DISCLAIMER: I don't own nor do I claim any rights to Twilight & it's characters.

A/N: Thanks to those who reviewed! Such quick feedback is what motivated me to write this chapter today instead of doing 'real work'. This chapter is longer (2k+, people!) and only one perspective—lemme know if works for you! As always- Enjoy!

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Chapter 3: Mending

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Jasper:

She thought I was an angel.

I was stunned.

This little girl must have had an absolutely terrifying life if I was her idea of an angel.

A particularly raw scream ripped from the girl's lips and I snapped out of my daze.

"Damn it, Edward." He should have been back with Carlisle by now. I didn't know how to help her by myself. I had tried projecting calm upon her, but the calm didn't negate the pain. I had tried to make her tired, hoping sleep would dull the burn, but the pain was too strong for her to come anywhere near unconsciousness. In my distress I had even tried euphoria, hoping that the happiness would help her come to terms with the pain. It was only during euphoria that she began to cry, the tears turning dust to mud on her cheeks.

I gave up after that.

I still couldn't believe that Edward had slipped.

No, slipped isn't strong enough. He had slipped, landed on an upturned knife and cut both his feet off.

I sighed. If only.

Who was she? Who was she that she could break decades of unwavering devotion to Carlisle's beliefs in an instant? What could she have possibly done in the few minutes between when I left Edward at the start of school and when I saw him leaving with her, already injured, slung over his back? How would anyone go about provoking a vampire to that point?

I looked at her again, her face contorted with pain, eyes shining with unshed tears, body clenched and twitching involuntarily. Her hands were clenched so tightly that her short nails had carved bloody grooves into her palms. I gently unfurled her fingers and let them curl tightly around my thumbs, her still-human strength barely registering.

"Who are you?" I asked her.

I lifted my head as Carlisle ran into the clearing, stopped beside me and pulled medical instruments from his bag. He took her temperature, her pulse, and her blood pressure before turning to me.

"She's been bitten." He said.

I bit back a sarcastic comment. Oh, no. You really think so?

"Yes." I said instead.

I could feel disappointment and sympathy pouring off Carlisle in waves. He removed a few antibacterial wipes from his bag and set about removing some of the blood and debris from the girl's multiple wounds. I wanted to scoff. Antibacterial wipes. Upside to being a vampire #1: Infections? Not so much a problem anymore.

I noticed Carlisle was avoiding making eye contact, so I projected concern and confusion at him. He took a deep breath before saying,

"Jasper, I know how hard you have tried, and I promise you that we will get through this. I know it doesn't seem big now, but I am very proud you managed to stop before—"

"Hold on there!" I finally managed to gather myself enough to cut him off.

"Edward didn't tell you?" I asked.

"Tell me what?" Carlisle asked.

I shouldn't be pleased about this. I shouldn't be pleased about this. I shouldn't be pleased about this.

"Edward is the one who bit her. And he wasn't going to stop; I had to physically remove him from the girl. He would have drained her dry."

I immediately felt remorse. Carlisle was winded. He stopped his ministrations on the human and stared at me, his eyes darting back and forth between mine.

"Edward?" he asked.

I tried to have a little more sympathy.

'Yes, Edward. He was completely feral. I don't know what happened but I've never seen him like that before. Something made him snap. He seemed to come back a little when the venom hit the human's system and her blood stopped smelling so… delicious."

Carlisle looked back at the broken human writhing on the ground, shrieking in utter torture.

"Edward…"

I had never seen Carlisle so crushed in my entire life. I couldn't bear to look at him while his beliefs about his oldest son, his trust and faith crumbled around him. I turned my attention instead to the frail human in front of me. There had to be something I could do. Calm didn't work, nether did lethargy or joy…

How about love?

I thought about it. It was worth a shot. Love was almost more than an emotion. It suggested a purpose, something to live for. And that's really what the little human needed to feel right now. Like this pain is conquerable. Like she has something to live for.

I caught myself. Well, almost live for, I amended.

I gave it a shot. I blasted her with the most potent love I had.

It fucking worked. Her eyes shot open and I could have sworn that, at least for a second, she looked right at me. Her breathing slowed down and she went from screaming aloud to moaning and wincing in pain.

Hey. It was an improvement.

Carlisle looked at me.

"What did you just do?" he asked.

For some reason I felt uncomfortable with the truth.

"I just calmed her down."

Carlisle looked so proud,

"Jasper, that's remarkable! Think of the possibilities! To be able to ease the suffering of transition. Do you see what that could mean? If you can control one area of vampire nature, what's to say you couldn't control another?"

I thought about what he meant.

"The thirst?"

"Exactly! Oh, we have to try and test—I mean as soon as the girl…"

I thought I was going to hurl. I felt worse than Edward in that moment. I had lied, and Carlisle was looking at me with more trust and appreciation than he ever had before.

I couldn't stand it.

I needed a reason to leave.

"Are we staying in Forks?" I asked Carlisle.

"What?" I must have interrupted his train of thought.

"After she's done, are we gonna leave? Or are we staying in Forks?"

Carlisle seemed concerned.

"I think we have to prepare for both possibilities. On one hand, we may have exposed ourselves,"

Edward may have exposed us.

"And so leaving would be advisable, if not necessary. On the other hand, is it fair to uproot this poor girl on top of everything else she is going to have to go through?"

"So for now, we plan for both." I said.

"Yes." Carlisle seemed lost in thought.

My training kicked in, and I couldn't help but stand a little straighter as I rattled off the most important details.

"Okay, first we need to fake a death. Something that won't require a corpse, or much of one. I need to get back to class, and you need to call in and get Edward excused for the day. We need to find out if there were any witnesses and handle them, and we need to find out who this girl is, who she's left behind, who's going to worry. But most importantly, we need to get her somewhere safe."

Carlisle immediately hopped on board.

"I can fake the death and procure a substitute body, if necessary. We need to know if she was seen at the school so we know what story will be most plausible. And the witnesses?" Carlisle sighed, "It would be much simpler if Edward could help."

"Edward can't be trusted." I barked. Carlisle's face fell.

"At least right now. We can't risk digging a deeper hole than the one we're already standing in."

Carlisle accepted that.

"Then you handle getting back to class and finding any witnesses. I'll get her back to the house, then begin to work on a car crash; that's the safest bet unless you tell me otherwise."

I nodded my agreement.

"I'll call you as soon as I learn anything." I said. Carlisle coughed and looked at my hand.

"I'm going to have to set that." He gestured to my fingers, which were still intertwined with the human's.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry." I peeled my hands away from hers, feeling for once my chill in the absence of her heat.

As Carlisle set her crushed fingers into place, I took off for the school, rubbing my hands together to get the unusual feeling off of my skin.

"Call the others!" I shouted over my shoulder. Carlisle raised a hand in acknowledgement and bent back over the girl.

I slid into French class, disrupting the horribly butchered attempts by the students to ask for directions to the library. I beckoned the French teacher over, and she scurried to see what I needed.

"Jasper?" she asked.

"Est-ce que je peux être excusé de la classe?," I asked, "Je ne me sens pas bien."

I would like to say it was my flawless French that won her over, but if I'm being honest, I was pouring on the nearly endless amounts of charm and charisma at my disposal.

"Naturellement!" The teacher responded with a half smile. She reached her hand to my shoulder and began lightly stroking my arm.

"And if there's anything I can do?" Then, swear to fucking god, the sixty-something, gray haired, tight as nails, Madame Jones batted her eyelashes at me.

This day could not get more bizarre.

"You know, I'm gonna be okay. But thanks...for…that." I walked out of the classroom, my skin fairly crawling.

I went back to the hallway where Edward had accosted the human. Oh jeez. The fucking locker had an indent where her head hit. And, fantastic. More blood.

I held my breath as I wiped the blood off with my button down shirt. I snapped open the locker and popped out the dent before closing the locker, and throwing out my bloody shirt. It wouldn't pass vampire inspection, but a human wouldn't see anything amiss.

By the door to the hallway was a plain canvas backpack, lying abandoned on the floor.

"And…? We have a winner." I pulled out a wallet, and looked at the ID inside. There she was.

"One Miss Isabella Swan. Organ donor. Arizona? Interesting..." I put the wallet back in the bag and slung it over my shoulder. I pulled out my cell phone, restricted my number, and called the school from memory.

"Forks High, how may I direct your call?"

I tried to make my voice rougher and nondescript.

"This is Mr. Swan, checking to see if my daughter Isabella came to school today." I shook my head. It was the best I could come up with under pressure.

"Oh, Hi Chief Swan!" Chief? "Lemme check for you….well, attendance sheets aren't in yet, but I don't think Isabella ever made it—she never finished her registration or picked up her class schedule."

Finished registration? Oh my god, it was her first day. I had to admit, even when Edward screwed up, he did it well. This Isabella girl had no ties here.

"Thank you so much, ma'am. I sure appreciate it." I winced as my southern drawl crept in and hung up the phone before the secretary noticed. Now for witnesses.

I spent the next half an hour, immersed in the emotions of the population of the high school. I was alert for panic or distress. While I found a couple people taking pop quizzes they weren't prepared for, and one girl crying in a bathroom over her boyfriend's infidelity, I didn't find anyone freaking out because Edward Cullen had abused a strange girl in the hallway during first period.

Edward was lucky.

Before I left for the house, I checked to make sure my siblings had all been excused from school. I peeked quickly into each class window just long enough to see that Carlisle had gotten in touch with them all.

I began the run home, thinking all the while. We had had close calls in the past, mostly my fault if I was going to be honest. This felt different, somehow. Part of it was being on the clean-up crew instead of the wrecking crew; it still felt strange to be trusted with the responsibility of dealing with Edward's mess. But that wasn't it. Every near miss, every accident in the past: We had been forewarned. We had known that it was coming. Where was the forewarning this time? Where was the premonition?

I increased my speed to the house.

Where was Alice?