Jasper hadn't expected for the pain to return how it did. It had been a week since the "incident" as the Cullens had taken to refer to it. He had been feeling better. Even apologized to Leah for even if he didn't like her that didn't mean he wished to cause her harm. She had done nothing to him.
In fact.
Weren't it for her Alice could have died that night the pack had attacked them.
So harming her wasn't in his plans.
But the pain was back.
He had gone out for a walk for he felt too restless in the house. Managed to coax Alice into letting him come alone. He wanted to be alone.
But now...
His chest refused to stop hurting and his head wielded such a persistent throb it was near impossible to focus. Muscles sore.
In fact.
He felt so sore he couldn't even stand from where he had sat at the bank of the river earlier. Heat blazing right beneath his skin with excruciating force. It felt as if there was a river of lava flowing through his veins. He could feel sweat trickling down his spine. Down his forehead.
His skin felt tight. Wrong. Constricting. Suffocating.
He tried to get up not for the first time in the past hour, but the second he pushed himself up the second the world went white with pain. Skin so tight he felt it may tear. He crumbled back on the ground. Breathing accelerated and pain blaring across his whole self.
Biting past the groan that tore out of his throat he blinked past the tears. The sweat. His fingertips were buzzing and so was his throat. Joints. Muscles. Bones. He could hear the thunder above. Smell the incoming rain.
He once again forced himself up. Biting down on his tongue as he did so. He managed to sit up. Hand grabbing a boulder in order for his body to not fall forward.
He sucked in a sharp breath as the throbbing in his head seemed to grow twice as worse, a sense of nausea swirling inside him, he felt hot, the cool breeze of the night doing nothing to cool down his weirdly overheated body, he tugged at the neck of his shirt for a few moments before dropping back on the ground. Clutching his head and hissing as the throb threatened to split his skull into a million pieces. Chest threatening to explode along with the rest of his bones.
He wanted to die.
One good thing about this was that at least Alice couldn't see him. It had taken them both quite a while before realizing that it wasn't her gift.
It was him.
Something about him for some odd reason kept her from being able to have visions of him all the time.
Which meant she couldn't see his current predicament.
Another stab in his stomach made him groan and he clutched his stomach with one hand.
And his skull was still pulsating. Like a sledgehammer smashing his down onto his skull over and over again. Such pressure he felt like he would throw up.
The sounds of the forest weren't as comforting as they would usually be, right now even the crickets were making heat pool deep within his chest. Filling him with such inexplicable rage it threatened to almost blind him.
His skull throbbed with the force of an atomic bomb as a moan of pain caught at the back of his throat and he rolled on the ground. Fingers digging on the ground as he began panting in a attempt to cool down the solar storm raging inside him. He was soaking in sweat at this point and his vision was blurred. He felt sluggish and hot and so so horrible.
It shouldn't have surprised him when he retched and venom crawled up his throat.
And when he was done he was left with such hammering headache he felt his vision zoom out. The patch he laid at brightened as the clouds above him moved to reveal one bright full moon.
The light sent such jolt in him he saw black.
And then he knew no more.
~~~~~~~
Cold.
That's the first thing that Jasper registered as he came back to his senses. He could smell the dirt and the aftermath of rain but other than that he couldn't smell much. Not that he needed to for he knew he was still in the woods. The sound of chirping birds and leaves ruffling each other as the wind made the branches dance was proof of it.
He fought to remember what had happened but his mind wasn't cooperating much which alarmed him greatly. As he shifted to sit up he couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath as the sudden bolt of pain flared on his torso.
And it took him a moment to realize what it was.
Bullet.
Bullet.
He had a bullet lodged in his abdomen. How- How was that even possible?
But what made the world stop around him was the state he was in.
Blood.
Red.
He-
He was covered in blood.
His senses were sluggish but even then he could make it out. Human blood. What the hell happened?
An odd scent reached his nose. Acid. Bitter. And as he looked closer he realized he was bleeding. No. Not bleeding. That wasn't blood. It was... what the hell was that? There was venom. Sure. But there was something else. Thicker. Not silver. He touched it with his fingertips and brought his hand back to look at it. Rubbing his thumb and index finger together and frowning at the odd texture.
It felt like blood but it didn't smell like blood. Didn't even look like it.
As the cold wind blew he felt an odd shiver run down his spine and a shudder attack his body, he licked his lips and was met with the familiar salty aftertaste blood never failed to leave behind.
Human blood.
And that brought back to him his current state.
He glanced back at his torso. Bullet. How was there a bullet in his torso? I mean. Yeah. Bullets could penetrate a vampire's skin but that would need more than one shot for the skin to even give in.
And not all guns worked on vampires.
He brought his hands down and tugged at his shirt to inspect the damage. The bleeding was sluggish and it gave no signs of stopping soon. Thus he took in a deep breath and inserted his fingers into the bullet hole. Crushing the pain down as he managed to grab the bullet and pull it out.
And upon inspection he came to the conclusion that this bullet was from a hunting rifle. It made no sense. He tried to get a hold of his memories from last night but he couldn't for the life of him remember what could have brought this state upon him.
He was covered in blood. Human blood.
Had he slipped? But that wouldn't explain the blood covering his clothes and each inch of visible skin. It made no sense.
But sitting here would help with nothing. He was quick to get up. Almost slipping on the mud as he did so. His clothes were clinging to him and his hair sticking to his face. He was soaking both in rain water and mud and blood. Leaves and grass sticking to his skin along with dirt and blood and God how many did he kill and why couldn't he remember it? What the hell was happening?
He winced at the familiar fire that tugged at the wound on his abdomen. Still.
He forced himself to walk. The fog was so thick he couldn't even see past it and while climbing trees would make it easier with the current state he was in he doubted he could succeed without crashing on the ground.
Figuring out where he was was hard when his senses were so dulled and he felt like sleeping for the entire week. And that shouldn't be possible for vampires couldn't sleep.
He caught the sound of a river at some point and didn't hesitate a second to follow it. Once he was at it he dropped on his knees ignoring the flaring pain on his torso in order to see his reflection.
Red eyes stared back at him.
The breath caught in his throat. The little sliver of hope that he had carried about being wrong on the scent crumbling down like a house of cards.
He.
Slipped.
And worst of it all?
He didn't even remember it.
How many did he kill? Why couldn't he feel their pain? Fear? It wasn't right. He should remember them. Remember their faces. Their names. Their ages. Their- He should remember them!
And why did he slip? He had fed. Fed enough he wouldn't attack unless someone was bleeding. He fed. He wasn't starving. Then why did he slip? And with enough people to cover him in blood? He couldn't remember and that was starting to agitate him even more.
He shoved his hands into the river. Scrubbing the blood off as hard as possible. He cupped some water to wash his face.
And in a surge of desperation he threw himself into the river. Scrubbing and scrubbing until pink water surrounded him.
He wasn't sure for how long he sat there scrubbing at his skin and attempting to get rid of as much blood as possible but the rain began pouring back down once again. Helping him wash the evidence. He tore his shirt for it didn't matter how hard he tried a white shirt stained in blood couldn't be cleansed in a river.
His breathing was ragged and he couldn't for the life of him remember a thing from last night. Whose blood was this? The gunshot. None of it made sense.
At some point he heard footsteps and he felt his muscles tense. Was it one of the wolves? Had he been found out? Who did he hurt?
Then he caught it.
Concern. Anxiousness. Hope. Relief.
And then Alice stepped out through the fog.
~~~~~~~~~~
Alice knew that she shouldn't have let Jasper go out alone, but she didn't want to suffocate him either. He had wanted to be alone and she had obliged.
After all that had happened this past week she had had a feeling that him wanting to be alone was for the best.
Jasper wasn't someone who took well to being coddled and followed at all times.
Something the Cullens had been doing since the incident.
This had, of course, led him to snap at the Cullens a few times. He even got into a fight with Jacob, going as far as biting him, it had taken both Emmett and Bella to pull him away. Thankfully Jacob hadn't held it against him.
The Cullens were more than aware about Jasper's moods and still went and tested his patience.
Jacob had done nothing to evoke such violent reaction, Alice had a feeling that had been nothing but Jasper lashing out against the first person at sight.
Carlisle had tried to talk things out with Jasper.
But at the end Jasper had done nothing but lock himself in his studio for the rest of the afternoon. Refusing to speak with no one but Alice.
Alice had held him for hours in the silence of his studio.
He had, after a while, proceeded to leave for a walk.
But he didn't come back.
He always came back.
But this time he didn't. And while Alice tried to give him time morning approached and nothing. He didn't come back. And she couldn't get not even a glitch of him in her visions. Which was to be expected but still...
Ever since that damned vision where he was one of those who died she had been on edge. It had taken her over two months before she came to terms with allowing him to go around alone. Out of her sight.
And now she couldn't see him. And he was nowhere to be found.
Edward had told her to not worry, that he would eventually return. But Alice was too worried to listen to him.
And then her composure snapped when the news came on TV.
Five men had been found dead. Same five men who had robbed a store earlier and taken a girl with them. The girl was unharmed but the same couldn't be said from the men. All of them had been found dismembered. A carnage that no bear could ever pull off. Not a vampire either as Carlisle declared. And the wolves certainly weren't to blame for the murder of humans.
The place was wrecked. Torn. As if an animal had gone rampage. But there was no animal in Forks capable of making such carnage.
The child claimed it had been a man with glowing eyes but there had been no footprints, not animal and certainly not human.
That had been enough to make her set out to look for Jasper. Something in her gut told her that she had to find him as soon as possible.
And of course the Cullens set out to look for him. No one knew what had done that and Jasper's sudden disappearance had flared uneasiness and concern in more than one face.
Then Alice found him.
She hadn't even known it was him. Hadn't recognized the scent at all. It was bitter. Acid. Sour. Sweet. Wrong.
There he was.
Sitting in the river and giving his back to her. Fear and desperation clinging to her skin. He craned his head to look at her over his shoulder.
Red meeting gold.
Alice froze.