves from almost dying in that attack.

His family had intercepted some other vampires Victoria had sent as a decoy to attack the Cullen's house, and they had handled them easily enough, but she had kept the bulk of her army with her.

Maria's army would be much better trained, and from what Alice had seen, much bigger.

Peter had promised to arrive in plenty of time for the fight, but the Cullen's should be training now. None of them had any experience of this sort of fight. And Jasper knew that, somewhere deep down, he cared very much about his family. And that despite everything, Bella cared very much for the wolves. For some of them anyway. And that should matter to him.

But if he let himself feel anything at all, he wasn't sure he could control himself.

Every time emotion had broken through since Bella's death, he'd tried to attack someone. And he was only just keeping the pull to Volterra under control. He'd seen more than one vampire go mad with grief after losing their mate, the hunger for revenge the only thing to keep them even slightly functional, until it was completed. Many died in the attempt at revenge, and those who succeeded found another way to die quickly after their revenge was complete.

And Edward and Alice had been right. He had promised Bella he would wait for her. Even if the Bella who came back wouldn't be quite the same, wouldn't remember that promise. He had to be there for her. This time he would keep her safe.

If he let himself feel now, that wouldn't happen. Instead, he was sure he'd find himself in Italy before he knew what he was doing, possibly with one of more of the Cullens injured in his flight.

Better to just count the blades of grass one more time.

.

Jasper's resolution was put to the test only a day later, when Charlie came to visit, one week after Victoria's attack. Charlie's grief was palpable, far more so than any of the Cullens', and almost tipped Jasper over the edge. He gritted his teeth together and closed his eyes, focussing on holding his body still. He wanted to send Charlie some peace and comfort, but it was all he could do not to flood the house with anguish instead.

As far as Charlie was aware, Bella and Jasper both died in the house fire. Although no remains had been recovered, Sue told him and the investigating police that Jasper had returned after she arrived, unable to bring himself to spend even the day at school. She had stepped out of the house to accept some chicken broth from Esme, who had driven over with the meal but wasn't staying, when there was a huge explosion, they thought from the basement, and the house had quickly been engulfed in flames.

The small amount of truth to the story was that Sue had been in the house when Victoria attacked, and was on the verge of being attacked herself, by one of the newborns, when the remaining wolves and then the Cullens had shown up and brought the fighting to an end. It had been Esme who saved her from the newborn intent on making a meal of her.

The Cullen's had quickly decided to stage Jasper's death in the fire, as well as Bella's, knowing that even if they were able to recover Bella, she was changing, and would need to go somewhere far away, and Jasper with her.

The explosion was also real, after Edward tampered with the gas connection in the basement, and they set fire to a venom covered vampire limb and threw it into the house. It had been a balancing act then between calling the fire brigade and having the house burned sufficiently quickly to hide both the vampire remains, and the lack of human remains.

Luckily, none of the neighbours seemed to have reported the noise of the fight with the newborns as having started well before the explosion. Everyone was in too much shock at the sudden deaths, to make reliable witnesses.

Charlie had been staying with Sue, and was in a state of shock and grief himself, but they had agreed to have a joint memorial service for the young lovers. Renee and Phil were flying up on Sunday, and the service was scheduled for Tuesday. Carlisle and Charlie had so far been discussing details by phone, but today the funeral director wanted to meet with them together, and as Carlisle couldn't go to the reservation, they had had to invite Charlie to come to them.

As the familiar sound of the cruiser approached, Rose knocked on Jasper's door and let herself in. Since she was supposed to be his sister by birth, she should be the most grief-stricken member of their family, and of course, having known Bella hardly at all, she was actually the least affected. She was hurting for Jasper himself, he knew, but she didn't personally miss Bella, and relied on her reincarnation to eventually make her family whole again.

Jasper had heard the family discussion about managing him while Charlie was there. What if he had a meltdown and appeared just when he shouldn't? Carlisle had wanted to send him hunting, but Alice had emphatically assured him that wasn't going to happen. He wasn't ready to leave the house.

"I don't think he'll move from his room anyway," she'd said, "but maybe someone should stay with him, just in case." So Rose had been elected.

He tried to melt himself from his statue-state to speak to her, but his throat was frozen, holding in the sobs. If he spoke now, he would break down.

He hadn't spoken since Alice had had to talk him down from his last decision to go to Italy, two days ago. A decision he didn't even realise he'd made, until she came barrelling into the room, dragging Carlisle with her, after having another vision of him going after Aro. Strange that it was Aro she kept seeing him attack, and not Marcus. But perhaps they knew better than to let him anywhere near the vampire who had killed his mate.

"Charlie's here," Rose said, bringing him, unwillingly, back to the present.

He nodded slightly, but didn't look at her. He could smell Charlie, as well as feeling his emotions. Having not hunted in more than a week, the scent of human blood should have made the burn flare in his throat. But instead, it simply reminded him of Bella. Their scents were as similar as their quiet temperaments. What would the next Bella smell like, he wondered? Would she smell the same? Who would her parents be?

The funeral director arrived next. Her scent did make the burn in his throat worse, and he welcomed the very slight distraction from his thoughts, as he listened to them plan the service.


A/N

Sorry for the delay, particular to those to whom I sent a review reply saying I'd try to get it up last week! May is a super busy month for me, workwise, so the next one will probably take just as long.

Thanks so much to all the readers and *especially* reviewers who are still with me.

I don't actually check my reader stats very often, because it just makes me crazy when I see hundreds or in some cases thousands of people have looked at each chapter, and only maybe 40 of them have said ever hello. What the?

Say hello people! You don't need to log in (though maybe leave a name/username, so I know who you are if you come back?), and you don't need to actually "review" (is that word a stumbling block?) - but say hi!

In fact, how about this? Whether you are a regular reviewer or not, and whether you are logged in or not, this chapter, leave a comment telling me where in the world you are, and what time it is there when you are reading? (I'm in Canberra, Australia, and it's 5:43 pm as I post this.)

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Recs

Please leave them a review, if you visit, and let them know I sent you. :)

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First, this is a one shot, utterly beautiful and utterly awful at the same time. All human.

Forward, by GoEunAh

Isabella must accept the truth that her husband was lost in battle during World War II. Time has moved on, but each day she is forced to take a step further from the man she promised to wait for. The same man that was there for her during her darkest times, was now asking her to wait for him in his own dark days. /s/13270408/1/Forward

.

Now, here's a rec for a totally different young adult series, three books published, the fourth (and final) due out in, I think July. I've absolutely loved the first three (as has my daughter). I've started writing fan fiction in my head while I wait for the next book. :) (updated 2021 - this series is complete, and still highly recommended!)

The Spoken Mage series by Melanie Cellier

The first book is called Voice of Power:

In Elena's world words have power over life and death-but none more so than hers

As the daughter of shopkeepers, Elena has always known that the mysteries of reading and writing were closed to her. Only the mageborn can risk harnessing the power unleashed from putting pen to paper. Until Elena discovers an impossible new ability and joins the elite ranks of the mages.

But with the kingdom at war, the authorities can't agree if Elena is an asset, or a threat they need to eliminate. Thrust into the unknown world of the Royal Academy without friends or experience, Elena will need all of her wits, strength, and new power to carve a place for herself.

Except as the attacks become more personal, wits and strength won't be enough. Elena will have to turn to new friends and an enigmatic prince to unlock the mysterious potential of her words and survive her first year as a trainee mage.

Find it on Amazon by searching for Melanie Cellier, or go to melaniecellier dot com/spokenmage/

(August 2020 - as I type (fixing a few typos) it's been months since I updated, but if you are reading this now, just so you know, I am still working on it, and plan to start publishing again when I have the rest all completed. It's not abandoned.)