A/N - sorry to have kept you guys waiting, but here comes. Hope you enjoy! And remember: reviews are love.

She had said they'd meet again, but had left him no clue as to when and where, or how to find her. Perhaps that was the whole point – that he wasn't supposed to look for her, just to find her, just like you're not supposed to look for love because it will come when you're not expecting it.

He threw himself into work, painting day and night, to bridge the time until she came back into his life with idealisations of her, technicolour Medicos wandering through parks or lounging on deck chairs high on roofs overlooking oceans.

Finally, Rosalie put her foot down. "For fuck's sake, Jasper, I'm glad you're not painting those freakish soldier scenes any more, but I have to say these multicoloured plague doctors are seriously starting to creep me out. Look around your studio, man, you're drowning in masked people! Don't you think three months of that is enough?"

He gritted his teeth in response. "I haven't seen her again. So I can't think of anything else to paint."

She flopped down on the floor, exasperated. "I know, Jazz, but seriously. This isn't healthy. I mean, the severed limbs were bad enough, but this is bordering on obsessive. At least you wanted to paint something different while you were stuck on war." She refused to budge under his glare. "Have you actually tried to find her?"

"It doesn't work that way, Rose."

"Well, how does it work? Because obviously this is totally working, since you've seen her every day since that party and in fact she's sitting right next to you and inspiring you to create high art."

"I can't go looking for her. It's not right."

"Then don't look for her. Just get out of this goddamn studio every once in a while, because she sure as hell won't just waltz in here, since she doesn't even know your last name so she can't even look you up in a bloody phonebook!"

"It'll happen when the time is right, I know it is. Maybe it's just not time yet or something."

For a moment, she just stared at him. "Jasper Hale, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you're on drugs. 'When the time is right', honestly. You've been pining for that weird chick for months and you refuse to go find her because the time isn't right? Are you on some kind of new esoteric trip that I don't know anything about?"

"I know it's strange. I want to see her too, only... I don't know. It feels wrong to try and force it to happen."

She bounded to her feet, startling him. "All right then. You're not going to force anything. I'm going to force you. You're coming with me right now, we're going out." His jacket and keys were flying his way before he could protest, and the set of her mouth told him that resistance would have been futile in any case. And anyways, he knew she was right to some extent – Alice sure wasn't going to turn up here. He slipped into the coat and let himself be stuffed into Rose's red convertible.

"So where are we going, oh mighty kidnapperess?"

"Back to the source. Scotch and Sofa has some excellent coffee, you know." Inwardly, he sighed. Scotch and Sofa didn't seem like a good place to start – he'd seen her there already, it didn't feel like he'd see her twice in the same place. Then again, the logic was of course undeniable – if she'd been there once, she might be there another time.

It became a ritual for them. Two, three times a week, Rosalie would turn up at his apartment, force him to drop his paintbrush where he stood and haul him to another bar or coffee shop, sometimes dragging Emmett along on her quest to "get Jazz to snap out of it". Not that it was a bad thing, really. He knew he'd spent too much time cooped up with his paints, and it wasn't as if he didn't enjoy the company. When Emmett and Rose weren't busy making goggly eyes at each other, they were actually rather entertaining, especially when they tried to get him loosened up by getting him drunk, and only succeeded in getting each other inebriated instead.

But the basic problem remained – the weeks dragged on, he'd been to what seemed like every place in town that served drinks, and yet, Alice never materialised. Occasionally, Emmett wondered aloud whether Jasper hadn't just imagined her, or made her up so that it wouldn't seem like he couldn't get any girls. Sometimes, Jasper couldn't help but ask himself the same question. The more time passed, the more she seemed like a dream, and only the memory of the symphony that was her voice proved to him that she'd been real, she'd been there and she'd talked to him and she'd told him they'd meet again.

In the end, it was her who found him, not the other way around. Of course.

He'd just settled down at the bar of a coffeeshop, looking towards the windows, with a large cappuccino and his sketchbook, when a pair of cool hands laid themselves over his eyes. He jumped a little, as always when someone came at him from behind.

"Guess who?" Her pealing voice was hard to mistake after having constantly featured in his fantasies for the last few months. It made him relax instantly as he reached up and covered her tiny hands with his own. She was here, she was here, here, here! She was real and she was there and she was speaking to him and her skin was laying against his and it wasn't a dream.

"Alice." Being allowed to touch her and hearing her tinkling laugh after all the waiting would have been a reward in itself, but he was determined to see her face this time. She wouldn't deny him this, he knew it, if only, perhaps, because she did not know how vital it had become to him. She probably didn't even realise that he'd never known what she looked like.

"Very good, Jasper! Deadly accurate hearing. You may turn around now" she teased. He slid her hands off his face and turned slowly towards her, excited and apprehensive at the same time. For so long, she had featured in his dreams, asleep and awake, that he was almost afraid to finally see her face for the first time, although he wasn't sure why. He'd imagined her beautiful, ugly, average, inhuman, nondescript, perfect or blemished – whatever she really looked like, he must have played it out in his mind, no face of hers should really come as a shock. Finally, the movement was complete, and having kept his eyes closed to make the most of the moment, he opened them, to see her countenance and end all mystery.

It was like having been blind and seeing the sun. He felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him – his chest felt too tight, he couldn't breathe. His heart began to throw itself against his ribcage, as if it were trying to smash its way out of himself, towards her. He ached to stretch out his hand and touch her – but he didn't dare to, for fear that she might dissolve into smoke. She was beautiful – not, perhaps, in the conventional, lady's magazine way, but heartbreakingly beautiful to him. As he looked into her golden eyes, everything else fell away – the last few years, the pain, the nightmares, red, grey, and black – at that moment, he became who he had been before, before everything. He could have painted a starry night right then and there out of coffee beans, milk and sugar, and put her in as the moon, or written a sonnet and put her in as Aphrodite, most revered goddess of love and beauty. His eyes drank in her skin, perfect pearly snow in winter sunlight, her hair, fertile earth on a lovely day in spring, her lips, ripe summer cherries waiting to be picked, her hands, falling leaves dancing in the autumn breeze.

She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. "Jasper – you're staring at me." He blinked a few times and shook his head experimentally, trying to focus on her without going into a rapture at the shimmering amusement in her voice.

"I'm sorry. It's just... I never saw your face before. You're beautiful." She blushed a little, and he could have burst into song at the sheer loveliness of the blood rushing under her skin.

"Thanks, Jasper. You know, you kept me waiting a long time." It was his turn to feel the heat spreading in his cheeks, and he ducked his head slightly to hide it.

"I'm sorry, ma'am" he mumbled.

The End

I know, I said I'd write more. Maybe I will, someday. But right now, I realised I kind of like it the way it is - don't worry though, my ideas for the future plot will turn up in new stories anyways ;)