Chapter 25 This is the House That Jack Built
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A/N: All these characters belong to Stephenie Meyer, and right now Jasper does especially.
---Jams---
BPOV – Franklin by Paramore
JPOV – Pitter-Pat by Erin McCarley
Music on the profile.
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Previously in For Want of a Nail …
"Jasper?" Bella's voice was hoarse and countenance nearly unsalvageable, as she visibly shook in place.
I was doing right by her; I knew that in this moment. She told me so, impossibly, with her dead eyes. But I had to hurry up.
"I'm taking you home." Finally cohesive emotions flickered. Inability, longing, fear, torn – Bella was broken apart.
"Home?" She was crying and laughing, sputtering and hushed, eyes alight with frenzy.
"Arizona first and then we'll find it – where we need to be," I assured my crazy girl.
I'm getting you out of here.
Bella tugged Rose's hand asking for something - for her to come, permission to leave, a sound reason to stay.
My mind tried to shove what we had here to the forefront of this unsteady plan, making me see the worth, but all I could acknowledge was helping Bella find a place to escape to.
Alice's lips and heart and laugh flickered around my resolute decision, searching for a crack. But, I was needed more by someone else.
I'd always be failing someone.
I clenched Red's keys in my palm and shouldered our baggage.
"Bella?"
She released Rose, remembering we'd be okay just the two of us, and pecked her lips.
And without another thought, Bella saw the end of her line and walked out the suite ahead of me showing the world once again she was in control of her own destiny and that Fremont was always meant to be a speck in the time line of our lives.
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BPOV
It wasn't too late.
As my bare toes smudged the foggy windshield, right where the muted sun was just beginning to crease into the horizon, I though of the last distance I'd driven in Red at about this time of day. And I didn't mean our jaunt from lovely fucking Puyallup. With my seat reclined to capacity and my eyes angled out the back passenger side window, I drifted away in the mingling of colors and light as trees and cars whizzed by. It was a tranquil time to be on the road, no matter where you were leaving from. No matter the unknowns ahead.
Once we'd hopped onto I-5 south my mind began betraying me, unsteady in its recollection of my thought process during that last drive. We were on the same freeway, flying along in the same literal direction but figuratively speaking I could find no similarities.
I'd looked at Charlie's house in Forks with recognition for the first time as we backed out of the drive. Home. It had been a goodbye hello. Now, though, I didn't know what I'd actually seen as we departed my three year haven nestled in the expected suffocation of trees. It seemed impossible that those feeling had been true when my heart now clearly mourned a place vastly more damaging, infinitely more familial.
Leaving Arizona all those years ago - basically a lifetime - meant moving on from my mom while the pain of leaving Forks had resembled a home because it brought stability and security back into my ravaged life. Fremont, in all its horrible reality, had given me what Forks lacked – people. My heart had begun to beat again in Forks, but it had finally stabilized its rhythm at Fremont; its purpose had been found.
And that was the difference. Truthfully, in my minds eye, we would never stop driving – Arizona or not – because there was nowhere left to land. We had found our place. We'd found it and left it behind in pursuit of what? The senseless dreams of a pre-Reneeless existence? The fantastical ideals of two truant sixth grade graduates more interested in running than experiencing, of focusing on the 'then' instead of the 'now'?
The continual promise of adventure and aspirations for a "future" were finally lost on me. And Jasper. We obviously had no idea we'd arrived even when it had been staring us in the face, kissing our mouths or moving as intimately as two lovers could.
And the bonds that had been cultivated: An estranged sister and cousin becoming our heartstrings and the love she found in a big muscled, swimmer man being the glue that held us all together. A tiny girl, of unparalleled energetic proportions, forcing her way into our time and rendering all established misconceptions of companionship incapable of remaining ignorant. A man, my very own man, built of what forever must be made of; an irrefutable other half.
Family, friends, futures.
All behind us.
And I couldn't for the life of me remember why the fuck we were driving anymore.
"Where the hell are we going, Jasper?" Why are we leaving?
The silence had been congested since we'd passed through the elaborate metal gates of our now former school, both of us most interested in our own thoughts. Now my voice rang out like no talking existed in the world whatsoever. Even Jasper's facial expression was one of a foreigner attempting to make sense of a language they weren't fluent in, a truly abstract dialect - perhaps like one of those African tongues with the clacking and rhythmic noises.
"I thought Phoenix briefly, then … anywhere." 'Anywhere' sounded pointless.
"Why there?" If he was truly helping us escape it made no sense to drag our damaged asses back there.
"We can regroup at the house." Standing on the Hale's back porch, it would only take a subtle northwestern glance and I'd be able to see my mom's master suit balcony.
"Why don't we go pitch a tent by Renee's grave, Jasper? Anything short of that isn't really a reunion, is it?" Sarcasm felt wonderful. Sex vulnerabilities, love questions, Heidi whoring, even Edward worries were easily pushed back when snark and snap entered the picture.
"Dammit – that isn't want I meant and you know it."
I did know it. That didn't keep our speed from agitating my queasy stomach or our direction from becoming equally sickening and … unwelcome. So baiting derision it was.
"Then what do you damn well mean, Jay? Because all I see this rescue mission doing is getting us lost further."
"Bella," he exhaled in a gust of certainty. "Don't worry, I'm not lost. I'll get us where we need to be."
His hijacking my allegory struck a cord that ran from brain to heart. He's not lost. He isn't the one who's lost, says he. And fuck that. I couldn't – wouldn't - accept the burden and accusation of being the only lost one here any longer.
But, wait, why am I lost, again? The reasoning filtered in from the recesses of my tired mind.
Loss. Abandonment. Change.
The past.
Renee, Charlie - the tortures of a teenage girl. It all seemed so small to me now.
This "lost" notion was all wrapped up in my broken record of debilitating limitations and Jasper's stagnant expectations - his inability to challenge me to change.
To grow the fuck up.
And I knew immediately this had been our undoing. I could see that now, even as blind as I remained.
Jasper had held me back, kept me from finding my own overcoming strength because of these past tragedies. His continual desire to fix it, protect, while also requiring me to protect myself no matter what I might loose along the way had perpetuated the pain.
Things never needed to be this hard. Home, friendship, love.
We did this to ourselves.
He did this to us.
And I let him.
I also allowed myself to accept this way of life.
Where this freeing clarity was coming from, I wasn't exactly sure, but suddenly it wasn't the car's velocity or direction to or from that was moldering my insides. Instead, it was as if something gelatinous had just severed inside me – perhaps from the pressure of realizing what we'd done and left and that we were now traveling towards oblivion – and was seeping over everything that filled me up. Every organ, vein, muscle and function that made me who I was felt open, exposed, in need of a purge.
What Jasper and I had caused together, that brought us to this desolate place, was a-glow. The roll he played, though, shone brightest and centrally.
I couldn't even attempt to hold back what was spilling forth in me, and didn't want to. It was time to face just what this shit was all about.
"Alright, maybe lost was the wrong adjective for your particular brand of crazy. So, how about … you're running the fuck away, Jasper, calling it penance, when it's really your wayward way of holding me back?" All Jasper's 'safe' and 'sound' goals for me were racking up, stacks and piles beginning to topple over. If I wasn't quick in sorting things out it would all crash down. We'd surely drown.
Through organized memories, Jasper's own issues were forcing their way to the forefront, and - just as it took Edward to help me face myself - Alice would be his tell-all. Jas knew now how badly he'd screwed shit up with Rosalie and probably subconsciously knew his roll in enabling my faults. There was no way, with his track record of ruined women, that Jasper could believe he was good for the female persuasion.
So he ran from Alice to keep from fucking it up, invited Rosalie along to tie up lose, though well-meaning, ends and was attempting to pull a maverick 'hail Mary' in the minefield of my emotions. He put me before others because my mistakes and floundering had somehow become his; he was going to fix us up simultaneously.
As the seams of my mind wound together I became explosively furious.
The love I had for the guy sitting to my left was chucked high up on a shelf; I needed to tear through everything that had locked us in our own destructive world without it slowing me down.
"You never believed in me, Jasper." Spit, venom and truth spewed, covering him in whatever was spilling fast inside me. "You saw Edward want me, and yes he was a fool for a lot of the time you knew him, but you had to have seen the change in him. It probably scared you more. When he came around though, you knew my limitations and it never crossed your mind that I could grow beyond them, that I would need to in order to grow the fuck up. Is mourning like some sort of chronic illness to you? Did you really expect me to stay thirteen forever? Need only you forever? Live without anyone to love? How dare you!
You abandoned me, or rather what I could become, somewhere along this fucking road, Jasper, choosing for me security over success. I'm looking at you and I'm wondering how your need to protect actually made it okay in your mind that I'd have some mediocre, half-ass life. Alone.
Sanity and self-reliance are traps. Life is supposed to be fucked up sometimes. That's what makes actually finding love so damned worth it."
The cold substance bathing my insides as well as Red's, it was realization - hopefully, acceptance as well. I was someone new; I had changed. And it was a good, messy business.
I'd dropped my feet and sat bolt upright as understanding had shot from me. I'd found what 'alive' felt like in the arms of Edward, but truthfully that invigorating culmination was very unlike this personal one.
"Bella, I was- I thought I was helping you hold onto what you needed."
Who he'd been and what I'd needed now seemed like polar opposites. But how could either of us have known? If I hadn't, how could he? But he was all I'd had. I felt failed.
"Why should a person be aloud to live alone? I think there's something inside you that needs me to be an isolated mess just so that it can be you who is there for me. Like your solo effort in keeping me calm and on top of my "needs" would keep us linked. "
By eyes bore down on his profile. No matter the pain, I wished we could have had this conversation eye to eye. It was, after all, the end of something.
"I've never felt farther from than you than in this moment." My voice was steady. The words were all I had left, and they hurt, but they were fact.
After uttering this last sentence I realized I could finally, actually, stand alone.
Ring. Ring.
Ring. Ring …
Like he'll answer, I thought as Jasper's cell phone trilled on and I continued to sit awash in the freedom I'd pondered in this very car's back seat not long ago.
Ring. Ring.
I watched him check the display. I had to admit, as distracted by my revelations as I was, I wanted to know who the first to call would be as well. But remembering them overwhelmed my already exhausted thought process. I hadn't even managed to wrap my mind around all this newfound understanding let alone whether we go back now. Back to them.
Ring. Rin- "Hey." My shock over Jasper's choice to answer couldn't drown out the apprehension-laced one word greeting.
I had no idea who would garner such a tentative response, let alone receive the time of day, as we skipping town in a bastardizing sort of way. Anyone I could think of that would call, neither of us would currently have the guts to face, via phone or not. As endless possibilities of exactly what those numerous conversations could entail, I suddenly felt bizarrely nostalgic for fighting properly, piss-to-piss.
"Please say that one more time, slowly." Only dogs could make out the shrill request made by quaking Jasper, who couldn't seem to keep up straight shootin' on the freeway.
"Slow down, Jasper. You're going to send us into a fucking guard rail," I halfway chastised.
Beyond the anger I couldn't help but echo, I was worried and thoroughly confused. He was just listening, but the silence felt full. His speed increased again, bringing my focus to zero in on his features.
Knuckles white, face ashen, eyes clenched shut- what? He's definitely supposed to at least watch the road while experiencing a total breakdown behind the wheel. "Shit, Jasper! Open your eyes!"
JPOV
My lids lifted open. I was still here.
I'd tried and tried and still ended up coming out the other end as the catalyst of yet another shit storm.
"She was hopeless, man. That's all I know. She and Edward went looking for Bella, trying to get to her before you did – to stop the fucking mad dash – but you were long gone. They did what they do, dude. He took her to the bridge - I think she asked him to. This is just what saving's for anyway - though you've certainly occupied more than your fair share of jump time." His pause crackled with the hostility I knew I'd be feeling physically if Emmett and I were speaking face to face. "Anyway, the water levels had risen so much and rocks and shit had shifted-"
I knew Emmett was attempting his version of a quick account, but every word hurt my eyes and ears and heart. Not to mention, the loosely connected run down was nonsensical.
"I don't even know what you're saying, Emmett. It makes no fucking sense. What bridge? What the shit is 'saving'? This can't be happening …" The road before me was blurring again, and I longed to shut my sight away once more, but the controlled voice urged me with another incentive.
"I'll explain more when you get here, Jasper. Just fucking get here."
She and Edward went looking for Bella … he took her to the bridge - I think she asked him to. This is just what saving's for anyway…
"Wait, wasn't Edward there? Why isn't he-" I was trying to make myself understand just what exactly Edward was doing with Alice and a bridge, and how she ended up apparently striking something in the water below, but there were barely any pieces available to create even half of a complete picture. All I truly knew was Edward had been there when this – whatever that was – occurred.
"Stop worrying about him. Are you coming now?" I thought I could make out Rosalie's hiccuping sniffles in the background, as I sought out Alice's greeting or exclamation of 'gotcha' to make this nightmare a farce.
But none of us would turn something this cataclysmic into a joke.
Alice was our fountain of joy. Beautiful, breakable, overflowing.
"Of course we are. Where is she?"
"The Children's Hospital. Take Sandy Point to Penny; park in lot four."
My thumb slammed the 'end' button and with the disconnection went my ability to speak, think, process.
"Oh my god. I can't – I can't…" The shaking was uncontrollable.
And that great varying void – first Rosalie and now Bella – was still there, just below the panic and adrenaline, drawing me towards my touchstone lying in an emergency ward that, by name, declared her - the woman I had left behind this same day - just a child. Fragile. Young. In need of fixing. But that fucking void reverberated whom - no matter how serious her injuries would be - really needed the damn overhaul. In lieu of repairing myself I'd done all of this, broken all that I'd ever touched.
My mind had honestly vacated whatever void Bella's mutual self-realizations had descended me into, because Alice – my Ali Angel – was … well, they didn't know. No information. No specifics. I cared what was going on, but mostly I just wanted to be there.
Back.
Seattle.
Home.
Right fucking now.
And because she would always be my Bella, the angry, justified, ever-friend to my right took the reigns.
"Jasper, just pull over. Right up there."
As soon as were stopped on the shoulder, I jumped out of the driver's seat and walked to a wooden sign-support post. Head bent, my fist began to connect, each punch harder than the last.
I couldn't be stopped. Not by my suddenly evolved cousin, not from the searing pain of mangled flesh connecting with raw wood. I would hit until I felt nothing.
As she continued to intuit my needs, Bella didn't follow. Instead, I felt her move to take my place behind the wheel and wait.
But nothingness wouldn't come and I was wasting time. Bloody hands and forearms hanging limply at each side, I sunk into my seat, gingerly pulling the door with me.
"Take us to the Children's Hospital. Alice has had an accident." The word 'accident' stuck on my tongue and teeth on the way out. It was a guess, a fucking painful descriptiveless explanation. I didn't know what the hell had truly happened or how she was fairing because of it.
Why were they jumping from a bridge? Why didn't Edward protect her, save her from this?
"And Edward…?"
"He's fine." Bitter couldn't cover what I was feeling towards her question, let alone the fucking fuck answer.
It should have been him. Edward. The very name boiled my insides. And to think, ten minutes ago I was actually feeling sub-par to his ability to reach the Bella I always hoped would come back. What use is he to her? He can't even care for his own.
For my own.
No, Jasper, not yours – you abandoned Alice. You drove her to do this. You.
And I had caused whatever had happened. Everything that happened, apparently, I thought as I caught Bella's frowning profile in my peripherals.
"Did I hear you say something about a bridge … and 'saving'?" Bella asked, quietly, so unlike the timbre she'd used for our previous conversation. Hardly any time had passed but the resilient, confident women I'd watched unfold in the very seat I now occupied had fallen hushed, sedated, bleak. Alice is her friend; her first friend and she's concerned. But I knew it was more than that.
So I pondered the question asked: Did I hear you say something about a bridge … and 'saving'?
"Do you know what bridge Emmett was talking about?" The details would uncover her issue. Picking at these details would also distract my damn mind.
The absence of a worded answer was enough of an affirmative.
"What is 'saving'?" I ventured again, hoping Bella had an idea of what went down mere moments after we crossed the Fremont threshold.
Clearing her throat, Bella clipped out, "Edward explained it once."
I assumed this was in reference to 'saving.' My mind found a precious image of Alice's face, eyes twinkling as she went on and on about one artist or another, the morning after our first time together, as I waited for Bella to continue.
"They use it to – the act of surfacing from the water symbolizes a … a fresh start."
A fresh start. It hadn't even been hours. I hadn't even begun processing the act of leaving, and she was starting over? The eyes and warmth I'd just been clinging to was snuffed out at this definition.
"And he promised me …" Heavy all over, Bella's sentence fell along with her countenance.
"Oh yes, what did he promise you? It sounds like our desire to have Fremont come and go without consequence truly won't just be a desire. At least from their end."
As long as Alice was alright - because how bad could it really be? – I could continue on in life, whether she meant to be rid of me permanently or not. Her well being was all that mattered, no matter the piercing her immediate disavowing inflicted on my soul.
"We left them, Jasper. I know that, but the first thing done in our absence was an act designed to erase. What could we have possibly meant to them?"
She was correct; we'd been washed away. But somehow I didn't care. Not knowing Alice's condition kept me from caring about anything else.
Fucking love.
It didn't take Bella long to navigate us through off and on ramps to get us pointed North. Nighttime was falling, and common Seattle traffic greeted us just as downtown came into view. I watched the hub exits creep by – Seneca, Union, Olive, and Mercer – my full body quake confined itself to my legs as they aggressively jittered from the constant delays. I felt the urge many times to begin shouting profanities while pummeling the horn in front of Bella. Finally 45th was upon us and we left the god forsaken freeway, only to brave the stoplights.
I was about to begin boycotting the color red as an impromptu religion, when 'Emergency' signs had me instead calling out driving and parking directions to an equally frantic Bella.
Though she was at my heals, my thoughts were far from my cousin, and I honestly hoped never to see Red again – as it was now the location of my worst realizations about myself and the things I thought I knew ending up being one horrendous lie.
I saw Rosalie first, pacing, after entering the hospital and rounded on the third miss-labeled corridor. Miss-labeled purely based on the fact that I was having a difficult time concentrating on anything long enough to actually read – couldn't they just say 'Alice, this way! Run like fucking hell!'?
"Rose." Bella apparently still had her voice, while it seemed mine had escaped me again. Being this close was messing me up.
"Bella, Jasper – oh, Jasper." My sister's fingers went to my cheeks, brushing along the bone, carrying with the motion the only thing I apparently could contribute – fucking tears. Blubbering fool.
She tentatively turned my hands over in her own, evaluating the damage I'd done but completely forgotten about. At the sight of my own blood my mind sprung to Ali, envisioning her tiny body smattered by injuries with bandages and casts in a large, angled hospital bed with IVs and monitors littering every vein and surface. The possibilities were endless and all I wanted, all I could fucking manage to propel myself any farther for, was to hold her hand and apologize and hear her sweet trilling laughter. To know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would be just fine … possibly that she regretted trying to wash our love from her history.
Damn it all - I just needed to find her room.
My wild eyes must have signified the questions running amok with my sanity as Emmett dutifully spoke up from the far corner waiting room chair; "She's still being worked on."
"The nurses promised a doctor would be out as soon as they know anything," Rose's unsuccessfully reassurance was met quickly by Bella's countering pragmatism.
"But you've been here for a while, right? What could be taking so long?"
"We have no idea. We just have to fucking wait." These words brought on the first recognition I paid to the crumpled figure hunched a row away from Emmett. Wet and ashamed, Edward looked too fucking healthy for my taste.
"What the fuck happened, Edward? What the hell were you doing at the bridge? You're such a liar." Bella beat my surfacing verbal abilities to the punch igniting group involvement.
Emmett stood quickly to take the arm of a jumpy Edward, while Rosalie wound nearer to me still as I moved in, inching closer to the bastard I was still determining what exactly I could do to with fists already beat to shit.
"You both left. No pause, no thought – you just ran. We went looking for you-" Bella's interjection and Edward's own wrenching sob stopped him short.
"But Jasper and I were already gone so you thought 'what the hell, I'll just go back to being a douchey asshat who's only in it for the pooty – forget the girl I made love me.'" She was screaming - shrill and unfurled from heartbreak - in the deserted waiting room, consoled only by Emmett. Rose wouldn't let me go to her.
"Bella, I didn't jump-"
Snippets of some alternate reality scenario surfaced in my bleary mind, revealing Alice falling over the edge of a cliff shrieking at me to save her while Edward stood idly by and Bella's mangled body lay broken at my feet. But instead of going to anyone's aid I was backing away slowly, afraid of falling, stricken by fear of my own broken body crumpling to the ground.
"Stop it, everyone." Rosalie's voice pulled me back to Edward's confession of not jumping, as if allowing Alice to jump by herself was somehow a positive decision, and I couldn't refrain one second longer.
"Don't speak to her; don't you dare try to excuse this. Why are you even here? You let Alice jump off a bridge alone, Edward? What the fucking hell could you of been thinking?"
"Rosie-" Emmett called out as if my waif sister could put a stop to my shouting. The volume we'd escalated to caused Bella to throw both hands over her ears, head shaking and face contorting in pain. Somehow, through all the noise around me as well as inside my mind, I could still make out the foreign voice among the group.
"Excuse me." My eyes fell on the white-coated witness to our public group annihilation.
"Please, Bella." My eyes darted back to Edward while his never left Bella's face.
"Don't listen to him, Bella." I would not let him ruin her too. If I'd been wrong about everything else, I was at least right when it came to Edward Cullen. He belonged far away from Bella. He would never harm Alice again.
But at that plea for her to see this reminder for what it was, just as she'd cut me to my own core during the escape, her hands flew away from her head, finger outstretched and jabbing quickly between Edward and myself. As her eyes blazed back and forth, mirroring her accusatory hand motion, a deep ragged voice choked out of her concave frame.
"NO! No! You did this. You … you both did this. I can't look at either of you."
"Excuse me!" A stern bellow broke our stunned five-way staring war, and we all turned at once to acknowledge that same white-coated intruder.
But as I gauged his file-weighted hand, stethoscope and controlled, anesthetic expression realization dawned. He was whom we'd been waiting on in the first place.
"Are you all here for Alice Brandon?" A nod rippled around the circle, but I could only focus on his bobbing Adam's apple and shifting eyes. The doctor's muted distress caused my stomach to fall as his following words obliterated my world, stealing every shred of reason and hope eternally.
"I'm so sorry …"
The blackness that immediately engulfed me was welcomed fully. After all, within my most beautiful memories was the only place I'd ever see Alice's spark again.
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A/N: Sincerest thanks to every last one of you who's alerted and favorited G&B! The numbers keep climbing and I can't help but love knowing so many of you read each and every update! There has also been an onslaught of new readers and that just thrills me. Thank you for letting me know you are out there and enjoying!
My frustrating update delay was due in great part to a TwiCon fanfic contest I chose to pursue. I've posted the completed entry, A Hither Affaire, on Fanfiction and Twilighted (though the submission process there does take time) and would LOVE to hear your thoughts!
Finally, Girls and Boys Come Out to Play has been nominated in the Best Drama category of the Razzle Dazzle Awards. Voting begins June 30th – the link is on my profile. Speaking of awards The Indies are new on the scene and the Bellies have come back around! Dig deep in your recognitions and have fun with them!!
Lots of love for my lovelies, RAE
P.S. (Longest AN ever – sorry) Be sure to put me on Author Alert if you're interested in being updated when I begin posting my next story, Where Happiness is Found, which should begin just as G&B is wrapping up!