A/N: This chapter will be unlike any other that you've read from me so far. Meaning, unlike the rest of the previous chapters, we are taking a peek into Jasper's jumbled inner thoughts and not just seeing everything through his eyes. Basically, you will feel like you are experiencing everything as Jasper rather than an onlooker reading about how he feels…

oOo

Previously;

"Sleep now," I bided, "Good night."

"Good night, Jasper…" She yawned and I smiled as she burrowed deeper onto my side, so warm and delicate.

Until tomorrow the dream will hold.

This isn't a dream any more…

oOo

Memoirs of Her Scent

Ch28: I'm Complete of Bits of Her

-J-

-With her multifaceted smiles that bestow,

Knowing that I am nothing without her,

I know am made up of bits of her.-

-J-

["Time heals all wounds."]

"As tyme hem hurt, a tyme doth hem cure." -Chaucer, Troilus & Criseyde

"Time is the healer of all necessary evils." -Menander

"These past days and months by Bella's side have taught me that, there's really no specific time to instigate love. Once you lose an opportunity, it's lost forevermore." -Jasper Whitlock, During Moments of Solitude

-J-

I started out missing her…

But then I began to need her.

That light that illuminates the distance between her and I, comes out of her eyes, and I know, with certainty, that this has to be a waking nightmare and that this abyss cannot possibly be reality.

Although the night became gray, knowing that I'm made off of bits of her, it was her indigo embrace pampering these stirring feelings from April and this love, which goes on a rampage, with whispers that tremble from her voice, her laugh, her walk, and her every waking moment.

This terrifying feeling, waiting for morning to come, no one knows what it's like. If Bella were never to return, love would cease making sense, the world would no longer make sense, and I would detach myself from people. I would have no other refuge, than to dwell in fantasy.

If she's not here, I don't know, what the hell am I (are we) doing loving her?

-J-

Once again, for her, I'm sinking into hell, trying to live under this silent suffering. Because I can't keep looking for her scent in the wind, I can no longer lie, or hide what I feel; I don't want to amble like this, a heart thrashing for a love without owner.

How does a broken heart get back together when it's torn apart? This single question has hunted me in more ways than one, making me feel guilty in my state of sorrow and in awe of Bella. How had Bella endured her days without the one she loves and not lose her sanity? Isabella isn't even here and she's still awing me, it's unbelievable. I was losing my sanity and she had only been gone nearly a day and a half… Again, how had she endured it, and then again, when I'd abandoned her?

Cringing away from that thought, I focused on other things that managed to plague my troubled mind… Now, my guilt; sure, my heart is broken, but I had done the same thing to Alice, I had torn her heart apart and not given her the chance to try and salvage, if for her sake, what I had known was beyond salvageable. I felt guilty because I didn't feel guilty enough after breaking and betraying her heart.

Also, I was still holding onto a large yellow manila envelope containing Alice's and my marriage license, since we were to marry, again, once she was out of this school term and graduated this time around. It had been personally delivered and brought to my attention by one of J. Jenkins's terrified men, just half an hour after Alice and Bella had disappeared from sight.

The intern had found me standing in the same spot I'd been standing since the moment the car had disappeared out of sight on his way back up from the Cullen's vacant residency. Or so he had informed me at the time, looking like he might shit his pants if I so much as made an attempt at shaking his hand diplomatically.

The scared stiff intern after promptly introducing himself proceeded to hand me the yellow envelope containing the license thereafter, which I'd forgotten I'd asked J. Jenkins's to provide, and prompted me into opening the document on the spot, according to J. Jenkins's instructions of customer satisfaction. Something that I'm pretty sure he only did for me.

Once I scanned over its content, a new marriage license with only a seal and no dates and a copy of our deaths certificate from ninety-five years ago, I felt an immense source of relief flood through me. The knowledge that I'm not lawfully bound to my mate and wife of the past decades momentarily gave me a respite from the numbing nothingness I'd been feeling in that moment and allowing me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Legally, there was nothing stopping me from being with Bella. I was free to love her and let her know that I love her more than I've ever loved anyone.

In fact, I had been so relieved at the time that I had outright laughed out loud; scaring the poor man into pissing himself from the suddenness of my actions, or perhaps it was the lack of real emotions showing in my face that truly scared him. No, that wasn't it either. Because I had seen my reflection reflected in his pupils, I can acknowledge to the fact that my face showed the total opposite of the mirth I had been trying to project at the time, I had looked deranged and consumed by paralyzing agony.

Something that to a man who could only see what his eyes allowed him to see, a young man between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four, couldn't conceive and much less grasp. Because there is no way that someone my age could feel so deeply without having lived at all. His misconception, granted.

But everything about my agony had been misplaced, too. I felt for Alice, because I couldn't care for her beyond what role she played in keeping Bella safe and bringing her back home to me. And I cared for Alice, like I would a dear friend, despite anything I might have told her before, I still care and I still love her, just not the way she would hope I do. She was the one that first taught me the wonders of caring for someone other than myself, and the one that destroyed everything about that beauty with all the omitted truths that she kept quiet, therein laid our downfall, in the things that were never said.

Undergoing a hurricane of emotions that confuse and dominate me… For the first time, there is no one to cloud what I feel, every single emotion was my own and no one else's, and I was starting to feel like I couldn't deal. I found myself wishing and needed the unsought of more emotions, just so that I could have an excuse to not sort my own.

Even so, I stood my ground for her and faced it all, reminded myself that I'm no coward and that if Peter or Charlotte ever saw me like this, they'd have my ass for sure. I've never been more ashamed of myself, until that moment, when all of my instincts and senses were telling me to flee and not deal. Therefore, my heart delirious with the uncertainty of which way to turn, felt constricted and caged between my two choices… Bella… Alice…

I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry… But I ache too… Today I'm lost… I'm in pain… She's not here… I can't find her… All that's left of Bella are the memoirs of her scent… My heart feels like it's bleeding, delirious, my pulse is accelerated, and my cranium feels like it's about to DETONATE! And I have this pungent dearth of breath… I'm so tired of this solitude that continues to tear through the wounds of my soul; I'm in need of her… Isabella, I need you… I need to find you… Bella's my only truth, because I, I can't sustain without her.

My days without her are so dark, so long, and so gray, like an endless winter, those are my days without Isabella Swan. My days without her are so absurd, so bitter, and so tough, that's what my days without Bella are like. My days without her are void of nights, and if one comes into sight, it's useless to feign sleep because my days without Bella are all ready devastating enough.

The hours have no beginning or end, so deficient of air and so chock-full of nothing… useless junk, trash on the ground.

Tangled in the hours, I no longer know if she'll get here.

My days without Bella are like a sky without silvery moons, or traces of sun. Without Isabella, my days are only an echo, which always repeats the same destructive song. Somehow, I don't think I'll be able to survive her if she doesn't come back to me. I completely destroyed every chance of that the night I (we) let her go.

Instead, I'm walking through a starless sky this time, still trying to understand who made hell out of paradise. It has been twenty-eight hours, forty-two minutes, and fifty-five seconds, make that fifty-six, of absence of Bella. I never felt more alone, until yesterday.

Kicking and stumbling through memories and visions of her, I'm still waiting for her to return with me. Biting at my fingernails, drowning in my sorrows, and missing Bella so much, throughout my days lacking her, and oh, how they impair, my days without her.

Isabella Swan, my prison, sweet condemnation that paralyzes this savage soul of mine. Unbeknownst to Bella, she's taught me, the sweet emotion of falling in love.

Through it all, I'm still glancing to the door, hoping that any minute now, she will come bursting through. And still, I'm hunting for reasons to make me believe that even I exist. Imagine, I can only imagine that she's mine and once more feel that she belongs with me.

But no matter how much I envisage her, it won't make it reality; I'm still lost without her and far from her love and heart, away from her love. Without an exit to this maddening reality, I was forced to look and see; I'm far from her love.

Come back!

Please…

Please…

Come back!

Your absence is pain.

While unvoiced and tacit in the abyss, I suddenly understood life's cry. Blaring, telling me that I've never had Bella and I've never lost her, and elucidating that love was something that occurs suddenly and naturally, full of fire, passion, and if its momentum were to wilt, without having a beginning, it would reach its end.

It wasn't so much the thought of Bella not coming back that terrified me, it was the thought that she would but I would have no place in her life, like I did now. Nothing would be the same, I knew, if she returned with Edward by her side. By then, she would have all ready accepted his apologies and probably gone back to loving him. And I couldn't blame her for doing so. That is the way it's supposed to be, from the start.

Wasn't it?

NO!

Enlightened by this vindictive elucidation, I cried for Bella, I cried without her, and finally understanding that she's never been mine, I cried for myself, feeling the sorrow of a loss that I wasn't supposed to feel, because Isabella Swan has never been mine for the take.

Trapped between my anger, pain, and resentment, I can't stop thinking about her, imagining her sad, tearstained face telling me; I'm sorry, I want a world with him… I can't love you, I'm so sorry.

Cursed be the moment I vowed the make her mine.

Damn this yearning need to see her again, I've all ready lost her.

Damned be this fortune for loving her, even if it means the world falls apart.

Damn the hour we promised to spend an eternity of relying on each other! And the promises obliterate…

Maybe it wasn't enough, maybe I was wrong. Today this pain is killing me… she doesn't even know that my heart beats solely for her.

My sky is collapsing…

Ironically, now that Bella's gone, I desire her like I desire the oxygen that runs through my veins, the blood which sooths the fires within my thirsting throat, and I no longer cared about what life was still screeching for me to hear; I needed to need Bella. That's all that mattered. But before that, in an attempt to alleviate the pain, I tried to forget her name, but in the air remained… her voice and her memories, which have become my voice and my memories.

Existing for her, I expire every minute…

I'm dying, dying to see her, agonizing, lethargically and strongly.

The evenings are a maze and the nights taste purely of pain, when she's not here.

And I'm dying, dying to see her…

I just want to go back to those times in which the nights could find Bella falling asleep on my lap and I would breathe her in, feeling her warmth caressing me and my eyes followed the path of light where I end and she begins. Touching her for the first time a thousand times, filling my life with everything she saw, and following that path to my house, home because she's there. Back to finding out I love her much earlier than I did and letting her know…

Aching for Isabella, I'm lost in a sea of doubts. This pain kills me, while my mute tears drown me. Each moment she invades my body and soul, making my eyes laments, making me lose my cool. In fact, the quotes that mention that time heals all wounds and that time is a the healer of all necessary evils come to mind in constant replay, and I can't make up my mind as to whom I'd go after first, Chaucer or Menander, for their erroneous enlightenment if they were still around.

Time meant nothing to the agony I was currently undergoing, time isn't healing shit. If any of that had any grain of truth to it, I would have started to feel better twenty-six and a half hour ago. And at the rate this is going, I don't think I'll be feeling any better in the next half hour to one hour, much less beyond that.

Actually, I don't think I'll be right again, until Bella is standing before me in the flesh, tempting my demon for a taste with that damned tempting and near sinful aromatic scent she flaunts about every time she breathes or enters the room. After all, my world has become a sphere that ends at her feet. With her, in her, it's where I always want to be, back to her before I even get a chance to return.

Maybe, if she heard my lament, she would return…

-J-

Honestly, since Bella's been gone, all I can think are helpless thoughts after powerless thoughts, getting darker and darker by the passing hours of the hourglass;

I don't want to be without her, if she's not here, there's excess oxygen.

I don't want to be without her, if she's not here, I lack peace.

I can't live without her, if she's not here, the air burns me.

I don't want to be like this, if she's not here, others become no one.

-J-

Thinking back to the beginning, Bella was supposed to be just another human girl. Only, unlike others before her, I would have the pleasure of getting to know her. But then, after just five minutes in her presence, Bella became someone precious. Without Bella even talking to me, or touching me, something within me ignited the moment Bella's eyes met mine. I could tell it was becoming late from her eyes but I had all but forgotten that time existed. I'd felt something so inexplicably profound, that there was no reason or logic habituating in my heart.

Little did I know, at the time, but I had opened the doors to my heart and had silently asked, begged Bella to come into my life. Since then, it had already been too late for me to turn back, Bella had become my illusion. And unknowingly, I'd wanted Bella to be the mistress of my heart, knowing that in her arms there would be no empty nights to endure, no nights of solitude.

After our time spent together, now there's no one else. I can't go back. I want her to own my heart, like I've always wanted her to, even if I have to beg her. I just need Bella to save me once and for all. She just needs to hear me tell her that I love her.

There's only one problem with that mindset, my snide demon interjected.

And what's that? I asked it impatiently.

Bella isn't yours, she's certainly not mine, and obviously not ours… his tone was so placating it had me trembling with fury. I hated it when my demon was right, and as much as it aggrieved me to divulge it, he was right now, too.

She will be, I vowed.

She better, he threatened, his hiss sounding alarmingly satisfied with my pledge, after all, we need her.

I love her, I greed.

-J-

Exist. That's what Immortals like me occupy our time with, existing and sustaining ourselves with the elixir of others life's time span. Our main concern is to stay atop the food chain, to not upset the balance between predator and prey, where we are the hunters and not the hunted. Secondly, if we see it necessary, we make a habit of keeping with the changes the decades bring. But sometimes, it is not necessarily essential to our survival. Therefore, there are some of us that simply vanish out of site and only come out to satiate our thirst and curiosity every once in a while. In other words, time is meaningless, nothing but a facing fancy.

Time is something that is but isn't a notion to us. When you have immortality at your disposal, there is very little for you to concern yourself with when it comes to time. That is why making acquaintances with fleeting humans is something that we avoid if we want to avoid attachment and heartache. Death is something natural, whereas we aren't. Being an immortal means that we fleet through time untouched by illness or death, always moving forward, watching as everything around us decays and we remain.

Before Bella, I didn't know the difference between day and night, apart from the fact that I noticed the difference in climate. I just went through the motions, going to school with everyone, trying not to make a meal out of an innocent human, and coming back home where Alice preferred to be ensnared in her visions of the future rather than being with me. Physically she was always there, sharing our room, talking, and telling me now and again when something she spied pertained to me and an impending mistake that I was sure to make but she would help me avoid.

Now that I was giving it much thought, I realized that Alice never truly believed in me. She never had much faith in my will and strength to deny my demon anything and everything. And being that Alice was the one that knew me best, the rest of the family was made to follow in her wake and be thankful for her knack at avoiding the next Jasper mistake.

Was there nothing about me that showed improvement? I would often wander idly; tired of Alice and her tirades of seeing which human Jasper might turn into a happy meal. I hated every single time Alice took it upon herself to take a moment and spy ahead into my future and I had to smile and thank her for looking out for me.

Hated the pity and worry in the eyes of the rest, but could never blame them, for I only resented Alice and her visions that interfered with what I wanted to do and what I would do, stripping me of my choices and will to make one. So now that I was faced with a choice, in avertedly, I felt like I needed someone else around to make the choice for me.

I'm more than capable of making my own damned choices! Who is she to say that I hadn't changed my choice in order to spite her for telling me ahead of time what I "would" do? Alice and her visions, there is always something tricky and complicated about being gifted with the sight.

But then there is Bella, lovely, with her blind and obtuse trust in me… where Alice never took for granted my demon and my infamous lack of self control, Bella simply has too big a heart to believe that I would hurt her if I could avoid it, she has expectations of me, which I've been striving to meet.

Constantly challenging my control and thirst, provoking my demon, with her need to have me nearer than was adequately necessary in order to appease her sleeping demons at night, Bella would look at me with her doe eyes and earnestly tell me; Jasper, I trust you. Won't you trust yourself a little more? You don't want to hurt me, do you? So you won't, you can't hurt me, Jasper.

As if it was as simple as that. Bella has more faith in me, than both Alice and myself combined ever had in my ability to deny myself what I want. But, if I'm being honest with myself, Bella wasn't the only one to blame in that aspect. I never did refuse her, much. Knowing that Bella had certain expectations of me, provided me with something to focus on, which I never had before, someone to please and make proud with each day that went on by and I didn't slip down the deep end.

Like my touch, which she craved for so openly, I secretly craved for hers and wanted to openly give into that ever growing need of just caressing and possessing every inch of her skin, while unabashedly taking advantage of her need and trust in me, just like the monster I am. Had I been a better man, I would have felt ashamed by my indiscretion, but I honestly wasn't and I am a lesser man.

Each night, I looked forward to the next sunset in hopes that I'd get to hold Bella again, breathe her in, and struggle through my desire to drain every crimson drop of blood in her luscious body, my need to possess her heart, mind, body, blood, and soul, and my lustful masochist libido, which grew with every sigh and throaty moan that would escape her innocently parted mouth during sleep.

Currently, I'm left missing all of those things that made my nights so memorable by her side. I even wish for the always present inferno that made its presence known, whenever I inhaled her scent, or she entered the room and I wasn't ready for her yet, to ignite once again and remind me that I am a beast and a monster, always reaching for the beauty that will never belong to him.

All along, coveting my brother's woman and trying not to see it, because that would have meant that the word "monster" would no longer fit my full description. There would be no one-word words to describe what I've become any longer… Bella can't possibly accept someone like me, could she?

I hate myself for hoping… but they say that hope is the last thing that goes, after all.

oOo

Now that I knew exactly where I stood and what I need to do in order to be happy, I knew that I had no other choice. I had to fight for Bella. I need her love as much as I need to feed my thirst right now. Besides, now that I've tried her love and I discovered who I am, it seems like all of my roads come to an end reaching for her.

There's nothing else I can do, except make Bella feel what she means to me, live for her. To reach Isabella, I would discover the universe just to follow behind her steps if I have to, even if it meant I would have to find a way to fly across the sky.

Mushy and too overly emotional, in my opinion, but a good start,the demon accepted, it will have to do.

I'd forgotten he's been listening. Instead of responding, however, I just continued to get lost in all my musings, unable to halt my thoughts to insult the snide.

Snide is my tone of voice, I can't do anything about that, the demon protested, feeling indignant by my dismissal and ignoring him.

Again, I paid him no mind. No matter how I try to forget about Bella, I always end up finding her in the recesses of my wilting mind. Suddenly, just when I was in the process of picking out the words I would say to Bella upon her return, my phone vibrated in my pocket, just once.

A text.

Are you going to look? If you won't I will…

I will…

Now!

I'm not ready!

You don't even know what it says! Of course you aren't ready! Pus-

I'm looking now, happy?

Getting there…

Reaching for my right back pocket, I extracted my phone and with trembling hands, brought it into sight. With a touch of my finger, I brought the screen to light and as I suspected, there was a text from dear Alice waiting to be read.

I thought I told her not to contact me unless they were on their way back…

Who cares, read the damned thing… Right. Now. Jasper.

With a quivering breath, I unlocked the screen and clicked on the awaiting, pulsating message, and much too quickly for my taste, the screen changed and I could read the message;

Jasper, I know what you said, and I'm sorry.

But Bella asked me to write.

She's worried about you.

My hands shook violently as I read Bella's name on my screen and even more as I tried to steady them and read that she was worried about me while out putting her life in danger for Edward, the one she loves and the one who had once abandoned her. For a fleeting moment of wishful thinking, I thought that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't only me. Perhaps, just maybe, I wasn't the only one keeping these feelings hidden. Maybe, Bella felt the same way?

She told me to tell you this;

You promised.

As I read this next portion of the text, I smiled, my first smile in the last forty-eight hours, I realized as I glanced at the clock on my screen. I'm here Bella, I'm still her, I remember our promise and I haven't gone anywhere. We won't go anywhere.

But as I read the last portion of the text, my hands shook so much that my phone dropped out of my hands and I couldn't catch it as I stood, momentarily freaked out, and finally obeyed my demon and my thirst, keeping that last sentence running on the back on my mind in a loop.

We are on our way home…

oOo

A/N: Well, this is chapter 28, hope you all enjoyed it. Bella is finally on her way home and Jasper's suffering is about to come to an end, or so he, we hope… I write faster chapters for reviews people! Let me know what you think and I'll be handing out teasers for the next chapters to those who take the time to do so. Good day to you all!