Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: Okay, so this is actually Part 2 of Part 2. My second chapter was so ridiculously long (especially in comparison to all the other chapters I have written thus far) that it felt like I had to split it up in two.

*WARNING* There is a tad bit of gore mentioned here. Please let me know if you feel it requires a ratings change. (Otherwise it will remain a T throughout... sorry for everyone that is hoping for a love scene. But if the thought of what yours would eventually turn out to be, should you try one, makes you cringe... well, it's probably just best to stay away.)

When he realized he had been subconsciously leading Alice toward that glen, he abruptly veered off course and ended up in the small clearing where he had mutilated that bear a year earlier. He stopped so suddenly, Alice ended up running into his back.

He whirled around with a sneer. "What? Didn't see that coming?"

Alice shrank back from the obvious hostility in his voice. "No," she admitted reluctantly. "My visions involving you have become a bit... wonky."

"I see," Jasper hummed. "And have they always been in regards to me?

"No," she hurriedly supplied, with an assured smile. She may have been relieved to be able to answer the question truthfully, but she was unaware that she had just backed herself into a corner.

His voice was calm when he asked the next question. "Did you know?"

Her emotions shifted so swiftly that it almost made him dizzy. She was scared now... and guilty as hell. "I don't-"

He cut her off. "Did. You. Know?" He spoke through clenched teeth.

She shook her head rapidly. "No, no, I really thought we were mates." Lie.

He violently grabbed her arms, a loud squealing sound piercing the air when he dug his fingers in. "STOP LYING TO ME!" he screamed, little spittles of venom spraying from his mouth and splashing her cheeks.

"Okay! Okay!" She admitted, with a sob. "I just didn't want to be alone!"

Briefly stunned by confusion, he released her. "What?"

"I knew we weren't mates the first time we met, but you were so lost and alone and I knew I wouldn't meet my real mate for a long time... I wasn't sure when, the visions weren't clear at that point. And we had a connection didn't we? Yes, yes we did, I felt it. I taught you a better way of life and brought you to the Cullen's... that must mean something, right?" She wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to him at that point, and instead continued nodding and rambling to herself. "Eventually I fell in love with you and was able to ignore everything for a while, so much I really began to believe you were my mate."

His anger was building again. "Ignore that you used me, you mean?"

"I loved you!" Alice insisted.

"And," he choked up slightly, "Bella?"

"I couldn't see her!" she swore. "Not at first... and when I did, when I saw you were meant to be together...I just... I wasn't ready to give you up yet!"

He was vibrating at that point, and if Alice had been paying attention, she would have noticed the demonic black slowly seeping into his eyes.

"She messed everything up! She was supposed to come later, after I met my mate. She... she... she wasn't supposed to kill herself!" she finished with a shriek.

Jasper roared as his vision went dark.

-oo-

snarling...

screaming...

tearing...

ripping...

venom...

shouting...

hands...

pulling...

-oo-

It took all four of the men to pull him off, but the damage was done.

Coming back to himself, Jasper looked over to where a silently sobbing Alice was being cradled by her hysterical mate. No, she wasn't dead. Even in the back of his mind, a part of Jasper wasn't willing to make a mate suffer the agony he had.

But she would never speak again.

The hole he had torn in her throat could be repaired, something her mate was currently trying to do by holding the chunk of ripped flesh a horrified Rosalie had passed him in place over the damage, but the pulverized larynx squished between his fingers and the venom he had spat in the gap where it had once been would guarantee that she would never spew another lie.

The family stood heavily divided, Jasper on one side of the clearing, the rest of the Cullen clan, including a visibly torn Emmett on the other. Alice's mate snarled up from his position on the ground, the enraged look on his face indicating that he was moments away from attacking Jasper.

"Don't even think about it, Bernie," he warned, dropping the mangled flesh at his feet and grinding it into the dirt with his boot heel. "No one will lose another mate." He glared viciously at a still sobbing Alice. "As much as I may wish it."

"How could you do this to her?" Rosalie shrieked. "How could you do this to our family? She-"

"She, nothing," Jasper snapped. "She lied to me. She's been lying to me since the day we met. She's been lying to you. She made me... she made Bella..." he trailed off with a wounded snarl.

"And this is how you deal with it?" An enraged Carlisle asked. With his next words he ensured that, while he may not have been a man that got angry very often, when he did, he didn't pull any punches. "No matter what you tell yourself Jasper, you are the one that made the choice that day. You are the one who chose Alice."

Jasper's face collapsed, venom welling in his eyes. I did... I did... Oh god I did...

Turning to the others, Carlisle motioned for Emmett to pick up Alice, taking her from a reluctant Bernard's arms and indicated that they all should head back towards the house. Esme hesitated, her eyes flitting fearfully between Jasper and her mate.

"I'll be fine," Carlisle murmured. "Go."

Esme nodded and turned. She paused and turned back around. "Jasper, I..." she trailed off as she searched for the right words. Finding none, she could only manage a single heartbroken smile before finally leaving.

Carlisle's eyes trailed her until she was out of sight. "It's probably for the best if you don't return home," he spoke softly, meeting Jasper's gaze with a heartbroken look similar to Esme's.

Jasper gave a stiff nod.

"I can set you up with some money, if you need it."

"I have my own. You know that," Jasper replied tightly.

"Yes... well, when you have a place set up, call me and I can have your clothes and things sent to-"

"Keep them."

"Jasper surely-"

"No, Carlisle, I think everything that needs to be said has been said," Jasper interjected, turning away when Carlisle nodded.

"I don't regret what I did to Alice," he tossed over his shoulder, as he was walking away.

"Maybe one day you'll come looking for forgiveness," Carlisle replied.

Jasper stilled. "No, Carlisle, I won't. That's reserved only for... Bella, but I'll never get that chance, will I?"

Silence was Jasper's only answer. He swiftly picked up the pace; cutting the connections to the family he had been with for over 50 years with each step he took.

-oo-

Peter stared at Jasper when he finished. Why did it seem the most unbelievable (at first) stories he ever heard took place while he was sitting on a couch?

"Did you ever?" He asked, strangely curious.

"Ask for forgiveness, you mean?"

Peter nodded.

"No. It would have been a lie if I had. Other then speaking with Carlisle briefly after he sent me the papers granting my divorce, I haven't seen any of the Cullen's since that day."

Silence reigned again as Peter rolled the story over in his head. There were so many questions he could ask, but he really only wanted the answer to one.

"Why?" Peter demanded, the meaning clear in his cracked voice. Why had you turned her away?

"I..I..." Jasper stuttered, scrambling for an answer that wouldn't have him thrown out. "There was something there," he finally admitted. "But I was... afraid of it. I had spent 50 years with the Cullen's, with Alice, desperately trying to find my place with them. So much, that after awhile, I was able to convince myself that they were it for me, that... she was it for me. I wanted so badly to believe it, that I ignored the other part of myself that said differently." Ashamed at his cowardice, and realizing that what he just admitted echoed Alice's words from years ago, he was unable to meet Peter's eyes. "Oh god," he moaned, "I suppose I'm no better then Alice, am I?"

"Why the hell did you try to make it work after then?" he spat.

Jasper's eyes were haunted when they rose to look at him. "I thought they were all I had left."

Eventually, the pity that the story invoked and Jasper's genuine contriteness seemed to be enough for Peter to share Bella's entire story with him. Sadly, the pity disappeared as the story progressed, Peter's tone regressing to the point where he was speaking through clenched teeth by the time he got to Bella's turning and the death of Jasper's... unborn child.

The rest of the story was abruptly cut off, when another mournful wail worked its way up Jasper's throat, his mind snapping.

When Jasper came to himself four days later, he was filthy. The evidence of the decimation of ten acres of forest and five unfortunate campers, stained him from his matted hair to his bare feet.

In the wake of the aftermath, Peter and Charlotte had to move themselves and a practically comatose Jasper to one of their spare homes before they could continue on with the rest of her story... and the part they had played in the end.

"What?" Jasper had hissed.

Peter snapped his eyes up to meet Jasper's rapidly darkening gaze. "No." He ordered harshly, without the slightest hint of fear. "You don't get to do that."

"I don't get to do that?" Jasper spat. "You killed my mate!" He finished with a roar.

"No, Jasper," Charlotte whispered, coming up behind Peter and putting her hand on his shoulder for support. "You did."

The fight drained completely from Jasper as Carlisle's words echoed through his head, 'You chose Alice..' and he fell silent. Defeated, he spoke only one final word. "Where?" The dead tone to his voice and the similar look in his eyes convinced Peter to reluctantly supply the location of Bella's final resting place.

With a nod from Peter as Jasper was leaving, Charlotte slipped the weathered photograph Bella had given them years earlier into his hand.

-oo-

The photograph...

Jasper smiled grimly as he looked over his shoulder. Where once was ruins, now sat a perfect replica of the picture he had blown up, the one that was currently hanging on his living room wall. The outside was perfect down to the last detail.

-oo-

The minute he had stepped onto the property, it was like a door in his mind had unlocked, and he was hit with a memory so hard that it dropped him to his knees. Blueprints, wood, stone, tools. sweating, laughing, radiant smiles, love... It was disjointed and over in minutes, but he remembered every single detail. Looking over the land, he knew what he had to do.

It had been an interesting effort, getting a hold of the deed to the lands.

Jasper had placed a call to Jenks, a lawyer with penchant for taking on supernatural clients, including Jasper himself. It hadn't been easy to explain what he wanted; since he was sure what he was asking would prove to be impossible.

To be honest, he was skeptical about the whole thing, certain he was only setting himself up for more disappointment. So when he stood in Jenks' office a week and a half later, listening to information so amazingly serendipitous, he had a hard time believing it was even true in the first place.

It turns out that the Whitlock family had been one of the very first settlers of Galveston. As the years passed and their wealth grew, the Whitlock patriarch (and Jasper's grandfather) William laid claim to over 100 acres of land (which included the property that Jasper and Isabella's home would eventually be built on.) When he passed it was stipulated in his will that the land would belong to 'a Whitlock of my blood' as long as one was alive to claim it.

Jasper's own father, had inherited the land, a little less than ten years before Jasper's birth (1844, Jenks had said when he'd ask. It had been a date Jasper had never been 100% sure of before), when William had died. After John's own death (the exact cause of which he'd learned from Peter) the land had been claimed by John's estranged younger brother Andrew. Many years later it would eventually be passed on to his own heir, Henry, when he died mere days after his sons 18th birthday.

Despite nearing destitution in his later years, Henry had steadfastly held onto that land for the next 50 years, before dying practically penniless in the spring of '42 with no children to carry on his legacy. That should have been the end of it.

With no Whitlock to claim it, the second part of the will would be honored and the land would transfer back to the city of Galveston, which had grown significantly in the last 125 years. And it would have, if not for the 'long-lost' daughter of Henry that suddenly appeared with all the right information and documentation to prove it. A daughter named Marie Isabella.

When the world tiptoed its way past the '90's, Marie's 'daughter' Isabelle (with the help of another supernaturally inclined lawyer, which Jenks informed him was a casual acquaintance), would step forward to claim it.

Bella, he thought at the end of the lengthy history, warmth spreading through him at the knowledge that she had gone through so much trouble to save his family's property. He tuned Jenks out and his brow furrowed. But she died almost 18 years ago... so..

"Who owns the property now?" Jasper asked, interrupting whatever Jenks had been saying.

"I was just about to tell you that, if you'd let me finish." Jenks was the only human he knew that didn't hesitate to give him attitude.

He'd asked him once why he didn't feel intimidated by him and had been greatly amused by his answer. "I'm a lawyer, I don't feel."

Jasper watched as Jenks reached for a file, running one hand through his salt and pepper hair as he scanned it. "It says here the property belongs to a Pete R. Whitlock."

Pete R... Jasper's eyes widened. Peter.

He didn't even bother thanking Jenks, slapping down a roll of cash on his desk and flitting out the door. Though judging by the look on the lawyer's face right before he left, it was something he was used to anyways.

-oo-

After five straight hours of running, Jasper burst through Peter's door, not even sparing a moment to knock.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He barked at Peter, who was slowly standing from the defensive crouch in front of Charlotte that he had instinctively fallen into.

"Tell you what?" Peter asked, genuinely bewildered.

"The property. Why didn't you tell me you owned the property?"

"You didn't ask."

Jasper scowled. "I'm serious."

"Serious? Fine. Bella told me and Char a little about the place before we came to find you, and after she... died, I looked into it. Found her lawyer who helped me get the deed transferred over to my name." He choked up a little. "I- I told them she was dead and that I was her brother."

Jasper raised an eyebrow. "That easy?"

Peter grimaced. "Actually, no. The town is starting to get suspicious, not to mention mad as hell, that no one seems to be doing anything with the property. I just got a call the other day saying that they were considering contesting the whole thing. And they have the grounds, seeing on how it's all based around a damn 200 year old will."

Jasper would not let that happen. That property and the ring dangling from the chain around his neck were the only two pieces of Bella he had left.

Since Jasper technically was a Whitlock, just not a living one, he'd gotten Jenks to tweak the already detailed and very forged documents he had made years ago to make him Peter's older brother. With those in hand, the two set out to argue their case.

The town council had been very reluctant to let the potential lawsuit go at first, having salivated over building on that land since the late 60's. The calm negotiations (on Jasper's part at least, Peter looked like he was close to draining the lot of them) had continued for an hour until he agreed to sell them back the property, at a ridiculously low price, under the stipulation that he could keep the little corner of land the house now sat on and the surrounding 10 acres of forest. They in turn would get the land on the opposite sides, the parts closest to two of their main roads. They were all too eager to agree after that.

Once the new deed was placed in his hand, the supplies to build in his truck, and had he not been so self-loathing, he would have truly believed that fate was on his side for the first time since... that day.

He rebuilt it on his own, going at a human pace. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Pausing occasionally to sit in the shade of their tree, his head resting beneath the initials J & B as he surveyed his work with a critical eye.

Peter had shown up once or twice during that year, but Jasper had refused to let him help.

"Repentance," Jasper had claimed as he hammered another tile on the roof.

"Is it working?" Peter asked softly.

The hammer stilled briefly, "No," before starting up again.

When the last tile in the walkway was in place, the flowers in the garden blooming, he set about carving a small, stone monument. Painstakingly and lovingly chiseling each detail until it was complete.

-oo-

Jasper dropped the hand that had been tracing the letters for the last hour. It was during these still moments under this tree that a new memory of Bella would slowly unfurl in his mind and another piece of the puzzle would slip into place. Their life together was becoming clearer each passing day.

Today's memory had been their wedding night.

He both looked forward to and cursed these moments, always begging someone, anyone, to tell him why he couldn't have remembered them years earlier, when Bella's beautiful face had looked at him with such heart-breaking hope. Asking why he had forgotten them at all.

Slipping the chain that held Bella's wedding band back over his head, he ended his day the same way he had every other one for the past year, walking over to the stone that sat atop her final resting place. The burnt patch on the ground had been replaced by sod in the shape of a heart, not unlike the one carved into the tree. He looked down and read the words that he had carved into it.

ISABELLA MARIE WHITLOCK

LOVED IN DEATH THE WAY SHE WASN'T IN LIFE

He had wept when he'd finished it.

He spent until sunrise the next morning staring at it, seriously contemplating, not for the first time, about asking Peter to kill him. But just like every day before, he knew he never would.

He wasn't worth it. Death was too good for him.