A/N: I promise, we'll be seeing some Jasper interaction in the next chapter! Special Thanks to The Sound and the Fury, for beta'ing for me, so you aren't all stuck with my mistakes.

Also, since there seemed to be a little confusion about the ages, here you go: Edward is 16, Alice is almost 17, Jasper is 17 (Almost 18), Rose is 19, and Emmett is 20. Yep, 20 and still in high school, but we'll get to that later!

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Esme's POV

It was early, barely four in the morning, and the rest of the family was still in bed. Even Carlisle was asleep, his snores echoing softly through the room. I lay awake, thinking about the young man I was considering bringing into my life. My eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness, and the manila folder on the nightstand seemed to mock me, telling me that it held all of Jasper's secrets.

I had been awake for nearly an hour, looking at that folder and trying to find the strength to pick it up. I wasn't naïve; I knew that Carlisle hadn't been completely honest about Jasper's last hospitalization. Oh, I'm sure the head injury was the emergency and their main priority . . . but whatever else they had seen had led to Social Services removing the rest of the children from the home.

With trembling hands, I reached out and lifted the file. It was heavy, but still seemed far too light to contain an entire life, boiled down to the basics. Carlisle stirred when I slid out from under his arm, and I lightly kissed his cheek. "It's okay." He grumbled and began to snore again. I loved my husband, but I needed privacy to look through the file. To get to know Jasper, even before we met.

Years of living in the same house allowed me to walk unerringly down the hall, pausing briefly to peek inside each door. Alice was curled up in a mass of pillows and blankets, the light from the television flickering over her serene face. She was beautiful, like a pixie come to life. I could have gone in and turned the TV off, but she liked to have some light in the room, so I just smiled at her and continued on.

Emmett's snores echoed around his room, proving that he, at least, was where he was supposed to be. Whether or not Rosalie was in there with him was a bit of a different matter. I certainly didn't disapprove of their relationship, but I wasn't about to condone them using our house as their private sex party. I peeked in, but he was, for once, alone. Dale McCarty had been nearly 6'9, and his son was almost as tall. He ate more than the other three combined, and even now, I could see an abandoned plate next to the bed. His backpack was leaning against the desk, still zippered tight. If he didn't buckle down, he was going to fail his junior year again. I loved my son, really I did, but I just didn't understand him sometimes. Both the counselor and his tutor had finally given up, telling us that it was up to Emmett now, and he was going to have to sink or swim on his own. Easy for them to say; they weren't his mother. I made a mental note to talk with him again tomorrow and shut his door.

I was surprised to see a light from under the door in Rosalie's room. She often had sleepless nights, and many times resented being bothered, so I hesitated before opening the door. "Rose, are you all right?"

Her head snapped up from the book she was reading, her dark eyes inscrutable. She looked down at the file still clutched in my hand. "So, we're taking him." It wasn't a question.

I sat next to her on the bed. "I don't know. It's not fair to anyone to put him a home where he isn't completely wanted. Your father and I are going to go meet him tomorrow before we make any final decisions. Why? If you're against this, Rose, tell me now. If we agree to take him, then we're keeping him at least until he's eighteen, so I need to know if it's a problem."

She was quiet for a long moment, laying her book down on the comforter. I ran my fingers through her hair, feeling the silky texture. Sitting with her like this, I was reminded of the skittish, untrusting teenager we had accepted six years ago. I would have never dared touch her like this then. She leaned into my touch. "So, if I say no, it's no?"

I hated to just say yes to that, because Rosalie might refuse just to be difficult. "If you say no, we'll discuss why and see what we come up with."

She twisted around to look me in the eyes. "Did you guys vote on me coming here? Like I was a dumped puppy?" Her tone was cold.

"Of course not. Carlisle and I made the decision ourselves. But you kids are older now, and need to have a say in the family. Jasper has been through enough, and I won't have him tormented here also."

Her body softened. "I think we should take him."

It was the last thing I expected her to say. She must have read my shock, because she gave me one of her mysterious smiles. "If you can handle me, and Alice, and Emmett, then you can handle whatever this Jasper throws your way. Plus . . . he needs someone, Mom, even if it's just until he turns eighteen. And no one can love the unlovable quite like you."

I wondered how she could ever consider herself, or any of them, unlovable. Time had taught me not to bring it up, though, but instead to just accept the compliments as she was able to give them. "Thank you, Rosalie."

She pointed at the file in my hand. "Can I see? Nothing personal, just his stats?"

I couldn't see the harm in letting her have a quick peek. She opened the file to the first page. "Jasper and Franklin . . . what weird names. I wonder who his parents named him after?"

It was a good question. Jasper was quite an old-fashioned name, and I wondered if he was named for a grandfather. Did he have still-living relatives who might wonder about him? Had they agreed to allow him to enter foster care in the hopes that he might have a better life than they could provide? Look where their generosity had gotten him — six years of torture and a skull fracture. The very thought made me feel ill.

She lingered across the picture of a five-year-old Jasper, much as I had. "Pretty eyes." She looked at the rest of the pictures. "Sad, though."

"Yes." I wasn't sure what else to say to her. Agreeing to accept Jasper was extremely generous, but drawing attention to that would only embarrass her. I gave her one last kiss and stood up. "Try to get some sleep, baby, okay?"

She nodded. I headed for the hall, but was stopped in the doorway by a tiny voice. "Mom? When you tell everyone else that I'm all right with taking Jasper, tell Edward that I threw a big tantrum before I agreed, okay?"

"Okay." There were undercurrents and power struggles between Edward and Rosalie that I didn't even pretend to understand. "I love you."

When she smiled, it was like seeing the sun. "I love you, too."

I left then, reminding myself to check on her again before I went back to bed to make sure she actually got some sleep. It occurred to me then, as I walked down to the kitchen, that Rose probably saw a lot of herself in Jasper. They had been surrendered to the system at roughly the same age, and both experienced abuse by the people who had been entrusted with their welfare. Maybe she was just trying to ensure that Jasper had the same chance that she had been given.

I set the folder on the table and put some tea on to boil. Something told me that by the time I knew all the details, I was going to need something to soothe my nerves. Slowly, I turned to the last part of the file, the part that dealt with the events that started on the morning of December 28th, 2008.

To the best of anyone's knowledge, a fight had started that morning over a toy that had been given to one child for Christmas. Despite the best efforts of the oldest children, it had gotten loud enough to wake Maria, who came down and meted out her own brand of discipline. Both of the smaller children were whipped for fighting; she then turned on Jasper for not keeping them in line.

But a seventeen-year-old is much different than a six-year-old, and she had apparently decided that a simple belt wasn't going to make much of an impression on him. So she had picked up a fireplace poker and used that. According to the other children, it had happened before. As the biggest and oldest, Jasper was used to bearing the worst punishments. Only this time, things went too far. When it was over, Jasper was still and limp, struggling just to breathe. That, also, had happened before. The second oldest boy, Peter, had been left in charge of both Jasper and the younger children. He had put Jasper on the couch and watched him for the better part of the day, hoping for him to wake up.

But he didn't. As the afternoon wore on, Jasper began to tremble without ever showing signs of regaining consciousness. Finally, around three that afternoon, the trembling turned into a full-blown seizure as his brain continued to swell. Peter sent another child to call 911, performing CPR until the ambulance was able to get there. He was rushed to Forks Hospital, and immediately underwent an emergency surgery to relieve the swelling on his brain. From there, he was flown to Seattle, where he underwent a second, more extensive surgery. The force of the blows to his head had fractured his skull and actually driven small pieces of it into his brain. There was a photocopy of his MRI in the file, and I didn't need my husband's medical degree to see the ugly scar left on his brain.

It was when they were stripping him down to insert the IV and save his life that the doctors noticed the bruises on the rest of Jasper's body. Subsequent X-rays revealed two broken ribs, probably from the same attack. Then there were the older scars. Dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny round scars, each perfectly matching the end of a cigarette. Longer slashes that were probably from a belt. A shiny burn on his upper arm, one that none of them could quite figure out. Numerous healed fractures, only two of which were accounted for as occurring accidentally. The report also noted that he was significantly underweight, though not dangerously so. There were full-body pictures taken that night, but I didn't look at them. My heart was broken enough for one day.

Jasper remained in a deep coma for three days, not expected to survive. By this time, Maria had been arrested, and his brothers and sisters scattered into six different homes. When he finally woke up, he was intubated and in pain, surrounded by strangers. He hadn't trusted any of the doctors since, though whether it was the trauma of waking up like that or just a general wariness was a mystery. Still, he was young and strong, making rapid improvements. His latest report was cautiously optimistic, though it still stressed that there could be long-term effects that hadn't shown yet.

"Mom?" Alice had appeared in the doorway, her tiny frame all but swallowed by one of Emmett's old T-shirts. "Mom, what's wrong? Why are you crying?" She ran forward and threw her arms around me.

I hadn't realized that I had been. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm just thinking about how unfair the world is sometimes."

She nodded. "Is it about Jasper? Because he's going to be all right, Mom, I know it."

For all of her other problems, Alice was a strangely intuitive girl. If she claimed something would happen, then ninety-nine percent of the time, it did. I hugged her back fiercely, grateful for her happy presence. "Honey, we haven't even decided if we're going to accept him yet. Your father and I are going later today to meet him."

"Can I go, too? Please?"

For a moment I considered the idea, before deciding it probably wasn't wise. "Not just yet. Just having your father and me there will be enough pressure on him."

She smiled again. "I know. He's not going to be easy, but we can do it."

I wondered where she had gotten her unshakable confidence in me and this family. "Honey, you need to get back to bed, all right? You still have school today."

"It's six already. Everyone's up except Edward."

I couldn't believe that so much time had passed while I sat there and looked at the report. I stood up, ready to make some breakfast for the younger three and try and drag Edward out of bed. There were days when I swore he was part vampire, only really waking up after dark. That would be fine years from now, when he was a musician who performed in the evenings, but for now, it just put him out of sync with school and other activities.

"I'll start breakfast." Then Alice was off, her movements more like dancing than running. I smiled to watch her go. Though she was sixteen now, very nearly seventeen, it was hard not to see the frightened child we had picked up at the institution almost ten years ago.

Emmett was stumbling around in the hallway, still groggy from sleep. He gave me a tired smile. "Hey."

I was reminded that there was something I wanted to discuss with him. "Emmett, did you do your homework last night?"

"Sure." He looked right at me, but I wasn't fooled. One of Emmett's favorite tricks was to agree passively to anything you asked of him, whether or not he meant it.

"All of it?" It had been a long time since he had fooled me by doing that.

"I still have a book report for Monday, but everything else, yeah. Rose helped me." He looked me right in the eyes. "Really, Mom, I promise."

The puppy dog eyes didn't fool me, either. "Let me see it."

He ambled back to the bedroom, agreeable as always. "In the kitchen, Emmett."

Edward was still asleep, his only concession to the blaring alarm being the fact that his head was shoved under the pillow. Carlisle and I had bought him the loudest alarm clock on the planet, and still he managed to block it out. I rubbed his shoulder. "Edward, come on!"

He grunted and shoved his head even further into the mattress. "Now! It's not my fault you stayed up too late screwing around with that piano. You, breakfast, ten minutes. You're leaving for school in half an hour. I don't care if you've eaten, I don't care if you're dressed."

That got him moving. All of my children had learned long ago that I carried through on all of my threats. They had all been sent to school without eating, and Emmett had gone in his pajamas more than once. Once he got up, I called for Carlisle. He didn't need to be up for another half hour, but he would be upset if he missed Alice's French toast.

It wasn't often that we managed to all sit down to breakfast together. One of the kids was forever needing something at the last minute, or running late, or needing to be at the school early. Even when they were all there, Carlisle was often working and not present.

I took my morning medication, though I was feeling fine. It was going to be a long day, with a two-hour drive each way to Seattle, plus whatever stress Jasper put us through. It was better to be safe than sorry.

"Mom! Emmett's eating all the food! If you want something, you need to hurry." Alice was laughing, and I could hear her chastising her brother. "You can't possibly be hungry! I swear, Emmett, I'll stab you with this fork!"

Carlisle appeared at my side. "Ah, sibling love."

"Maybe soon we'll have one more." Despite agreement from Social Services, I knew it was still a long shot. They could place Jasper in our home, but they couldn't make him accept us as family.

"I hope so. I'll be off by noon, so we can get there on time to meet him." He gave me a quick kiss. "Don't worry too much, love."

Easy for him to say. I worried through breakfast, the checking of Emmett's homework (the work was sloppy, but it was done), and the morning chores. I knew we wouldn't be able to take Jasper today, but I washed the sheets in the guest room anyway, and opened the windows for an airing despite the cold weather. The room hadn't been used much in the past few years, and was a little lacking in personality, but that was all right. I loved to decorate, but I had to remind myself that Jasper was very nearly an adult and probably had his own ideas.

Time crawled until noon, when Carlisle arrived to pick me up. He smiled at my trembling hands. "Relax. He's probably going to be more nervous than us. Let's just talk to him a little bit, and let him know that we're interested in taking him, if he likes the idea."

It wasn't much of a game plan, but I supposed this was one of those things you didn't over-plan. "Maybe he'd like to go to dinner? I'm willing to bet he's pretty tired of hospital food."

Carlisle nodded, his eyes soft. "You can't help but want to take care of him, even now. But that's a good idea. It'll give us something to do besides sit there and stare at each other."

My head was still buzzing with nerves and questions, but it was too late to turn back now. I turned the radio on and sang along softly. The drive stretched out, simultaneously too long and nowhere near long enough.

Seattle Grace Hospital was huge, much larger than the one in Forks, and we were lost within the first few minutes. We were fortunate to find a nurse from Jasper's unit coming in from her smoke break, and followed her through the twisting mass of corridors and doors. "So, you're the foster parents coming to look at our Jasper. He's having a really good day today, no headaches."

Carlisle snapped to attention. "I thought the headaches weren't that frequent. The report made them sound like a minor issue."

The nurse flinched, like she knew she had said too much. "He says they aren't, but I've been a nurse for twenty-two years, and I can tell when someone's in pain. That kid's in a whole lot of it. He's a good boy, though, not a complainer."

We stopped in front of a slightly opened door. The nurse leaned in. "Jasper? You have some visitors."

"Is it Pete and Charlotte?" The voice was much deeper than I expected it would be, with a soft accent on the words. The hope in it nearly broke my heart.

"No, a Dr. Cullen and his wife. Come on and say hi." She gestured us into the room as she spoke.

We entered cautiously, both looking at the figure that was rising to greet us. His hair was grown out from the picture, probably to cover the scar that ran down the side of his head, but it was undeniably him. Despite seeing his report, he only became real to me in this instant, a flesh-and-blood child. I felt my lips form his name.

Jasper.