A/N: I forgot to thank you all for voting for me in the fandom choice awards. What a great surprise and honor. I love my time here, and I'm glad you seem to enjoy it too.

For reference, the Serenity Prayer-used often in AA and NA and all that good jazz-goes as follows:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

"Alice, why do you put up with me?"

"Oh, Jasper." On the other end of the phone, Alice sighed. "I don't think you're ready to talk about that yet. Don't try to change the subject. You have something on your mind. Talk."

She knew him so well.

Jasper blew out a long breath. He held his phone to one ear while he used his free hand to flip through the photo album Bella had given him for the millionth time. Reaching the end, he traced the last picture with the tip of his finger. It was the day Bella had finally been able to bring Kaylee home from the hospital. The baby girl in the picture was fast asleep in a crib Jasper had put together, in a nursery he'd helped Bella paint.

"You know how they say a man doesn't become a father until he sees his baby?" he asked Alice.

"Yeah."

"That's bullshit. At least, it was for me." He pulled the album up his body as he moved from a cross-legged position to lay down on the bed. He cradled the closed album to his chest as he spoke again. "From the minute Bella told me she was pregnant, I was a father."

Somewhere there were pictures of Bella with shy smiles, her hands pressed to the increasing bulge of her belly. He'd spent so many hours marvelling as their baby grew inside her, and she had always been patient with him. She let him take a million pictures and ran her fingers through his hair when he pressed his ear to her belly to talk to their baby.

"It's been part of my identity for so long, you know?" he said to Alice. "These years I've been gone, I kept her in my heart. I talked about her so much in the clinic. My daughter who died. I never forgot."

Never, except during drug-induced hazes when he forgot his own name, did he forget he had a baby. He'd carried the guilt and grief of her death with him for three years.

"Jasper, I can't even imagine."

He pressed the heel of his palm into his eyes and dug hard. "It's just… When she was dead, she was mine. And I wouldn't trade it. Of course I wouldn't trade it. She's alive and beautiful and happy."

"But when she was dead, no one could take her away from you?"

His breath left him in a huff. "Yeah." The word was small and broken. He closed his eyes against the sting of tears and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't want to cry. He didn't deserve to feel so sorry for himself.

"The things you can change," Alice said reminding Jasper of the serenity prayer.

Alice knew damn well he didn't like the prayer. No god was going to grant him the serenity; he was going to have to find it for himself. The effect was the same, though. There were things he couldn't change, and the consequences of his actions were among them. He'd thought he was at least mentally prepared for what the fallout of his coming home would be, but the reality of it was so much more than he could bear.

"One step at a time. There's plenty you can do."

Alice was right, of course. Even if Edward hadn't taken his place as Kaylee's father, there would have been steps to take. One way or another, he had to get back on his feet, and that journey in and of itself wasn't going to be easy.

"Yeah. I'm um…" He tried to think around the overwhelming sensation that came over him whenever he thought of everything he had to do. "Tomorrow. Mom's taking some time off work to help me get whatever's left of my finances in order."

Jasper may have been a drug addict, but before the accident, he'd been a high functioning one. He had a BFA in Photomedia and a Master's in Art History. He'd made a decent amount of money as a staff photographer for the Seattle Times, and he'd taken side gigs here and there. He hadn't been hurting. It had taken him the better part of a year after he went off the deep end to run through his savings.

"I need to see if I can get my bank account reopened. If I have any kind of credit left at all."

"Sounds like a good time."

"Yeah." The tension behind Jasper's eyes and the grip around his lungs were beginning to ease. "Mom wants to pay for my counseling."

The whole twelve-step program wasn't the only game in town, and it had proved not to be a good fit for Jasper. He found one-on-one counseling to be much more effective.

"That's a good thing."

Jasper grumbled. "I don't want my parents to have to pay for anything like that. It's bad enough I have nothing left to give them now."

"That will change. You're going to look for a job, right?"

"Of course, but that's exactly what I mean. I can wait to get counseling until after I have a job of my own to pay for it."

"Jasper."

"I've been okay these last few months without it."

"You are in an intensely stressful situation right now, Jay, and that's not going to change any time soon. You need more support than your parents can give you, especially because they're part of your stress."

"I have you."

"Yes, of course. You always have me, but I'm here. Let your parents help you with counseling. If not that, I know you hate those NA meetings, but it might help to find a proper sponsor. Someone who's actually close by."

"I know. You're right. I know. I just hate this. I already owe you so much. I don't want to owe them too."

"We've talked about this. Right now, you have to think about what's best for you as much as you can. No one else is responsible for that. I know you feel you owe me something. The best way you can pay me back is not to fail at this. I'll bet your parents feel the same way. Let your mother help you. Take a break when you can get it, because you know damn well you're not going to get many."

Jasper thought of dinner and the hard look on Edward's face.

"You don't get to sit here all pathetic and pretend you're sorry."

"You're right about that," Jasper said to Alice.

~0~

That Monday, the third full day he'd been home, Jasper finally fell asleep. It was as though he hadn't slept in years. He slept right through the morning. When he woke to the low light of late afternoon, he was still tired. Tired and confused.

"Oh, hell," he muttered as he tried to disentangle himself from the cocoon of blankets. He rubbed his temples and tried to shake off the lethargy of his limbs.

The house was quiet when he emerged from his room, but he found his mother easily in her office. He wondered if she had any idea how grateful he was at the way a grin lit her face when she turned to see him in the doorway. She stood and wrapped her arms around him. Jasper leaned his forehead on her shoulder and let himself revel in the fact he could hug his mother again.

It had been a very lonely three years for him.

"You let me sleep," he said when he could finally convince himself to let her go.

"Sweetheart, you were dead on your feet." She rubbed his back and peered up at him. "How are you feeling? Are you hungry?"

He nodded and followed obediently after Esme as she went to the kitchen to make him a grilled cheese. He tried to help, but she pushed him gently down on the kitchen stool. "You're so skinny. Let me take care of you," she said.

Jasper sat and let her fuss. If she'd seen what he looked like a year and some months before, she would have been horrified. When he woke up in the hospital after being stabbed, he'd been skeletally thin. He'd filled out quite a bit since then.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to waste your time today."

"I always have plenty of work to keep me busy."

Jasper ran his hand through his hair, irritated at himself. "Still, I'm not trying to be lazy. I wanted to get a few things done today."

Esme smiled and reached out to touch his cheek. "It'll wait just one more day." She went back to chopping chunks of cheese. "Anyhow, you're awake just in time to help me go shopping. I need to pick up a few things for dinner tonight."

"Oh, Mom. You don't have to cook. We could order pizza."

She eyed him. "I want to cook. You still like my stroganoff, don't you?"

He laughed. "In the clinic, they had this god awful stroganoff. It was clumpy and gray and gross. I missed you."

"I would have been there, you know. In a heartbeat I would have been there."

Jasper was quiet. He wanted to say he knew that, but he hadn't. He'd been so plagued by guilt and doubt. In the clinic, he'd occasionally awoken from nightmares where his family slammed the door in his face and left him out to die in the freezing cold.

Esme exhaled in a quick gust. Jasper saw her eyes were glassy before she turned to the stove. "It's Edward's favorite, too, remember? It can't hurt."

Thinking of his youngest brother, Jasper sighed. "No. It can't hurt."

~0~

Emmett arrived with Edward and Bella. Rosalie, still not in the mood to see Jasper, stayed home with the kids including Kaylee. Jasper did his best to hide his disappointment, but he couldn't say he was surprised. At least Edward and Bella both seemed calmer tonight. Tense but calm.

"Ground rule," Bella said. She looked him in the eyes, her gaze steady.

"Okay," Jasper said.

"I don't want you to talk about Kaylee tonight. I know you have to have questions, but I can't hear them. Not yet. I want to listen to you. I know that's probably not fair, but you wanted to talk before you knew she was alive again, right?"

Jasper held his hands out in a placating motion. "I get it, Boo."

The old endearment fell off his tongue without forethought, and he wished he could take it back instantly. Edward's features twisted, and he stepped forward, his stance threatening. "You have no right."

"It slipped out. I'm sorry."

"Is this a game to you?"

Jasper narrowed his eyes at his brother. "What are you talking about? It was a slip of the tongue."

"How convenient."

"Actually, seeing as I wasn't trying to set you off, it's not really convenient at all. Is that what's driving you so crazy about me? You hate any reminder that I was ever with Bella? Well, I can't fucking erase that, and I wouldn't want to. I regret a lot of things I've done. I'm sorry about all this hurt, but I don't regret being with Bella. I can't."

"Oh, that's great. You-"

Sick to death of his brother's anger, however well deserved, Jasper drew himself up to his full height. "What do you want from me, Edward? I can't undo my existence. Only an idiot would promise that, so what do you want from me? You want to make it clear what a piece of shit I am, well guess what? I already know that. There's not a damn thing you can say to me I haven't already said to myself a thousand times over. I know. I get it. I fucked up.

"And I'm sorry that I'm how you met your wife, but honestly, look at the trade-off there. Bella looks at you in a way no one has ever looked at me. You're twenty-four years old, and you have everything a man could want. You have a home, a family, a good job."

"I worked hard for what I have."

"I never said you didn't. I just said you have it. You have an enviable life, and what do I have, huh? I'm thirty-one, and I have nothing to show for my life except scars and track marks."

By then, Jasper's shoulders had begun to sag again. He was so tired. He sighed as he looked his brother in the eyes. "Look, you have plenty to be pissed about. I get that. But don't you think that maybe you could at least get past the fact your wife was my girlfriend? Give me that one small thing?"

Edward glared, his shoulders heaving, for several long, tense seconds, but he finally jerked his head in a nod. He let Bella pull him back to her side.

Esme let out a shaky breath. "Okay. Maybe we can eat now?"

Jasper, still tense, nearly jumped out of his skin when Emmett clamped a hand on his shoulder. "Come on. We'll set the table."

It was only Emmett's hand guiding him that got Jasper's feet to move again. He shuffled forward and tried to reorder his chaotic thoughts. He couldn't make them gel, couldn't think around the too-quick beat of his heart and the tremble of his limbs.

"Are you okay?" Emmett asked when he had pushed Jasper gently against the furthest wall.

Jasper's answering laugh was weak. "You don't have to do that."

"Do what?"

"Be nice to me."

"You're right, I don't have to do it."

Jasper closed his eyes and breathed in deep a few times. "So why are you? Aren't you angry too?"

"Do you want me to be?"

Jasper tilted his head up and opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling. "I just want the other foot to fall. Edward hates me. Bella… what I see in her eyes is half anger and half pity. Mom and Dad don't trust me as far as they could throw me. They always seem surprised when I'm still here. Dad keeps staring right in my eyes. I think he's trying to figure out if I'm high at any given moment." He huffed. "I guess I'm just waiting for you to do whatever it is you're going to do."

Emmett was uncharacteristically quiet for long enough that Jasper almost pushed off the wall to end the awkward moment they were caught in. "I remember the way Mom cried when she accepted you weren't going to come home. I wanted to kick your ass. Thinking about it, sometimes I still do. But someone beat me to it, so what's the point?

"The thing is, Jazz, your mistakes aren't all of who you are. We were giggling kids and dumbshit teenagers together, you know? It just seems stupid to me to forget all the good things because you did a few really bad things. Fuck it up again and I'll kick your ass. Until then… I don't know. It seems like you have enough on your plate without worrying about me getting pissed. Mostly I figure I'll just have to sit and wait to see if my brother really is back, because I missed you. "

Jasper didn't say anything. Gratefulness always brought confusion with it. He was so utterly thankful for Emmett's easy acceptance he could have wept, but he wasn't sure he believed it. He was too scared to believe it. Whether he deserved it or not, if he believed Emmett was telling the truth, it would kill him to be faced later with his derision.

Emmett bumped his shoulder. "Come on. Let's set the table."

That Jasper could do.

~0~

Dinner was amazing. More than that, it brought back so many happy memories, Jasper could hardly breathe. He couldn't eat it. Even if the nostalgia wasn't choking him, his churning stomach made it impossible to eat more than a bite or two.

He wrung his hands, digging the pad of his thumb into his palm, trying to find calm. His family was ready to listen even if he wasn't ready to talk.

"I, um…" He took a deep breath. "When I left the hospital… I knew it was a fucked up thing to do. I knew it. I thought of each of you. I'm not sure if that's any comfort at all. It's like… there was this voice in my head telling me the right thing to do. It said, turn around. Your girlfriend needs you. Your mom and dad…" His throat got too tight, and he looked up at his parents. It was hard to lift his head as heavy as he felt with guilt. "I saw your faces in my mind, your disappointment. I couldn't… The voice kept telling me to go back, but my body kept moving further and further away. Like… instinct. I couldn't have stopped my feet if I wanted to, and I…" He hung his head.

"You didn't want to," Bella said.

Jasper shook his head. "I wanted to. I was always serious when I told you I was going to be better. But the voice telling me the right thing to do had the volume turned all the way down, and the voices that wanted… you know, the drugs, they were shouting. It's a need. It's so much stronger than anything else I've ever experienced. It gets to the point you can't think around it. There's nothing but…" He closed his eyes. "It doesn't matter. That part… It just doesn't matter."

He shifted in his seat and continued, staring studiously down at the table. "Anyway. After I, um… After I woke up after I left the hospital, everything was different. I got the hell out of Dodge because if I didn't, I would have come back to you all, but I knew I was useless the way I was. I knew I could only hurt you more. So I got on a bus. And then another bus. Little by little, everything fell away. I took little odd jobs here and there at first. I stayed in hotels. Then I just stopped. It didn't matter to me anymore if I had a bed or if I was warm. Money didn't matter. The things I did for my next hit…"

He stopped for a second and had to swallow sporadically to get the lump in his throat down. He squeezed his hands so his nails dug into his palms. "I missed you all so much. That's when I took the pictures, when it got so bad even the drugs couldn't take away that feeling. When I wanted to be good enough.

"Then, about a year and a couple months ago, I woke up in the hospital. I was detoxed because I'd been out for awhile." There was a lot he was leaving out. He wanted to tell them about Alice, but it wasn't the time. "I've been clean since then. Working on getting better. Being better."

"And now you think you're good enough?" Edward's voice was hard, but not quite as venomous as it had been.

"No," Jasper said. "But I want to get there. I think I can get there now. I know I need to prove it. I don't expect anyone to believe I'm going to make good on my promises. But I had a plan. I wanted to come home, get a job. I wanted to work on being a good son, a good brother." He cleared his throat and glanced at Emmett, purposefully not looking at Edward and Bella. "I want to be a good uncle if you'll let me. I know it will take time…"

Carlisle clapped his shoulder. "We have time."

An hour or so later, Jasper was beyond exhausted. But when Bella reached out to give his hand a brief squeeze, he couldn't help himself.

"I know you ask me not to… Can I ask just one question tonight? Only one."

Bella looked over her shoulder. Edward was still talking to Carlisle and Esme. "Okay," she said, though she seemed apprehensive about the idea.

"I'm not… I'm not upset, okay? I know I have no right to be angry. I just want to know."

Bella crossed her arms and looked at him, waiting for his question.

"Kaylee… We had a name picked out." Madelyn Rose Whitlock had been the name in Jasper's head for three years. "I thought you loved her name. Why did you change it?"

"Oh." She looked away from him but not fast enough that he missed the pain that flitted across her features. "I didn't sign the birth certificate for a few days. There was a lot going on, and I hated that I had to put your name on it. I couldn't think about calling her the name we chose together, not when you'd abandoned her.

"I told Edward what I wanted for her. That I wanted her to be happy despite the fact her father had run out on her. I hoped she was always happy and smart. Edward said it sounded like Kaylee. You know, from Firefly?"

Jasper managed a tight nod to acknowledge he understood the reference. It wasn't easy to hear the things she was saying, to face what he'd done.

"Kaylee just fit her."

He nodded, looking down at his shoes. "Yeah. It does. It sounds happy."

"Jasper," she said after a moment.

He looked up.

"Her middle name is Madelyn."

It was well after Edward, Bella, and Emmett had left that Jasper realized the significance. As angry as she'd been, Bella had given their daughter one tie back to him.

A/N: SO! That happened with minimal bloodshed.

Many thanks to barburella and jessypt.

How are we feeling now, folks?