A/N: Originally written for the 'For The Love of Jasper' Contest. One of the rare pieces I'm quite proud of.

Thank you to cdunbar beta'ing it so long ago, and to all the lovely people who originally reviewed this story.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything written by Stephenie Meyer or Joseph Heller.

Man of War

'The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off. '

'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller

There are places in this world where my name is still spoken with fear. It commands respect and obedience, for to not feel those would spell certain death.

I am a soldier. I died a soldier and remained so. Soon battle and fighting and blood became all I knew. And hate. Hate and greed and terror.

I remember Maria's lusty laugh of delight as she watched me 'train' new recruits. That beautiful Medusa-- I would wind her coiled locks around my fingers as her mouth transported me into a state of heady bliss. The only bliss I received through all those years of destruction.

I became unstable. Emotion was flung at me from all sides, bombarding and colliding with my mind like a hazy drugged fog. I would sometimes sit, sobbing for hours with no real cause to. I would laugh hysterically, leaning against walls for support as laughter racked my body. Even though I didn't get the joke. I would glut myself feeding, fuelled by others' hunger. Then would loath myself as I felt my prey's terror.

I lost myself and turned into a demon, with the beauty of an angel.

My hair is long and blonde, thick with a shine that resembled a cruel mockery of a halo. They would call me Apollo, as I stalked forward with my weapons bared. I was swift and immediate, death was never far away if it was I that hunted you. And I was never defeated.

Scars criss and cross my body like vicious love bites. A penance for my sins when no whip or reed was strong enough to leave such marks.

I am no God of War. I was but a foot soldier to kneel at Maria's feet. She turned me to stone with a careless glance, a flick of the wrist and a kiss to the neck. Her kisses killed.

She had killed me once and as I fell deeper and deeper into the hell she created for me, I knew she would be the true death of me. I had to leave, before true feeling left me forever.

I left under a burning sky, I didn't look back. Maria called for me, sobbed for me, laughed for me. She believed I'd return.

"You'll never be far away, mi amor. I know this as do you, Jasper. This is all you know." Those words haunted me as I travelled north. So tauntingly spoken, so confident.

I nearly turned back then, I was so close to doing it. She was right, it was all I knew. The camaraderie of fellow soldiers, the thrill of the fight. But I'd think of Peter and his Charlotte as they fled into the dark forest like nightingales, hands clasped tight. I watched them go, the moonlight illuminating white boulders that circled me like a pixie ring. Or like licked-clean bones. I shut my eyes and drank in a wondrous feeling, something I had never felt before. Something so strong. It was love.

I had never felt love with Maria, and if I had felt love before her I didn't remember it. I did not feel tender toward anyone, there were no recruits I particularly noticed. Love was never something I expected to feel.

Until Alice.

Alice. Her name must be spoken with reverence, with joy, with the adoration she deserves. It is a treasured word and I love to say it. I cry it, I laugh it, I gasp it and I breathe it. I am no longer crushed under waves of emotions that I have no wish to feel. It is not blood and fire that surrounds me as I walk through this world. It is Alice, and Love. I am Apollo no more, I am Achilles. She is my weakness, which I proudly bear. I would have no other.

We found each other in a backwater Philadelphia diner and never looked back. I sat on a stool at the counter, swilling the coffee I wouldn't drink around the grimy, chipped cup and furtively observing the crowd of people around me beneath the brim of my dark felted hat, selecting my next meal. I had not fed for days. The self loathing that always consumed me was hard to shake and I fed only when I couldn't hold out any longer.

A small red-eyed beauty sauntered up to me, people turning to watch her pass, and emanated such powerful feelings of love toward me that the cup I held slipped from my fingers and tumbled to the floor as I swivelled on the stool toward her. I didn't hear the cup break or feel the hot coffee splash onto my clothes. I watched Alice stand before me, as she lifted a little pale arm and softly cupped my cheek.

"You've been keeping me waiting, fella," she said with a tender smile. I cocked my eyebrow and replied with an amused smile, "Why, I'm awful sorry for that, ma'am, but I'm here now." And then I tipped my hat to her. A beautiful grin spread across her face, and that clinging gloom that had hung around me for eighty-five years lifted like the casting off of a mourning veil. She was bright and shining. I couldn't look away. I didn't want to.

She perched on the stool next to me, her hand moving to entwine her fingers with mine. I let her. I was too frozen to protest. I felt blanketed and comforted in a peace I had never known before. This strange slip of a girl, this ethereal nymph loved me before she even knew me.

We talked of our lives thus far. Her eyes would glaze over intermittently and the first time it happened I was terrified. Terrified for her. I had not known her for even an hour yet, but already I had been claimed as hers. She did not do it with teeth and pain, but with smiles and caresses.

She told me of her gift, and of how she found me. That when she woke up from her three day long death it was my face she saw. She thought it was an angel. I laughed bitterly but stopped when I felt her sorrow.

I told her of my sins, the evil I had done in my life. I told her more that night than I had ever told a soul, or a soulless, before. I waited for her to spurn me, to withdraw her soft hand nestled so tightly in mine. I waited for biting words and retreating footsteps.

She held me to her and blessed my forehead with a cleansing kiss. Her kisses gave life.

We left the diner, the rain beating down hard on the sidewalk and on us. She wore a simple brown dress and could no longer feel the cold, but squealed and recoiled as raindrops fell on her. I laughed (a true laugh that my feelings were responsible for instead of someone else's) and took off my long heavy coat for her to use as a shield.

We ran across a field, she led and I followed. As I watched her lithe and graceful figure twirl in the night, flashes of lightning illuminating the lines of her form, I knew I'd follow her for the rest of eternity. Suddenly she stopped and turned to me, her eyes wide and mouth open in delight. Love and desire struck me with the force of a hurricane and we pounced at each other.

We tumbled to the apple grass floor, holding the other tight. I looked down at my sweet Alice and smiled languorously.

"You've seen us, ain't you?" I asked her with a husked voice. She nodded slowly in reply and a light humming sound came from her throat. I expected to feel disappointment, that she had seen us make love and knew what would happen. She knew the secrets of our love making before I'd even known it would happen. But I didn't. Because even though she knew, all I could feel from her was happiness, love and intense desire.

She had no memory of another man, and I had too many of one woman. But it did not hinder us.

I kissed her mouth softly, her venom was sweet and her tongue gentle. Her little hands fluttered across my back and shoulders, trailing down my arms as though she could not decide where to settle. I stroked her cheekbone with one hand, her hip with the other.

Our desire was a slow burning flame. Under the cloudy night sky we showed our love for each other in the oldest of ways. Her heated look as I touched her so intimately for the first time burnt itself in my mind. And even though she had seen it happen, the feeling of it took her entirely by surprise.

I unwrapped her body from the pauper's clothes she wore like a bridal gown, and I removed the child-like undergarments she had been given to fit her frame in that hellish place. I held the woman of my heart in my arms as she took off my armour.

Naked as babes we lay in the grass while the rain fell down from the heavens and baptised the holiness of our union. In that moment I truly believed I was blessed by God.

My sweet Alice wrapped her arms and legs around me as I covered her with my long form. I pushed into her and even though we both suspected I was her first, she did not tremble. I hated that I was not untouched, that I had known another. It was she that comforted me, stroking my face lovingly, as we joined together for that first time.

I pressed her into the ground, reluctant for there to be even a centimetre of space between us. She giggled into my mouth as I kissed her passionately in time to my movements. I freed her mouth only to hear her gasps of pleasure, I needed to hear them. To hear the innocence of her joy, the sweetness of our actions. After all I had seen and done, I needed this. To hear how happy I made her.

I moved my hands so they clutched hers. She pressed her little body hard and urgently against me as we rocked and swayed to our bodies' desires. I rested my cheek against hers as she panted into my neck and I shivered, relishing the sensation.

And then we effervesced, grabbing and grasping at each other in awed desperation. The pleasure that overwhelmed my senses was an eclipse of sight and sense. All I could feel was Alice. Myself within Alice, my hands in Alice's, my mouth on Alice's. I swallowed her rapturous cries and she swallowed mine. I freed a hand to touch her once more before her pleasure waned. She crested and keened once again, her unclaimed hand tearing a crater in the ground beside her.

And as sense restored itself to us once more, we huddled into each other, and while darkness covered us, we explored the other's body at our leisure.

We travelled for two years, happiness our guide and laughter our companion. Alice guided us since she knew where we were headed. I followed my Alice gladly. We trekked our way up, dodging the sun and its light; we made our own. We rented sleazy and cockroach riddled hotel rooms. We didn't need the sleep, but deserted woodland and fields became hard to come by.

As we lay on sheets stained by human sweat and other fluids, we turned the dingy room into a perfumed boudoir. Decadently I would worship every inch of Alice's beautiful body, the stature of a child but the curves of a woman. No snake coils to snare me, her shorn hair brushed my finger tips that I did not grasp and pull at. It was too precious to me, an eternal reminder to her what her human self had suffered. They had hacked away her hair as if they could hack away her strength. My Alice was stronger than Sampson, she was stronger than Atlas. I would comb my fingers through it gently as we lay together, as we sat beside each other, if it was within reach. She would purr like a cat and I would laugh and love her more for it.

But our attention turned. Alice knew the time was close at hand when it would not just be the two of us anymore. We would join five others. We explored areas that resembled her vision. It took us months and I teased her at each wrong turn.

"Look's like that third eye of yours is going blind, darlin'." She would grin and poke me in the ribs, sticking out her tongue. I would kiss her deeply and the search would get postponed.

And then we found them, the others she had woken from the darkness to see as our family. And though I struggled with the denial of their nature, I was happy. I found brothers and sisters. I found a father.

And I was with Alice.

There were quarrels, there were disagreements, but with the aid of my gift the storm was weathered. I felt lucky and giddy and I never stopped to ask myself, "Is this real?" If it was a dream I'd rather not know.

Alice was the sun which I orbited, the cause I fought for, the deity I trusted and believed in. Maria and pyres and bite marks were behind me, I thought of them rarely.

I struggled with the temptation of human blood though. That soft pulsing so often surrounding me was an exquisite torture. But Alice would soothe me and tempt me in better ways, saving me before I sunk into that abyss of self-loathing once more. We played our parts, comedy or tragedy we played them. I graduated high school and college more times than I care to remember with my eidetic memory. We moved across the northern states on a bloody rampage. Luckily it was only animals that were slaughtered and we ensured that no species ever suffered the diminishing of their population too much. I found it strange living with such conscientious people. But ironically they brought my humanity back to me, I felt the distance to my human side fall away.

And then one day my brother fell in love.

She was a sweet young girl, fresh and innocent. Eyes like a doe and a heart of gold. Alice adored her and Rosalie sneered at her. I knew he was onto a good thing.

But a birthday present and a drop of blood made me snap. Even Alice couldn't save me then.

She is in Italy now, chasing after her brother with that sweet young girl he loves to bring him back to his senses.

I sit in our room, holding grief at bay while huddled by the window as I await her call. It may be her last.

I am a Man of War, I am Achilles. And I wait for the arrow to pierce my heel.

A/N: Thanks for reading if this is new, or re-reading if it's not.