Startled about his son's reply that he thought of Edward as an easy victim, Carlisle leaned back in his chair and stared at Jasper. "You wanted to take your anger out on him?" he asked with raised eyebrows.

It did happen from time to time that his children took their anger out on each other, but it usually happened in the heat of the moment. Now, however, it sounded like Jasper had planned it.

And what seemed to be especially peculiar: Jasper admitted to it and apparently wasn't in the least bit fazed by the consequences that would await him for that, or – what was even more shocking - by what could have happened if Esme and Emmett hadn't defused the situation.

"That's right," the blonde boy affirmed and kept his eyes fixed on his father. No blinking, no averting his eyes, no shame.

If Carlisle didn't know any better, he would have thought that his son was proud of his actions.

But right now, he just refused to believe that, because while he didn't want to accuse his boy of lying, he had the feeling that he wasn't telling him the ultimate truth.

"All right," he uttered and sighed, then scooted with his chair closer to the desk and clasped his hands together before he let them rest on the smooth table top. "I think I'll rephrase it...," he said and cleared his throat before he went on. "I believe that something must have infuriated you, maybe Edward provoked you, and if that's the case, then I would like to know what it is he had done and when you felt that your patience snapped."

Instead of complying with this obviously very simple request - it was easy, because Jasper more than likely knew the answer to this question - the boy remained silent.

"So?" Carlisle queried and waited, but when a minute had passed and it grew apparent that Jasper again was denying him the information he needed, Carlisle let out another deep sigh. "Jasper, please. I'd like to know what happened so that together we can figure out what's causing this and how we can work on avoiding it from happening again in the future." He tried to let his son feel what he was feeling at the moment - concern, sympathy and love, but when Jasper just leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, he knew that he was either ignoring it or blocking his emotions.

Funny enough, Jasper's posture and the look in his dark brown eyes even seemed challenging now.

Carlisle, well known for having the patience of a saint, decided to ignore it for now, because he figured that the boy was probably just feeling nervous and tried to overplay it. He doubted that what Jasper had told him and wanted him to believe was the absolute truth. The boy was different than his other children, and he had lived through a much more brutal, traumatic and difficult time than Emmett, for example. But despite his past, he refused to believe that Jasper had suddenly decided to live by his old coven rules again and attack with the intention of crippling or killing his chosen opponent. It had been one of his tasks to kill members of his coven as soon as they weren't of any use anymore or were causing trouble, but Jasper knew full well that this coven was different. Otherwise he would have never joined this coven with Alice if he had the feeling that it was like the one he was born into.

"What did Edward do?" Carlisle queried, keeping the question as simple as possible to make sure it couldn't be misunderstood. There was no accusation in his tone, he was convinced that Jasper wasn't solely to blame for that incident, and so he wanted to give both boys the chance to tell him what had happened without giving them the impression that he had already made up his mind of who was at fault and how that would be dealt with.

The boy took his time to answer that simple question - like he was enjoying to make him wait.

"Breathe," he eventually stated - his voice was as cold as ice, but there was a blazing fire in his eyes that could have kept an entire tower building warm.

There were several things Carlisle would have expected to hear at the moment, but that had not been one of them. "It annoys you when he breathes?" he queried and felt confusion rippling through him.

And Jasper, as eloquent as ever, just shrugged his shoulders.

Back at the hospital, Carlisle had been looking forward to a wonderful night with his family. The day at work had been very calm and nothing out of the ordinary happened, and when he was working on stitching up a cut, he suddenly found himself chuckling. What had amused him so, was the fact that he had caught himself looking forward to a less than calm day at home. After years of being a doctor and a father, he needed both calm and busy days, and it was barely ever really calm and quiet at home as his children were quite the lively little group of young vampires. He loved spending time with them and listen to their chatter, their laughter and even sometimes to some harmless bickering. And since it had been too quiet at the hospital, he needed a little turmoil.

But not to that extent.

Now, he was admittedly saddened about the difficulties Jasper and Edward were having, and he was unhappy about the fact that Jasper remained quiet instead of telling him what he wanted and needed to know.

And it seemed that he would have to spend the night meting out punishment to two of his sons - a task he wasn't looking forward to.

"Jasper, I am losing my patience with you," he admitted quietly. "Stop this childish behaviour and talk to me, please. Why were you about to attack Edward?"

"I already gave you answers to that question."

Carlisle shook his head. "Your answers were absurd, and you know it."

"Maybe because my motive was absurd," the blonde boy replied with an eyebrow raised in... challenge? That was the second time now he got the feeling that his son was trying to challenge him, provoke him. But again, he dismissed it as nervousness. Jasper obviously did not have his mouth under control due to the stress of the day, he believed, and so Carlisle decided he had to do something about that.

"All right," he sighed, then pushed his chair back and got up. "Enough."

Jasper followed him with his eyes, trying to decipher what Carlisle was feeling at the moment to be able to anticipate what would happen next.

"I want you to go back to your room, Jasper."

That confused and unnerved the boy - Carlisle could clearly see that in his eyes - but the way Jasper spat his next words showed him that he tried to overplay it once more.

"And then what?"

"And then," Carlisle replied calmly despite his growing displeasure about his boy's tone of voice, "you will spend some time thinking about what happened this afternoon, what Edward had done, what you have done - everything. And then, I'd like to have precise answers from you."

Jasper's jaw clenched and he glared at the table, before he lifted his head again and looked Carlisle directly in the eye. "I gave you answers." His voice resembled a growl - he was angry or frustrated with his father, and Carlisle had to admit that he felt the same about his boy at the moment.

There was absolutely no need for Jasper to be so disrespectful towards him when he was just anxious to help him.

"I don't know whose questions you answered with that nonsense, but I do know that they weren't mine." He made his way over to the door and came to a halt next to it, before he put his hand on the smooth door handle.

"Carlisle, this is-"

"Jasper, enough. Go to your room." Carlisle sighed and opened the door while massaging the bridge of his nose with his middle finger and thumb in frustration. He was a patient man, but he was at risk of running out of patience when confronted with repeated deliberate disobedience, backtalk and a disrespectful attitude.

"That won't be necessary."

Not this again...

"Boy," Carlisle warned and looked up at him through slightly darkened eyes. "you thought there is no need for talking, and now you think there is no need for you to go back to your room and think about what had happened. We're not making any headway. You are being defiant and I am not willing to spend the entire evening trying to coax words out of your mouth. Go to your room and come find me when you are ready to act your age."

His words seemed to hurt Jasper's pride a little, because he immediately sat up straight in his chair and retorted, "I'm always acting my age."

"No," Carlisle corrected him, "right now you are acting like a petulant five-year-old that is bone-tired but refuses to go to bed. I do believe that you are older than that. Please go to your room and reflect on your behaviour and the happenings of the day, because I am not willing to sit here and listen to your nonsense."

Jasper still didn't make a move to get up.

"Do as you're told, Jasper. To your room, now," Carlisle requested, when he saw that Jasper just sat there doing the thinking he was supposed to be doing in his own room. Carlisle certainly wouldn't let Edward treat him like that, that boy would already be facing the carpet by now, so Jasper could consider himself very lucky that he was giving him the chance to evade that outcome.

Convinced that he must have made himself clear now, Carlisle grabbed a book from the shelf next to the door to read some while Jasper would be spending some time on his own in his room.

"No."

Carlisle's head shot up and immediately their eyes locked. "What was that?" he asked disbelievingly.

When Jasper didn't say anything, Carlisle snapped the book shut and put it back on the shelf, before he fully turned around and put his hands on his hips. "I must have heard wrong... did you just say No to me?"

Jasper swallowed heavily.

"We can take care of this now," he replied after a moment.

The coven leader studied his son, his hard gaze, his tense muscles and his clenched jaw. It gave him the impression of aggression, but he just refused to believe that Jasper was being aggressive towards him just because he wanted to get answers to an incident in his family. "Then answer my question: Why did you want to attack Edward?"

Jasper averted his eyes and shrugged one shoulder nonchalantly. "I felt like it."

It took some effort for Carlisle to keep a growl of frustration from building up in his chest.

"Go to your room, son, and do some thorough thinking," he ordered strictly, then grabbed the door again and pulled it further open before he pointed out into the hallway.

The boy however, remained seated and didn't make a move to comply. Again.

"Jasper," Carlisle warned and felt his eyes darken. It had barely ever happened that one of the children would challenge him like that. Every time one of them had felt the need to repeatedly disobey him, he'd shown them that he had little patience for that. But now it seemed that it would happen again.

"Get up," Carlisle demanded resolutely, let go of the door and marched towards Jasper, who still did not look like he wanted to obey him.

Carlisle, now more than just thoroughly fed up, grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of his chair, before he bent him over the desk and held him down by his shoulder.

His right hand connected firmly with the boy's jeans-clad backside to let him know that he demanded his full attention and then he spoke.

"You had more than enough chances to comply, Jasper," Carlisle rebuked, "but you wanted to show me how stubborn you can be. I do not tolerate that kind of behaviour."

His right hand connected with Jasper's behind again, this time even more forceful. "If you don't want to listen, find out the hard way."

With that said, he didn't waste any time to administer a sharp volley of smacks to his rear. While the first two had made Jasper quietly gasp in shock about the fierce burning, he squinted his eyes shut for the following and held his breath as if trying to make sure that not a single whimper would escape him.

Carlisle had a heavy hand and saw to it that he would cover Jasper's entire behind with stinging slaps before he stopped the assault and pulled his son back up by his upper arm.

A strand of hair had fallen over his brow and he roughly wiped it away, then held a finger up in front of Jasper's face. "That was completely unnecessary, Jasper. When I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it. Sending you to your room to do some thinking is supposed to help you, because I refuse to punish any of my children without knowing what exactly had happened. It's for your benefit, not to anger you. Now, if you continue to disobey me I can always add more, but it won't change the fact that we will still need to talk about what happened this afternoon, understood?"

With the defiance leaving his eyes, Jasper nodded his head to show that he understood and then quickly made to leave the study. But a simple nod instead of a verbal answer wasn't good enough for Carlisle, and so he held him back and narrowed his eyes at him. "Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

Seeing that he was finally getting the first clear answer from his son this afternoon, Carlisle nodded approvingly and put his right hand on the back of Jasper's neck to rub it in comfort.

"Now, off to your room. Don't make me tell you again!" he told him and pushed him gently in the direction of the door to make sure he would indeed leave this room and go back to where he felt the most comfortable. He didn't know what had caused the boy's silence, or his curt, insolent answers, but hopefully Jasper knew and would figure out a way to overcome that.

Jasper had been determined to not leave Carlisle's study until he would have gotten the punishment for all his misdeeds, but now he lay here on his side on the bed in the middle of his and Alice's room and gazed out of the window.

His butt was throbbing, and he wasn't interested in having this throbbing turn into a blazing inferno for childish defiance - defiant behaviour like that of a little boy was so unlike him and he was embarrassed that Carlisle had seen and treated him like that.

That really didn't go as planned...

Now he realised that no matter what he could have said or done in the study, he wouldn't have been able to change his father's mind to take care of his wrongdoings immediately.

He really, really hadn't wanted to go back to his room and do some more thinking - he knew what had happened and that it shouldn't have happened! He knew what he had done to Rose and he knew that attacking the coven leader's first-born was a serious offence. So, with all of this together, he would have preferred to just get it over with instead of having to wait some more and then eventually having to answer Carlisle's questions.

He didn't want to talk.

It was as simple as that - he just didn't want to talk.

Explaining how he was feeling at the moment and how Edward had provoked him wouldn't help - it would only make everything worse, because Jasper didn't want Carlisle to feel sympathetic to him and therefore go easy on him.

He clearly didn't deserve any lenience, but admittedly, he was hoping that it wouldn't come to dismemberment and Carlisle would resort to less permanent but equally painful measures of retribution.

With one hand lightly massaging his buttocks, he realised that the doctor had been truly fed up with his antics, which made him administer a swift but painful warning. Not even a dozen smacks, but he could still feel every single one of them.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he took in a deep breath and held it, before he slowly exhaled and hoped it would have a calming effect on his nerves.

It didn't seem to work.

He just didn't understand why Carlisle hadn't believed him, but instead wanted to give him a chance to explain himself! What's wrong with Carlisle?!

Carlisle could have immediately seen that his behaviour is getting worse and worse, and that he spared no-one. So shouldn't his coven leader take immediate action to keep the rest of the coven safe? The way it was going, Emmett or even Esme were next, before he would dare to attack Carlisle himself. Why didn't he see that?

He's a ticking time bomb.

What kind of a leader would just go and ignore that? He could have seriously hurt them, all of them, but Carlisle just sat there and asked him about how he was feeling. As if a cosy little talk would change what he was or what he was capable of when he lost control.

Maybe he should indeed lose an arm for this... or both of his hands. Yes, his hands and his teeth to minimise the risk of him even daring to think of hurting a member of this coven ever again. If he were in charge of this coven and had a coven member act like this, he'd definitely consider that.

He raked his fingers through his blonde hair as he felt that his control over his emotions slipped, and a low growl escaped him.

Carlisle's complete ignorance of the danger he could be to the entire family and the annoyance about still having to wait for his punishment suddenly made white-hot rage fill his body and boil in his stomach, and without thinking he grabbed the next best thing off the bed stand and threw it forcefully through the room.

Too bad that his fingers had curled around the shaft of the bedside lamp, and too bad that there had still been a sense of defiance simmering beneath the surface when he had left the study, and so he had left his room door wide open.

But what was really, really too bad, was that he had thrown the lamp in that exact direction. Not even half a second later, and it flew into the hallway where it crashed against the white wall, before the broken pieces of the lamp and the glass shade shattered onto the stairway underneath.

And too bad that even before the sound of glass shards falling down the stairs had petered out, Jasper could hear the sharp scraping of chair legs on the wooden floor in Carlisle's study, followed by loud, hurried footsteps.

Sorry for the wait guys, but I didn't have much time to write and then Jasper was being stupid and I have the feeling that the next chapter will be worse, because we'll have some Edward in the next one and he is extremely stupid and... yay, Edward.

Ok, enough whining.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, guys! :D