Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own any of these characters.

A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews. I really appreciate them. So here's the second chapter. Hope you all enjoy it.

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We ran together, he kept pace easily with me, and we crossed counties like they were streets. I found myself watching him; mesmerized. His chest rose and fell evenly as wind rustled through his honey colored hair. I liked the way he moved. There was a force about his grace that I wasn't able to replicate. He looked strong and his strength only made him more beautiful in my eyes. The same way his scars told me he had courage. They didn't detract from him, but rather accentuated. I wouldn't have changed a thing about him, except the creeping sadness in his eyes.

Hours later I began to slow again. While it wasn't impossible for us to run indefinitely, it did begin to get uncomfortable after a while. Jasper matched me, stopping in a small clearing that opened up in front of us. The grass was tall there, growing easily up to my chest and I could smell a city in the distance.

Laughing, I collapsed into the grass, disappearing from sight. I laid back, looking up a the puffy, white clouds in the sky. I tried to remember the way I had felt that morning, the utter discontentment I had had with my life. How was it that so much could have changed in so little time?

Jasper sat down next to me, careful to keep several feet between us. I felt, rather than saw, his gaze rake over me. I hoped he liked what he saw. I hope he saw something that would plant the seed of doubt in his stalwart defense of his heart.

"Jasper," I asked after a few moments, "Do you like me?"

"Don't start that." He said irritably.

I sighed, not looking at him. "No, I meant . . . you don't . . . not like me, do you?"

So long as he didn't dislike me, I would be okay. For the moment. Not forever.

He snorted. "Of course I don't not like you. I'm here, with you, aren't I? You create far to intoxicating of a climate for me to do anything but like you."

"Climate?" I asked. Though intoxicating sounded good.

He hesitated for a long moment and gave me a sidelong look before he answered. "I'm an empath and you're a very happy person. I like it."

Ah. I'd thought he'd picked up on my moods a bit too easily. But this wasn't a good thing. An unforeseen obstruction. It was going to be a lot more difficult for me to eventually make him love me if he was on his guard and constantly had an advanced warning about my mood.

He chuckled. I liked it, it was deep and reassuring. "That's it?" He asked. "I tell you I can turn you into a raging force of nature and all I get is consternation?"

"I'm already a force of nature." I teased.

He lay back onto the grass to stare up at the clouds with me. "I can't argue with that."

"Will you tell me about yourself, Jasper?" I asked after a moment of silence.

His eyes narrowed. "I don't have a happy story. And with your . . . fixation with me, I don't think you should know more about me, regardless."

"Is it so wrong that . . . traveling companions," I said the words disdainfully. "should know a bit about each other?"

He smirked, no doubt picking up on my distaste with our relationship. "Then tell me about yourself first, ma'am. If you're so eager to learn my story, you ought to be willing to share yours, shouldn't you?"

I frowned and sat up, my back to him. "I don't have a story. I don't remember being human. My first memories . . . I woke up like this. I didn't know who or what I was. On the inside of my dress there was a tag with my name on it. 'This garment belongs to: Mary Alice Brandon'. There was nothing else. Nothing I could remember of myself. I didn't even know what I looked like." I felt a wave of calm and comfort wash over me, enveloping me like strong, soothing arms. I sighed. I wished he was actually comforting me, not using his gift, I wished his arms really were around me and that I could snuggle into his chest, that he would tell me everything was okay now, because he was here. But he didn't. "Yours was the first face I saw. At first, I didn't understand what was happening. I was terrified that I had somehow teleported myself somewhere. It was bad enough that I already didn't know where or what I was, but at that moment I didn't know where I was going either.

"But then the vision faded and I was exactly where I had been before. I received other visions in the next few days, mostly of you, but some were of the Cullen's. Some were of you with me with the Cullen's. I knew I had to find you. I knew it was a diner that I would find you at. So I traveled, waiting in every diner I could find. Thousands of diners, Jasper. You have no idea how much I was starting to loath the sights and smells of the places. They were all the same, smelled the same, looked the same." I closed my eyes and smiled. "And then you showed up. You walked through the door, exactly how I had seen you walk through the door thousands of times."

I stared at my knees. My existence was so pathetic. I had done nothing, nothing of note, since that first day except sit in diners. It was worse than pathetic. It was . . . it was . . . it was pitiful.

"In 1861, I joined the Confederate Army." Jasper said softly behind me. I looked over my shoulder at him. He was still laying on his back, one arm propped under his head as he glared at the clouds above. "I advanced through the ranks very quickly. I became a Major. I was on my way from Houston to Galveston when I came across three women. They were very beautiful to me, then. One of them, the smallest, sent the other two away. Her name was Maria, she's the one who changed me."

"Is she the reason you don't like that my name is Mary?" I asked softly.

His eyes flicked to my face and he smiled softly. "It's foolish, but yes." He looked back up at the sky and his voice hardened. "At the time, I didn't realize that there was more that one war raging in the South. Maria was putting together an army of newborn vampires. A highly skilled, highly trained army of vampires. My ability proved useful for keeping the others in check so she eventually put me in charge of them. She had no choice, really. I was very good at what she wanted us to do. I was killing her soldiers faster than she could make them.

"We retook Monterrey, Maria's home city, easily. Too easily. It made her greedy. We took other cities. We expanded our territories, mercilessly, until our allies turned on us. We were pushed back to Monterrey." His voice sounded haunted and I at once wished I hadn't asked. If it hurt him to talk about it, then I didn't want to know. "We managed to hold onto the city, barely. We kept an army in reserve but it had to be . . . replaced every year. Maria would seek out new candidates. It was my job to dispose of the old, those who had outgrown their usefulness."

I couldn't help the way my hand fluttered to my mouth to stifle my gasp. I couldn't imagine the horror of it; of a life like that. The constant fear he must have felt, that maybe he too had outlived his usefulness. And the climate that must have surrounded him. The terror and hate and blood lust. And beyond all these things, I couldn't imagine the force that would have been necessary to destroy creatures such as us. Before meeting Jasper, I had never felt physical pain. I hadn't thought that we could be killed. I had never met anything in all my years that had been able to so much as scratch me.

"You see now, Alice, don't you? You see the monster I am?" He said softly, closing his eyes.

"But you left." I persisted. The horror I felt at what he had been forced to do could not dampen the love I felt for him.

"Yes, I left. Two newborns escaped. One of them had been my friend. He returned a few years later to tell me about the new life he had. The way life was away from the wars of the South." He confirmed. "I left with them, without even telling Maria I was going. She was going to turn on me anyway."

I frowned. "But weren't you traveling with your friends before you met me? Wont they miss you?"

"No. I haven't been with Peter and Charlotte for months. It didn't feel -" His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright.

Less than a second later I knew why. A foreign scent was wafting across the breeze toward us. Jasper was on his feet in seconds. He yanked me to my feet and pushed me behind him, crouching low. A deep, resonant, growling issued from his chest.

It was ridiculous to expect to be attacked here, so far north of his homeland. I had never once had an altercation of any kind with anyone. Of course, I didn't have a lot of experience with others of our kind. I'd spent most of my time to myself. I had nowhere near as much experience as he did, and now that I knew his story I could understand why he reacted the way he did.

I gently put my hand on his shoulder. "We don't know that they mean us any harm."

The growling ceased and he stood a little straighter, but his every muscle was tensed and he wouldn't let me move from behind him. A smile tugged at my lips. My gallant protector. If he wasn't a gentleman then I was a poodle.

Then our stranger burst through the underbrush on the opposite side of the clearing and came to a sudden halt. He was upwind of us and would have had no warning of our scent. He was a tall, stocky man with chestnut hair in a comb over. His eyes were so red they were almost glowing. Another low snarl ripped from Jasper's throat.

"Jasper, he could be a friend." I said softly.

The stranger approached warily. I didn't blame him. Jasper looked terrifying.

"You're in my territory." The stranger said angrily.

"We're just passing through." I said quickly.

"This land has never been claimed." Jasper said sharply. I sighed.

"I claim it." The man professed. "I claimed it when I killed my maker."

"Then we'll be on our way." I breathed, hoping to make peace.

"He wont let us be on our way, Alice. He wants to kill us." Jasper said harshly. "Just like all newborns, he's driven by the illogical need to kill everything in sight."

The barest flicker of surprise crossed the newcomer's face before a slow, vicious, violent grin spread onto his face and he launched himself at Jasper. But Jasper was already gone, already moving, dancing out of the way with his forceful grace. My breath caught in my throat, but I didn't know the first thing about combat. I was useless to help him.

I watched, unable to move. Terrified that the man I loved would be damaged by this mindless youth. I noticed Jasper refused to let the man between us and wanted to cry. It he got hurt, if he died because he was trying to protect me, I would never forgive myself. Not in a million years, supposing that the newborn didn't get me too.

As I watched, tense with fear and panic, hazy ghost images flitted across my vision. I could see every strike a fraction of a second before it happened. The way Jasper manages to to snap off a finger of the man's. Followed shortly thereafter by a large crack and a piece of his shoulder coming away in Jasper's mouth. The way the man pushes Jasper back, diving at him again. The way Jasper loses ground. The way the man's teeth crunch off Jasper's right hand while he's trying to regain the advantage.

No!

No no no no no no. I launched myself at the man before any more rational thoughts could flick through my mind. Not Jasper. I had promised that he would never be hurt again, that I would protect my protector. I let my instincts guide me as I catapulted myself over Jasper's head while he lashed out at the man again. I landed, lightly, on the back of the man, one arm clinging tightly to his shoulder as I plunged my teeth into the man's throat. This was the only thing I knew, the only instinctive way I knew to kill something. Go for the throat, just as I would have on an animal. My teeth cut through his granite skin like butter, drowning out the man's enraged cry.

I collapsed onto the ground with the body as the head rolled away a few feet, stunned with what I'd done. How was it possible that the newborn had died so easily? Could I die that easily? I'd never thought of myself as fragile; breakable. But this thing, the corpse that I had landed on, was certainly dead. Or at least, it wasn't moving and I couldn't see how it could survive without it's head.

Then Jasper's hands were on me, pulling me to my feet, he hauled me into a crushing hug. "Are you mad?" He demanded harshly as he released me. "You could have been hurt or killed."

"But you would have been hurt." I whispered, still shocked with what I had done, before I made my fingers imitate scissors and held them around his right wrist.

He stared at me unfathomably for a moment before his lip twitched. "And I thought I was a monster." He said with a soft chuckle, a glimmer of respect or admiration in his eyes.

Then he turned and began ripping the body of the newborn apart. I winced and averted my gaze. I was fairly certain I wanted to be nauseous. But my body wouldn't let me. I didn't look up again until I smelled smoke. He was now burning the disjointed pieces of the body. It seemed a bit excessive.

"Is all this necessary?" I asked as I miserably watched the marble pieces blacken.

"Yes. Unless you want him to put himself back together and hunt us down." He said coldly as he threw the last of the pieces into the fire.

I swallowed nervously. Okay, so maybe we weren't quite as breakable as I had been imagining. Jasper put his arm around my shoulder and a wave of serenity flooded over me. "Thank you." He said softly.

I liked this new camaraderie between us. I liked the way his arm was warm against my neck and the way I could feel his muscles under his coat. I liked the way his body formed a protective shield in front of me, blocking the fire from my sight. And I especially liked the way his scent wrapped around me like a favorite blanket. I breathed in deeply and saw him shake his head, but this time with a soft, sad smile on his lips. He disentangled himself from me and took a step away.

"Let's get out of here." I whispered.