A/N: Ok, so this chapter is a little short, but the next one is huge! Updates should happen a little faster now, as I know where I'm going for the next few chapters. Also? That rushing sound you are all hearing? Yeah, that would be the shit headed for the fan at a rather high rate of speed. Expect much suffering for our favorite little Jasper.

Rosalie

"Come on, Jasper, let's go. Just come to me; it's fine." I kept my voice calm and sweet, like he wasn't driving me crazy.

Ten feet away, Jasper wrapped his arms even tighter around his body and shook his head. "Can't I just stay here?"

Alice nudged my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "I don't think he can swim."

Thank you, Queen of the Obvious. If Jasper could swim, he wouldn't be standing in ten inches of water, shivering and looking like a kicked puppy. I rolled my eyes at her. "No shit."

"What should I do?"

I had thought she was already doing it. It was more than slightly possible that someone packed Alice's new bikini, which had the advantage of not making her look like a twelve-year-old boy like her one-piece did. Actually, Jasper hadn't crossed my mind at all when I packed it. I had just been hoping to avoid tan lines for later this summer. My sister is as beautiful and delicate as a doll, and she's petite enough to pull off strapless tops without a bra. But tan lines would ruin it, hence the bikini. I knew that she wouldn't wear it out in public, but we were all family here. And if that cute little thing coaxed the water chicken in to swim, that was just an added bonus.

But Jasper wasn't so much as nibbling at the bikini bait, though I noticed that he kept sneaking glances. But he wouldn't come any further in, no matter how much I coaxed. "Come on, Jas, I promise nothing will happen to you."

He shot a nervous look at Edward and Emmett, and shook his head again. They were out quite a ways, trying to get a makeshift diving board on some rocks, and paying absolutely zero attention to what was going on over here. "I don't want to. I'll just build a sandcastle." With that he started to back up and out of the water.

No way. He hadn't even gotten his brand-new swimming trunks wet, much less the white long-sleeved shirt he was wearing. Even now, he wouldn't let any of us see his chest or back. I had a few guesses why, mostly ones that made me want to stab his former foster mom to death with something blunt and rusty, but I didn't know for sure. Emmett had slapped on a shirt as well, just so Jasper wouldn't feel singled out. See how sweet he is? "Sorry, it's a family rule. You have to at least be able to do a dog paddle, just in case there's an accident and you fall in. I won't let those two idiots dunk or splash you, I promise."

Jasper still looked uncertain, but he took two small steps forward. Great, now he was almost up to his knees. At the rate he was going, it would be dark before he would get up to his chest. Still, it was progress, and I rewarded him with a smile. "Good job. Now come on."

His blue eyes cut over to Alice before coming back to me, and I suddenly got it. No boy likes looking foolish in front of a girl he's trying to impress, and Jasper was even more worried about these things than most. There was yelling from halfway across the lake, followed by a stream of cursing from Emmett. "Hey, Alice? Why don't you see if you can help those two doofuses before they kill each other? I don't think Bella's quite up to the task of corralling them yet."

Luckily, she was astute enough to get my actual meaning, and she nodded quickly. "Of course."

Then it was just Jasper and me, standing there eying each other like a pair of gunslingers in the Old West. I narrowed my eyes. "You know that this is going to happen, right?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Good, so we've established that. Now, here are your choices. Either you come on over here and I teach you the basics while everyone else is distracted, or you keep pushing it off until you have to learn it in front of everyone else. Your choice."

"What if I go under?" He still seemed uncertain, but he was starting to relax his grip on himself.

"I know CPR."

"What if I have a seizure?" That was his new worry about everything and, while I couldn't say that I was totally unconcerned about it, I wasn't going to let him back me down now.

"Again, I know CPR, and I'll pull you out. We're only fifteen feet from shore, and we don't have to go any further out."

I could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to come up with some other excuse, but there was nothing. Finally he crept forward so we were even with each other and sighed. "Okay, let's do this."

He couldn't have sounded less enthusiastic if he had tried, but I chose to ignore that. "Has anyone ever tried to teach you to swim before?"

To my surprise, he nodded. "Yeah. When I was younger, before she could leave me alone, Maria used to dump me off at this respite home that had a pool. The foster dad there tried to teach me, but I hated it." For a second he looked off into the distance. "I think they wanted to keep me. The respite family, I mean. I don't know for sure, but the mom really, really liked me and always said that I could call her any time if I needed help."

Since I'm an untrusting person, I had snuck into Dad's office one day while no one else was in the house and gotten Jasper's file out of the safe. (Really, if Dad wanted to keep things hidden from us, he shouldn't use Mom's birthday as the code. That's just common sense). It wasn't because I was nosy, per se. It was just that I had to know everything about him before I could know what to do. Everything about us is in those files. Why we're in foster care, how many homes we've been in and why we left each one, what we've been accused of doing, whether it was a proven charge or not. It would let me know if Jasper had been accused of being physically or sexually violent at any point. Rude, yes, but I wasn't going to risk my safety or that of my mom and sister.

So I knew something that Jasper probably didn't. There had been two phone calls to Social Services from another foster family, both very concerned about Jasper and the possibility that he was being mistreated by Maria. This respite family had to be the ones who had made the call. Both times the charges had been investigated, and both times Jasper had told the social worker that things were just fine, so they left.

It chilled me to think about how different his life, and the lives of our entire family, could have been if he had told the truth back then. He could have been legally adopted by someone else, with a healthy brain and a loving family. It wouldn't be our family, but not knowing Jasper was a price I would gladly pay for him to have suffered less than he had.

I also could have told him why he hated to swim, because I had felt the same way when Esme first taught me, and I was more like Jasper than anyone else in the house. It was the simple fact that you can't control water. You can't outrun it, you can't outfight it, and you can't outstubborn it. If Jasper tried to pull his usual trick of locking up and refusing to move until it was over, he would go under and drown. Nothing would help him learn to swim except letting go and working with the water instead of against it, and that loss of control was frightening to him.

The water here was up to my shoulders, which was mid-chest on him. "Okay, the first thing we're going to do is teach you to float on your back. Even if you can't swim, floating will keep you up until someone can come help you." There was no way in this world I was going to tell him that this was actually called the Dead Man's Float. If I did that, he would be out of the water so fast I would never catch him.

The natural buoyancy of the water allowed me to support him with a hand on his back. "Relax, relax. I won't let you go until you say it's all right." I never, ever wanted Jasper to feel that he had any reason not to trust me. "Arch your back just a little bit . . . good. Do you want me to let go?"

Even now, Jasper didn't really like my hands being on him, but he much preferred it to me letting go. "No! Just one minute more?"

"How about a six-count?" If I let Jasper start his 'one minute more' crap, I would still have my hand under his back an hour from now. He nodded weakly. "Six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one!" I pulled my hand away quickly, and he stayed afloat. Thank God, because I don't think he would have given me a second chance if he had sunk. "Good."

I didn't expand on that, because things just aren't like that with Jasper and me. I don't do fawning and coddling and all but putting him back in diapers. We both know it, and he respects me for it. When he gets praise from me, it's because he's totally earned it.

Jasper's lips moved as he counted to ten, and then he flipped himself upright. As scared as he was, his pride wouldn't allow him to just straighten up immediately. He had to prove to me and himself that he was in control here, and he wouldn't let panic rule him. It was a brave, if ultimately pointless, show.

Slowly and patiently, I worked my way up to actual swimming. First the basic movements, with his head out of the water. Then practicing holding his breath and blowing out, with his face just barely under. That was the part that worried me the most. Nothing he had said or done so far indicated that he had been either forced underwater or suffered any other deprivation of air, but you never know. When I was six years old, I got stuck under a float in a pool, unable to break the surface and get any air. To this day, it's still one of the most frightening things I've ever gone through. I didn't want Jasper to feel that fear.

Jasper was graceful and coordinated, even now, so he must have really been something before he got his brain bounced around. That's what caused most of his problems. Not the actual blow from the poker, but the fact that she hit him so hard that his brain actually bounced against the far side of his skull, then back to smack the side she hit, which pushed pieces of his skull into his brain. Two surgeries later, the pieces were gone, but the scars on his brain were still there. That, by the way, was not something I learned from snooping. I learned that by asking Dad face to face. I only snoop when I don't think I'll get honesty any other way.

I didn't want Jasper to know what I was thinking, so I just nodded at him. "Okay, ready to put it all together?"

"Do I have a choice?" He smiled, though, so I knew he was holding up all right.

"Not really." I backed up ten feet or so. "Just swim to me. I won't let you go under and I won't let you get off course."

His eyes, as changing as the water around us, met and held mine. "Do you promise?"

I couldn't help but feel like he was asking me for far more than what he seemed to be, but I nodded anyway. Jasper was my brother, if by hearts rather than blood, and I would do anything for him. "I promise."

He nodded and took a deep breath, going under with a quick shudder. His swimming wasn't straight and it wasn't refined, but he was moving underwater and not drowning. Anything beyond that was icing. I shifted so I could grab his shoulders and pull him upright. He was breathing hard, but his eyes were triumphant. I squeezed him into a hug, something he had just started tolerating from us. "See, that wasn't so bad."

His insulted glare told me that it had been miserable for him. "So, I swam. Swum. Swimmed. No, swam is right. Can I get out now?"

Normally I would have had him try it again, but something had caught my eye and derailed my thoughts. The shirt Jasper was wearing was long-sleeved, but it was also white. The minute he got it wet, the thing turned all but transparent. Every mark on his body stood out, and dear God there were a lot of them. I tried to look down, or over at the rest of my siblings out on the rocks, or anywhere but Jasper's body.

"Fine. But you have to help me build a sandcastle."

Not the most eloquent of replies, but at least it bought me a few minutes while we both made it back to the beach. It wasn't long, but it was enough for me to get my emotions under control, and make my face calm again. It was a lie, but I've used the fake happiness so often that it fools everyone. Shit, there are times when it almost fools me.

It didn't fool Jasper, though. The only way he had survived as long as he had was by learning how to read the tiniest changes in emotion of the adults around him. He stared quizzically at me, no doubt trying to figure out what had changed in just a few seconds. It only took a quick glace down for it to hit him, and he crossed his arms defensively over his chest, his blue-grey eyes shuttering and turning distant. "Whatever."

"Jasper." My voice was pleading, but I wasn't sure what I was asking for. He continued to stare at me, waiting. We both knew what the problem was, but neither one of us was willing to acknowledge it. "Never mind."

I trailed him back to the beach, where he shook the water off of himself and sat down in a desolate heap. I sat next to him, torn between my desire to comfort him and wanting to give him his space. Finally I reached out and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He didn't tense up or push me away, but he didn't relax into me like he usually did, either.

I had no idea what to say. Telling him that they weren't that noticeable or not that big of a deal was a lie and we would both know it. But not saying anything at all would just cause the issue to fester between us, which I didn't want either. I already knew that Jasper was going to run when he hit eighteen, and I didn't want him to have any excuse to think that I, and by extension the rest of the family, wouldn't want him back.

Jasper, meanwhile, appeared to be in his own little world. "I wish I could be over here."

"Over where?" He was already here, and his words didn't make sense.

He pointed to the rocks, where all of our siblings were roughhousing and playing. "Here. If I could swim better, I could go over here and play. But I'm stuck."

He meant 'there' instead of 'here,' but it wasn't something that I was willing to call attention to. He was doing so well, but his brain was still damaged and there's no fixing that. Confusing or losing words was part of that, a part that had improved greatly since he arrived. He tended to revert more to it when he was tired or upset.

"I could get them to come over here." There was something deeper going on here. In his mind, there was a line between him and us, and there always would be. He was apart because of what he couldn't do — in this case, swim. But it could really be anything. Short answer was, Jasper didn't feel like part of our family, no matter how hard we tried to convince him that he was. Sure enough, he shook his head.

But today was a step forward, even if a very small one. For the first time, he was indicating that he wanted to be a part of the group, even though he also seemed to think that it was never going to happen. I laid my head on his shoulder and he only paused for a second before resting his cheek against my hair.

His body relaxed slightly, and that was enough to give me a surge of courage. This had to be handled very, very delicately. If Jasper got even the slightest hint that I pitied him (and I did. Even covered over by his shirt, the scars were terrible, and I couldn't help but feel pity for the child who had to endure them), it was going to ruin things. I squeezed him and went for the direct route. "Alice won't mind them, you know."

"Alice will never see them." His tone was final.

Right. This was the King of Denial I was talking to. "Do you plan on remaining fully dressed for the rest of your life?"

"Just a little while longer." His tone was vague, but I'm not an idiot. What he was saying was that Alice would never see his scars because she wasn't going to see him after he ran. None of us were.

"Oh. I'll miss you." In for a penny, in for a pound. "I wish you wouldn't go."

He twisted around to look at me. "Really?"

You would think that no one had ever told him that before. Wait, had anyone told him that before? Dad had told us over and over not to pressure Jasper, to give him time to bond to us and make his own choices. But maybe we had pushed things too far in the other direction, not letting him know how much we cared about him. "Really. You're my favorite brother."

He grinned a little. "Only because you hate Edward. Jack the Ripper would be your favorite brother if Edward was the other choice."

"True, but I would take you over Jack the Ripper any day. No matter what happens, you'll always be my brother. Mom and Dad love you, too, and Emmett. Even Edward loves you, in his own prickish way. We all want you to stay."

"That's good."

He was squirming now, and I knew that it was time to back off of the subject. He was slipping away from me, from all of us. "Will you at least call me, wherever you are? Just so I know that you're safe, and you aren't hungry or scared?"

"Yeah."

I had probably already pushed Jasper too far, but I so seldom got the chance to speak to him alone like this that I had to do it. "Alice won't care about those scars, Jasper."

Jasper was silent, but he did look at me, so I knew I had his attention. "Girls love scars, you know."

He snorted. "Girls love battle scars. Bullet scars and knife scars and that sort of stuff. Scars you get rescuing a litter of kittens from a burning building. They don't love cigarette burns."

Even though I had suspected that was what they were, my stomach still clenched and rolled at the thought. Still, he had made it through, and that made him strong. "What do you think those are if not battle scars? You got them fighting to survive, and you did survive. That makes them battle wounds."

"I . . . I didn't think of them that way." His lips moved, as if he was repeating my explanation to himself. "Do you really think so?"

To my horror, I saw that the rest of our siblings were off the rocks and coming back towards us. It was hard enough for Jasper to talk to me, even though I was kind of like another mother to him, and I knew he would never do it in front of the rest of the family. I leaned over and whispered quickly in his ear. "I do. It's your body, Jasper. Own it."

That had been a lesson that I had a hard time learning myself. After what Royce (may the bastard burn in hell) did to me, I refused to own, or even claim, myself. After all, I had given my body a chance, and it had repaid me by advertising itself to a pedophile.

God, I was a silly little girl back then. I thought that having breasts and a pretty face made me a grown woman, instead of a child pretending to be one. I was pretty, and I liked to flirt, and I never once realized that there are some men in this world for whom the word 'no' is a meaningless syllable. Foolish, foolish little girl.

But I got my revenge on it. I couldn't do a damn thing about my breasts, which insisted on getting bigger no matter how sternly I told them to stop, but I could hide them under a million layers of baggy clothes, which I did. My hair had once fallen in thick, blond curls, but I shaved them nearly to my scalp. No makeup, no heels, no plucking or shaving. I looked like a ten-year-old boy, and I was fine with that.

But Royce knew the truth. He knew that, no matter how badly I tried to hide it, I was still a girl who was rapidly turning into a woman. Of course he did; he had seen it all. His complaints, coached in fake worry, became commonplace.

Rosie, my angel, why aren't you wearing the pretty clothes I brought you? You know I like you to dress like a beautiful woman and not a punk.

My precious flower, why did you do that to your hair? It's not feminine, and do you know how long it will take to grow back out?

Little girl, this has gone on long enough. Go upstairs and take a shower, and when you come back down, you better look like a young lady and not a vagrant. There's no point in covering your beauty.

My beauty. My femininity. What he liked to see. It was never about me or the fact that I was suffering. It was all about what pleased him, and his ability to show off his beautiful foster daughter to everyone else.

But he didn't touch me again. He was attracted to a beautiful girl, and by making myself no longer that way, I took away his interest. So what if I looked terrible, felt terrible and was consumed with guilt over both what had happened and the fact that I was hurting him now? At least I was safe.

I was destroying myself, but there was one thing that I didn't do, one thing that could have stopped everything in its tracks. I never once called for help. I don't know why, except that the thought literally never occurred to me. So I understood why Jasper hadn't asked for help either. Some things look really easy from the outside, especially to adults, but they can be confusing to kids who don't know any better, and who don't think they'll be believed if they do tell.

I was nearly seventeen, and had been with the Cullens for four years, before I could see myself as anything other than a piece of meat for men to ogle. Royce King the Third (and yes, the douchebag actually made people call him that) had done his work well.

Then Emmett came. Emmett with his huge body and comically outsized hands and feet, like a puppy with enormous paws and mischievous eyes. Emmett who picked me flowers and baked me a cake (it was a three-fire-alarm fiasco, but at least he tried), and who never told me that I wasn't good enough because I wasn't pretty anymore.

Still, I rejected him. Royce had been kind at first, too, right up until he got what he wanted. Then I was yesterday's news.

But I couldn't deny the attraction I felt towards him. His goofy smile, his awkward stumbling, the way he never gave up or got offended. No matter how many times I rejected him, embarrassed him, or just plain told him off, he was back the next day with another trick to make me love him.

That didn't make me trust him, though. Sure, he treated me well now, but if he saw what I looked like when I was normal, he would turn out just like Royce had. So I decided I had to test him. My hair was still short and unflattering, but I gelled it into something that was at least cute, if not outright sexy. To top it off, I put on one of the nice dresses that Emse had bought me and I had stubbornly refused to wear. The refusal had as much to do with the fact that she had bought it as the fact that it looked gorgeous on me, but I had to know for sure.

When he first saw me, Emmett had been speechless. His eyes had gotten huge, and they had been drawn directly to my body. He was disgusting, just like Royce had been.

Only he wasn't. That one look was the only time I caught him staring at my breasts (though later on there would be a confession that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about them for weeks). He had gallantly offered me his arm and opened the car door for me. When he spoke, he looked at my face and not my body. He treated me like a lady and not a piece of meat placed on this earth solely for his pleasure.

So I let him in. I let him take me on a few dates, and even kiss me. No further, though. He still snuck the occasional look at my breasts, but there was no way I would let him touch them, not even over the shirt.

And somehow, I fell in love, despite myself. Emmett wasn't bad, even if he was a little goofy at times, and he never pushed for more than I was willing to give. Except it turned out that I did want to give it to him. Not because he demanded it and not because I felt like I had to in order to keep him, but because I was making the choice.

I hadn't been ruined by what Royce had done to me, any more than Jasper had been destroyed by what Maria had done to him. But, like me, it he couldn't see that himself. He needed someone else to help show him, and Alice was more than equal to the task. The problem was getting him to see that.

Speaking of Jasper, he had just poked me. "Rosalie? I don't think I can own it."

He was one of the only people in the family who called me by my full name. With his accent, it sounds beautiful, like something a fairy princess would be called. "You can. It might take a little while, but I have great faith in you. You're nothing if not capable."

There were about a million more things I would have liked to say to him, but there was no time. Everyone else was back, splashing and shouting, and the moment was lost between us. Jasper pulled into himself, his body hunching over. It wasn't that he didn't like the rest of the family, but he was always a bit apart. I think he feels like he has to put on a show for them, so they'll accept him better. With me, he's just Jasper.

Emmett tossed himself down next to us, shaking himself like a dog and spraying us with a mixture of sand and water. "How come you guys didn't come out there? We have an actual diving board now!"

"We didn't because we didn't. Now, do you want to build a sandcastle?" Distraction was usually the best way to go with Emmett, and he loved all things that he could do with his hands.

"Totally! Jasper, man, you in?" He's so enthusiastic about everything that Jasper nodded and delicately unfolded himself. "Great! Should we start with the moat or the castle itself?"

"Castle." Jasper was pert and competent, with no sign that he and I had been discussing anything more serious than playing with sand and water. It was amazing how well he could hide things when it suited him.

"You're the boss. Let's back up a little, though, or the waves will ruin it by tonight. Rosie, do you want to get some shells for decoration? Here, you can use my T-shirt to hold them in." He stripped it off in one smooth movement. "Here you are, my lovely."

When I leaned forward to take it, he kissed my cheek, then whispered in my ear. "I know what you two were really doing in here. You're the best big sister in the world."

And to think, I almost let my fears get the best of me. If I had, I wouldn't have given this man a chance. I wanted Jasper to be able to have the same thing with Alice, but I had a sense that that wasn't going to happen yet. Jasper would run, and I couldn't get a good enough read on him to know if he was ever coming back.

But maybe I was wrong. Maybe Jasper was just as happy as he pretended to be, and his eighteenth birthday would come and go with nothing but a party to mark this new stage in his life.

Yeah, maybe that could happen.

Maybe.