I don't own Twilight. Obviously.

Thank you for the lovely reviews/faves. Makes my day. (lol. look. dialogue.)

Enjoy :3

Blood splattered the ground as Jasper lurched away from the werewolf's body. His body rebelled again; more blood spilling from his mouth. It stained the wet sand beneath his bare feet as his mind slowly dropped from its predatory state.

The blood in his mouth tasted of animal. But something was wrong with it. It was sharper. Stronger.

Human.

The thought brought up another wave of blood. What kind of blood mixed an animal's feral taste with a human's vitality? He knew, and his stomach twisted. An image of the Cullen's at war burnt behind his eyelids. Sam would lead the pack against them, Jacob would turn against them, and they would rip the Cullen's to shreds.

But whose blood had he been drinking?

Vaguely, he remembered his tongue travelling over soft flesh, the bloody mockery of lipstick on lips. But the face was a blur, a mix of soft angles and silken black hair. Wiping blood from his own lips, he turned back towards the body.

Seth's naked form was a ravaged mess. At least the blood had stopped flowing from his chest. Battered by the sea, his legs twisted at angles that no human creature should be in. Blood had soaked into the sand beneath the shark-like bite that Jasper had left on his neck.

"God protect me," Jasper breathed, crossing himself.

Black silhouettes of birds against the grey sky circled above them. Moving forward, the world shifted beneath Jasper's bare feet. For a moment, his view of the beach tilted, till the ocean was throwing itself uphill. As the world righted itself, he knelt beside Seth's body.

When the others found out about this...

Did killing a werewolf count as murdering a human, he wondered, ghosting his fingers over Seth's wet cheek. It certainty felt the same. Same horror. Same grief.

He rested his forehead against Seth's broken chest. The boy's wet skin was cold against his. "I'm sorry." he gasped, as a foggy memory of Seth's broken voice rasping his name surfaced. "God help me, I'm sorry, Seth."

Standing, he lifted the boy into his arms. A rational part of his mind whispered for him to swim out to where the tides took away all, to sink the body where it would never be found. But he couldn't. He wouldn't. No matter what, he couldn't leave him here, on this godforsaken beach.

He started for home at a run.

...

Esme was in the kitchen, her back turned to him, taking a tray of cookies from the oven. She glanced back as the door slammed shut behind him. Her pleasantly bemused face transformed at the sight of them. In an instant, he saw her take in Seth's wet, naked form in his arms, the bloody gouges on his chest, the blood on their mouths and, Jasper was sure, the red of his eyes. The tray of cookies fell from her hands, clattering to the floor. For a moment, the cheerful pink cookies was all Jasper could see. The mockery of them as they broke on the floor.

Like his life had broken when he had found Seth's body.

"Jasper." She breathed, staring at Seth's corpse. She stepped forward, heedless of the cookies covering the floor.

Fighting the tremors that shook him, Jasper drew Seth's body closer to him. He could feel Seth's flesh give under his fingers, could feel the blood weeping from their broken vessels and pool in bruises. "Carlisle." He gasped. "Where is he?"

With fluttering fingers, Esme touched Jasper's cheek. He drew away. He didn't deserve the comfort of her reassurance now. Maybe never again. Blinking large, golden eyes, Esme turned, shouting for Carlisle.

Carlisle appeared from the hallway that led to his study. He took one look at the werewolf in Jasper's arms and was at his side in a moment.

Jasper saw the flare of disappointment in his eyes. Choked as he was with grief, it still made him sick. It always made him sick when he saw their disappointment whenever he let the hunger control him. The way Esme turned her face away from him, the way Carlisle told it would get easier, the disdain that burnt in Rosalie's eyes. Worse, the way Alice would assure him that everything was okay, that it would all be okay.

It wasn't all going to be okay.

"What happened?" Carlisle asked, his voice clinical. He tilted Seth's chin to get a better look at the bite on his neck.

"He was bleeding." Jasper said, trying to force himself to loosen his grip on Seth. "And..." He tried to remember, tried to rip memories from the predatory part of his mind. It was a blur. Blood and sand and salt.

Carlisle moved his examination from Seth's throat to the wounds on his chest. "These aren't yours." He sounded surprised. It made guilt burn in Jasper's throat, worse than even his desire for blood.

Trying to remember, Jasper nodded. "They were... they were bleeding."

Esme pressed closer, careful to keep out of Carlisle's way. "Are those?" Her voice trembled as she traced one delicate finger beside the outer wound.

"Werewolf. Yes." Carlisle didn't look away from Seth's damaged chest. "Where did you find him?"

"On the other side of the border." Jasper said, hating the words even as he spoke them.

Esme frowned, drawing her hand back. "It won't matter if those wounds were inflicted by a werewolf." For a moment, her eyes flicked to the bite Jasper had left on Seth's neck. She continued on, her voice somber. "They'll attack us just for breaking the treaty."

"We'll find a way to deal with it." Carlisle's voice was clipped, his fingers pushing down on Seth's chest. "The blow broke his ribcage," he murmured, almost to himself. He frowned, brows pulling together as he pressed harder on Seth's skin.

"What," Jasper rasped. "What is it?"

"Honey?" Esme asked when Carlisle didn't respond.

"There's a pulse." Carlisle pressed closer, fingers moving to rest on Seth's neck.

A pulse? If his own heart had still been beating, Jasper was sure it would have missed a beat. Seth was still alive? Even with a broken chest and venom swimming in his blood, the boy was still alive? He pulled him closer, fingers grasping at Seth's skin as if he could hold life to his body.

"He's alive?" Esme's voice wavered. Jasper wasn't sure if she was happy, or if she was terrified. He wasn't sure what he felt himself. Was that happieness or fear making him feel as though he might throw up again?

Carlisle ignored her. "Jasper, my office. Now."

...

While Carlisle had wrapped Seth's broken body in bandages, Jasper had clung to his hand. After Carlisle had finished with him, they laid Seth out on a cot in his office. Now, as Seth lay unconscious, he was still hanging onto his hand. His long fingers were threaded through Seth's, willing the colour to come back to the ashen skin. He wasn't sure who he was trying to console anymore. The werewolf boy? Or himself?

Dim light was offered by one lamp left burning on the desk, but Jasper didn't need it to see the bandages hugging Seth's chest. At least its light diffused the blood staining the bandage. It was a weak comfort, but Jasper took it. At this point, he would have taken anything.

Carlisle came and went, changing bandages and checking on Seth's pulse. Every time he left, the lines on his face had etched themselves deeper. When Jasper cared to listen, he could hear his and Emse's conversation outside the room.

Esme's low murmur of concern came through the walls easily. "The treaty Carlisle. Sam won't care that Seth is no longer one of his pack. He was on La Push territory."

The hoarse whisper that was Carlisle's response was harder to hear, but Jasper made it out. "That may not be of concern."

He quit listening. He didn't care what the others had to say. He had nearly killed Seth Clearwater. Werewolf or not, he was human. If his blood hadn't disagreed with his body, he would have drained the boy. What did it matter if the werewolves came to tear him apart?

What did anything matter anymore?

The scream tore him from his thoughts.

On the cot, Seth convulsed, his back arching as screams ripped from him. Dragged from bruised lungs past broken bones, the screams were the worse thing that Jasper had ever heard. They were nothing compared to the screams of his victims, or even the screams he had made when Maria had turned him. The screams bit into him with the teeth of vampire, tore him apart like a wild dog as if they were trying to rip whatever remained of his soul from his body.

He was up in an instant, hands hovering over Seth. The boy convulsed, bones cracking with his frantic movements. Every time a bone broke, the boy's screams reached a new pitch. In a moment, Jasper doubted he'd be able to hear them at all. What the hell was driving the boy to this? The venom? A reaction to the venom?

Was he dying now? Had Jasper just prolonged the inevitable by injecting him with his venom? Had he just drawn out the boy's suffering, to end it with this now? Was even now, Seth's inner wolf tearing apart the venom, or was it the other way around? Didn't matter. It was killing him.

Seth was dying again.

And Jasper didn't know how to save him.

He wasn't sure whether to push Seth to the bed, or let him thrash. If he held the thrashing werewolf down, he could just as easily snap his spine as save him. His mind raced. Could Carlisle save his spine? Did it matter? Would the venom save the bones he was breaking now? Better paralysed then dead? Better dead then paralysed?

Esme decided for him. Her slight hands pushed down on Seth's shoulders, firm but gentle. Her mouth pressed into a thin, tight line, she drove him back to the cot, though his legs still flailed, hips convulsing.

"Hold his legs." Carlisle ordered, appearing with a needle. Following his orders, Jasper grasped Seth's legs through the sheet that covered him. The boy's thigh muscles twitched under his hands, his spine arching. His screams ripped through Jasper, till he wanted to smother them by any means possible.

This was all his fault.

Carlisle slipped the needle beneath the skin of Seth's arm. Jasper waited for the peace the drugs would bring, his heart in his throat. Seth continued to thrash against his hands.

"Hush, hush, baby," Esme soothed, her face not at all matching the calmness of her words. "Sleep now." She looked up at Carlisle, panic in her eyes.

Forcing himself not to clench his hands and rip out portions of Seth's thighs, Jasper dragged in a breath, trying to calm himself. "It's not working. Why isn't it working?" He demanded, voice sharper then he had intended it to be.

Carlisle returned with another needle. Holding Seth's arm, and ignoring his hoarse screams, he plunged the contents of the needle into Seth's vein. After a moment, Seth's scream faltered, then changed into a series of whimpers. His eyelids fluttered, coming down over his unseeing eyes. His body eased, reclining into the bed.

Hesitantly, Esme lifted her hands from his shoulder's. He stayed down, the muscles in his face relaxing. After another long moment of silence, Jasper released his hold on Seth's thighs, reaching instinctively for the boy's hand. His fault or not, right now, he was all the boy had to comfort him. Not, he knew, that he could be much comfort. He was the killer, after all. The one who had let the animal inside him take over and put the boy through this kind of pain for just a bit of blood.

"Why didn't the morphine work?" He asked, pushing his voice around the lump in his throat.

Carlisle frowned, running a hand through his hair. "Seth's body burns off morphine quickly. And with the venom... We'll have to set a drip." he murmured, almost to himself. "He'll burn morphine off faster than Jacob's did."

Unconscious once again, Seth's face showed none of what had just happened. Jasper watched him, looking for any signs of discomfort. At his back, he could hear Carlisle moving about to set up the morphine. Esme was still at Seth's head, wiping a lock of jet black hair from his sweaty face. Seeing Jasper's eyes upon her, she gave him a forced smile.

"It will be okay." She told him. "You'll see."

He could hear the falseness in her words. See it in the way her hand shook. He didn't answer her, just went back to watching Seth. She knew the truth. This was his fault. It was all his fault.

He heard her move to where Carlisle was preparing the needle. "Carlisle?" she asked. "Have you ever seen a werewolf infected with venom?" Her voice was quiet, and obviously not meant for Jasper, but he listened anyway.

Carlisle was quiet for a long time. "Yes." Jasper could hear the finality in the word. He didn't need to ask to know the fate of the creature. "But Seth is a shape shifter. Not a true werewolf."

Jasper didn't take his gaze away from Seth. He knew his family well enough to guess at their expressions. Carlisle's quiet defeat. Esme's pain. Their mutual disappointment in him. Instead, he watched Seth, looking for the slightest sign of discomfort. "He's turning into a vampire, isn't he?"

The question hung in the air.

...

The world was darkness and pain.

It rose and fell like the tide.

Sometimes, Seth thought he saw light. And with it, the pain eased. It glimmered in his peripheral, but when he turned to find it, it was gone.

And then the darkness and pain consumed him once again.