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: I so badly wish I could up my word count for you guys, but I think there's a certain point (at least with my chapters) where I am in danger of entering rambly territory.

Charlotte actually turned out to be an interesting POV to tackle, and I was really surprised about where her thoughts took me. Turns out she wasn't as neutral about the whole situation as I originally thought she was.

"What the hell did you do that for? I thought I told you to leave her be?"

Peter stared down at the crumpled form being cradled in Jasper's arms. He was a firm advocate of 'I won't believe it till I see it' (perhaps a foolish frame of mind for a creature that didn't technically exist) and even though he was seeing it, he still couldn't believe his eyes.

Jasper had been right. Although the girl had been an absolute mess, tangled hair, reddened eyes and ruddy cheeks, she still looked exactly the same. Bella was still, well, Bella. He felt Charlotte squeeze his hand enough to almost shatter it and knew that she must be in a similar state of shock.

Lost in the hurt from the way Bella's eyes had immediately dismissed him and Charlotte, he had almost missed the way she had paled and began twitching when she was looking at Jasper. Concerned, he had been about to speak up (though he was certain it wouldn't have done much good) when her eyes had rolled up and she had fainted. Judging by the guilty look on his face as he darted forward, Peter suspected Jasper had something to do with it.

Jasper blinked at the question and Peter almost snorted at the bewildered look on his face. "I panicked?" he asked hesitantly, as if unsure of the reason himself.

"You can't keep her asleep forever, Jasper."

-oo-

Jasper looked down into Bella's face, his heart twinging at her pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes. It didn't change anything; she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Tearing his eyes away, he looked up at Peter.

"I know. It's just until I figure out what to say to her."

"Well, you've already confirmed her mother was dead, it's not like you can take it back."

Jasper glared at him. "I hadn't planned on it." He sighed heavily and gathered her warm body into his arms, once again relishing her nearness. He had been so caught up in the badness of that night, that he hadn't really given himself a chance to appreciate her before. His breath hitched as he pressed his nose in her tangled hair, rooting deeply for her unique scent. It was almost completely covered by the acidic scent of her fear and the disgusting smell of the vampire who attacked her.

He hadn't felt comfortable enough to change her out of his clothes, (a part of him afraid of the reaction he'd get if she woke up in the middle of it) but knew he couldn't leave her in them for much longer. Simply the scent of another vampire on her was causing the venom in his veins to boil and he struggled with the urge to rip them off her. As reluctant as he was to add another vampire scent to the one already on her, he made a mental note to ask Charlotte to do it before she left.

As for the actual telling though...

"Just let me do this part alone. That's all I ask."

Peter opened his mouth to undoubtedly protest.

"I'm not going to keep her from you," he promised wearily. "I told you that, remember? But you saw her face and, I'm not saying this to hurt you, she didn't recognize you, either of you. At all." At the look Peter shot him he could pretty much guess what he was thinking. "And yes, you're right, somewhat. I didn't make the best first impression on her either, but at least there's some level of familiarity there."

"I don't know," Peter replied dubiously. "She didn't exactly look happy to see you."

"That's why I want you to promise me something."

He cocked his head. "What?"

"If at any point she decides she hates me," his voice choked up, "or that...that she never wants to see me again, that you and Charlotte will take care of her. If it's as a friend, or even on the sidelines, just make sure she stays safe."

"You plan on telling her everything? All at once?" he asked.

Jasper shook his head. "No. But eventually I'll have too."

"And you'd stay away from her if she asked you too?"

Jasper nodded sharply at Charlotte's question. "I'd do anything for her. After the hell I put her through, she deserves that much at least." He now understood the frame of mind Bella was in when she stepped in that fire. If she rejected him, nothing would stop him from-

A firm hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. "Whatever you're thinking, stop," Peter warned lowly.

"I'll think whatever I damn well please." Jasper's lips quirked in a small smirk as he basically repeated what Peter had said to him in the woods earlier. His face grew serious. "Just promise me."

Peter's jaw clenched. "She made me promise her too."

"Guess it really proves history is repeating itself," Jasper quipped half-heartedly, wincing when the joke fell flat.

"You're an asswipe, you know that?"

"I do."

"Fine, I promise. But I can't go through anything like that again. I won't help, not this time. And if you even try, I will stop you."

You can try, Jasper thought caustically. Wow. Somebody actually makes the effort to care for the first time in a very long while and I react like that? I am an asswipe.

"Agreed."

Peter seemed to sense his internal monologue, shooting him a warning look before nodding in agreement. "Good." He stared down at Bella, seemingly reluctant to leave before lightly touching Charlotte's (who seemed just as spellbound) shoulder. "C'mon, Char," he urged, giving that same shoulder a gentle shove.

Charlotte nodded dazedly and followed him towards the door.

"Wait!" Jasper called.

Both of them paused and turned to face him. He stood, looping his arm under Bella's leg and shifted her until she was cradled bridal style in his arms.

"I was wond-" his voice cracked with emotion and venom misted his eyes when Bella sighed lightly and buried her face in his neck. He cleared his throat and started over again. "I want to get her out of these clothes." He paused. "Okay, that didn't quite come out the way I wanted to." A small smile tilted his lips when Peter chuckled. "She's been in them for almost two days now and they're filthy. I didn't change them myself because it didn't feel right. So, will you do it for me Charlotte?"

"Of course," she agreed, squeezing Peter's arm.

She paused briefly by the couch, slinging a pair of the cotton pants and a t-shirt over her shoulder before moving to take Bella from him. He snarled instinctively when she touched Bella and she snatched her hand back.

"Sorry," he murmured sheepishly, motioning for her to hold her arms out and passing Bella's limp body over.

"It's alright," she said, shifting Bella gently in her arms as Peter approached them hesitantly from the side.

"Can I just...?" he asked Jasper beseechingly.

Unable to deny the open vulnerability in his face, Jasper nodded, this time suppressing his growl when Peter lightly touched her face.

"She's really real," he whispered, awe coloring his voice.

"I still can't believe it myself," Jasper replied lowly.

Peter dropped his arm and stepped aside to allow Charlotte to pass, eyes trailing her as she walked into Jasper's bedroom and nudged the door shut behind her.

"C'mon," Jasper said to Peter, eying the pathetic state of his clothes. "I think I might have a shirt that will fit."

-oo-

Charlotte shut the door softly behind her, a gentle smile on her face at the camaraderie between her mate and her maker on the other side of it. They were baby steps, yes, but at least they were being made and she felt relief rush through her.

It had been difficult to hate Jasper with the same vehemence Peter had and in the years they had been separated, she had often contemplated going behind her mate's back to contact him. The only thing that had stopped her was the belief, that despite their mating bond, Peter would have seriously contemplated leaving her if she had. What had happened with Jasper was proof enough that he didn't handle betrayal very well.

While Peter had been bitter that Jasper had abandoned them, she had, in some ways, understood why he'd done it. While her and Peter considered any life away from Maria's tyranny to be a better one, Jasper hadn't been able to fully escape the part of his past that he desperately wanted to- feeding from humans. Her and Peter had no problem switching from innocents to the scum of society, but Jasper always saw it differently. Good or bad, innocent or guilty, a life was still a life and he had already taken too many.

Jasper would say this many times over the years, often shrugging off the invites to hunt, but all Peter had seen was his maker starving himself and hadn't always reacted in the best ways. It wasn't his fault though. They had both been at a loss about what to do to help a vampire that refused his natural food source and even though they had tried their best, they hadn't been able to offer Jasper what he truly needed, at least not at the time. So it shouldn't have been that surprising that he had found somebody that could.

When Peter had found out that he had taken up with a group of 'veggie vamps', he had scoffed and mocked their feeding habits quite a few times over the years. Charlotte had wondered after that if her and Peter would have had the same strength to make the same drastic lifestyle changes for Jasper's sake. She had secretly tried animal blood once and when half of it ended up on the ground after she forcefully spit it out, she had been ashamed to admit that the answer had been a firm no.

But if they had been given time to adjust, if they had learned together, who knows? She liked to think they would have.

Charlotte paused by the bed and stared down at it, deciding that if Bella's clothes were in bad shape, chances were that they rubbed off on Jasper's sheets. As reluctant as she was to do it, she eased Bella down onto the floor and stood. She looked towards Jasper's bedside table, frowning when she didn't notice a lamp. In every house they had ever lived at when Jasper was with them, he always had a lamp beside his bed because that's where he liked to read.

Remembering the thump from earlier, she circled the bed, chuckling when she saw the lamp on the floor. Setting it upright on the table, she flicked it on, filling the room with a soft amber glow. The light was probably too dim for a human to read the words off a page, but for a vampire, any brighter and it would hurt their sensitive eyes.

She inspected the sheets with a critical eye, noting that they were mussed and had smudges of dirt on them. Stripping them from the bed, she balled them up and tossed them in the corner nearest to the door to Jasper's closet next to his bed, she crossed her fingers that he would have a spare set. As luck would have it, she found an entire bed set crammed in the back still in its protective packaging and spotting the yellow sale sticker in the corner of the bag suspected it was bought merely on a whim.

Injecting a little vampire speed, she had the crisp green bed sheets spread out on the bed within seconds, doing her best to work as silently as possible and not disturb Bella who was beginning to shift uncomfortably on the floor.

Kneeling beside her, she smoothed a hand over her clammy forehead, humming a nonsensical tune under her breath. It seemed to be enough to settle her down slightly, allowing her to swiftly remove her clothes with the least amount of jostling possible. Charlotte silently thanked the person who had invented button down shirts.

She hesitated with her undergarments before deciding they looked clean enough to last until Bella had the initiative to change them herself.

Lifting her up, she placed her softly on the bed and then crossed the room to the connecting bathroom. Jasper didn't appear to have any washcloths (though he did have a toilet, she noted bemusedly and made a mental note to ask him about it) so she offered a silent apology and tore one of his towels in half. Taking the smallest portion of the grainy fabric, she held it under a running tap hoping that the temperature was warm enough. Thanks to their permanently chilled skin, the difference between hot and cold never really registered.

Wringing out the excess water, she returned to the room and stood by the bed, taking a moment to stare down at the girl who looked tiny in Jasper's king sized bed and as pale as her vampire counterpart next to the darkness of the new sheets.

She hadn't been lying to Peter when she said that she had mourned Bella, but what she hadn't told him was that there had been a few times in those twenty years that she had come very close to hating her as well.

During that first year after her death, Peter had pulled away from her significantly, giving into brooding and long periods of silence. She had been angry and, if she was honest with herself, a little jealous of the small piece of him that Bella had taken with her when she died. A piece that Charlotte knew she would never be able to touch. And of the large part she had taken of her maker, who, no matter the distance and the time or how furious her mate had been, she stilled cared for very deeply.

Looking down at the vulnerable girl, she felt shame build up in her for cursing a girl that had suffered so much. Who had to go through the pain of losing everyone she loved twice- whether she knew it or not- and whose only crime was loving a man who didn't remember her.

Charlotte remembered her own connection she had made to Peter when she had awoke in that terrible camp of blood, pain and horror. He had been her calm in the storm, her very reason for fighting and without him; she would have easily allowed one of the other newborns to tear her apart if only to escape the darkness that her life had become.

How could she truly hate someone who had done the same?

Sitting down beside Bella, she tenderly began to wipe the smudges of dirt and dried tear tracks off her face, keeping up the low humming that had soothed her earlier.

Like Jasper and Peter, she wondered what would happen now. If she ever got her memories back, Charlotte knew that Bella had more than enough reasons to hate them all for the parts they had played in the final days of her life. Peter's act may have been one of mercy, but would she see it as that? Or would she be bitter that he hadn't put up more of a fight to keep her alive?

And that's even if she remembered, Charlotte thought, running the cloth down her arms and then over the bare skin of her stomach and upper chest. Though, like the boys, she had the barest inkling that it wouldn't be the case.

She knew her mate had been too wounded by Bella's indifference towards him to really pay attention to what had happened in that living room. There had been a strange look in her eyes when she had looked Jasper. A sheen to them that was similar to the glazed look Peter's own eyes got when he was remembering the past. The downside to that had been that she was obviously very unnerved by whatever she saw and considering this girl's past, it really could have been anything.

Finishing off with her legs, Charlotte set aside the soiled rag and waited a moment to give a chance for the moisture on her body to air dry. She put the pants on her first, the soft cottony fabric sliding up easily over her legs and fitting snugly against the curves of her hips. She frowned down at the shirt and briefly considered grabbing one the button down shirts from Jasper's closet. Deciding the scratchy fabric wouldn't be conducive to sleeping; she placed her hand behind Bella's head and tilted her body up enough to slip the loose t-shirt over her head.

Cautiously completing the task, she placed Bella's head back down on the pillow. Her fingers snagged in her hair when she removed her hand and eying the mussed brown locks, she made a mental note to grab the brush buried at the bottom of the bag she had brought Jasper and put in on the table beside her. She'd brush it herself, but judging from the tangles in her hair a lot of less than gentle tugging would definitely be required. As she slipped her arms through the sleeves of the shirt, she began to make a mental list of some other items Bella would need.

Bella released a faint whimper as she sat her arm down, and drew Charlotte's attention to her lips. She added a toothbrush and toothpaste to the list. While she'd had enough foresight to stick a brush in the bag, other toiletries hadn't really registered with her. Like she had told Jasper, she'd never shopped for a human before. And being a vampire, she didn't have to deal with human things like brushing your teeth, sweating, or shaving her legs anymore. She'd be sure to rush out as soon as she was done doing this and find a twenty-four hour store to purchase the items so Bella would have them the next time she woke up. It would be pointless to ask Jasper to do it. He was already kicking himself for leaving her the last time.

Standing, she surveyed her work and, with a faint nod decided that, while not completely clean, it was the best she could do under the circumstances. Pulling the covers up tight around Bella, a gentle smile touched her lips at the almost mothering affection that warmed through her at the action. She may be unsure of what would come tomorrow, but in that moment all Charlotte could feel was hope.

Clicking off the lamp, Jasper's words echoed through her head as she turned towards the door.

History really is repeating itself.

Casting one final look at Bella she silently promised her that the three of them would prove those words wrong. They wouldn't repeat it.

They'd rewrite it.

A/N2: You're probably all starting to get a little impatient now... I'll admit that in the beginning these chapters were merely written so I could delay Bella really waking up, mainly because I didn't know what to do about her and Jasper. But that's all settled and I'm working on the next chapter us we speak... uh, type.