Everyday Moments Of Perfection
~ Belonging.
A/N: Oh, gawd, I know, I've not updated for ages. Bloody exams and bloodier writer's block. But I'm here now! :) Also, I wanted to have a halfway decent idea for a drabble rather than writing something for the sake of it, so I hope it worked. ;) After the Eclipse movie I felt like writing the diner scene thing, but of course this just evolved on its own and became a sort of Jasper-centric story of how he ran away and met Alice.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. :)
He kept running. Diamond feet beating down the earth beneath, punishing it with severe force.
He thought that maybe, just maybe, if he kept running, he could run so far that he could fall off the edge of the world. (The abyss would keep him when the earth had forsaken him.)
Because once he did that, Jasper knew everything would be so much simpler. There was no way she could find him there; no humans to torture his unabating thirst; and peace enough to soothe his aching conscience.
A conscience that threatened to overwhelm him. (For he was no longer of the earth, no longer of bone and blood - he was of fire, of ice, of poison.)
Jasper could not contain himself around humans, that much was clear. The second his crimson eyes flitted over them and their heady scents filled his lungs - that was it. Their lives were as good as over. Before Jasper could even stop to think what he was doing; his stony arms were locked around them, and his mouth was pressed against their throats, his teeth embedded deeply into the addictive, hot flow of their bloodstreams, drawing it in.
(Trying to regain that which was unwillingly forfeited - that which was gone from him forever. For Jasper knew his humanity was lost, like a child in a never-ending forest.)
It was only after the deed was done that guilt and penance and sorrow overwhelmed him. Every second of pain and fear was his alone to recall; the last imprint of their lives existing only within his mind. So he could not forget. It was his duty to remember them; and as a soldier, duty was something Jasper clung to desperately. Forsaking all other humanity, Jasper found his sense of duty to be his lifeboat.
Perhaps that was why he had stayed with Maria for so long.
But he had been wrong; Maria was not his duty, she was not honourable, nor did she deserve protection. She was naught but a snake, a venomous slithering serpant put on the Earth for cruelty and deceitfulness. She had whispered her pretty lies in Jasper's ear, and he had believed her, without proof or question. Maria had twisted him. She made him believe she loved him, that she cared only for him... but her sweet nothings and rough caresses were not love. Her silver tongue was just more poison.
Jasper had not learned that until he met Peter. His words were rough because he did not want to hear them.
Love was not something Jasper wanted to know; he did not want to feel, because it was painful. (And he was selfish.)
He knew what it was, he knew the concept surely enough. But vampires did not love. The vampires he had known, that he had killed, that he had served... they did not love. They lusted, they envied, they hated, they knew glee and wickedness and power. But they never loved.
Jasper had forgotten love after a while. After decades. He forgot his father first, and his mother last. Countless friends and cousins and aunts and uncles were lost inbetween, chipped away by the crashing wave of servitude. His sister left just before his mother, her face slipping away while Mrs. Whitlock stubbornly clung on.
But soon even she could no longer withstand the hatred that had stolen her son's heart, and she too faded away.
Jasper wished the dark would take him as well, sometimes.
Until Peter re-taught him about the light.
He and Charlotte were nothing like the pallid concept of love that Jasper remembered. The purity of it shone like clean snow and bright sun, and for a while it burned him. The feeling was foreign, and unwelcome in Jasper's carefully-constructed world of apathetic compartmentalism. He'd locked his empathy in a box - it had been hard, so hard he thought it would kill him... but it had worked.
Or maybe it had never actually worked. Jasper had just fooled himself into thinking it did.
That must have been the case, because it had seemed just too damn easy for Peter and Charlotte to smash the box into little heart-shaped pieces.
(And Jasper screamed. He screamed for his mother and his father and his little baby sister. He screamed without words because he could not remember their names.)
They comforted him as he remembered that which he had forgotten. Comfort scared Jasper for a while; it was too soft, too gentle, too caring. Frankly, it was suspicious. He'd thought about killing them a few times. Quickly, quietly and then it could be over. The alien feelings could dissipate. (He always dreamed about it in the dead of night, where Maria still had hold.)
But he didn't do it.
Because somewhere along the way, Jasper discovered that what kept him from ripping their heads clean off their bodies was also the very reason he wanted to.
Jasper loved them. (It was a sense of protecting, of fluttering, of soaring, of drowning, of smiling, of embracing, of caring, of completeness.)
And it was then Jasper knew he had to leave. That he could leave.
...
Now he was running away again.
Once they were out of Maria's thrall, Peter and Charlotte no longer had to restrain themselves, or the power of their love, and it sank into Jasper's bones. It shook him down to his core, and it warmed him, but it also made him feel empty inside.
He was nothing more than a voyeur, a witness to this brilliance. It was not his.
He was alone. Empty, and alone. And he deserved to be.
For all the sins he had committed, he deserved to be.
...
Jasper traipsed from place to place, a ghost upon the world. He would term himself a nomad, but even that word suggested a sense of belonging, even if it was simply to the earth. And currently, Jasper belonged nowhere. He had never not belonged. It was an odd feeling, and Jasper didn't like it much.
He had belonged to his mother and father when he was born. Then when war came, he belonged to the army. For a short while (too short, in his opinion) he had belonged to Death. And then he had been Maria's. (And even though they had never claimed him - Jasper always thought even when free that he had belonged to Peter and Charlotte.)
It was probably unhealthy to have such an innate sense of transference, to think of oneself as a possession.
(Only with Alice had he begun to learn that he could belong to himself, whilst giving of one's heart to another. Jasper had pretended this was what he did, though in truth, if someone ever asked him to whom he belonged, it would be her. It would always be her. She had given him confidence, self-worth, she had made him whole - but he was still hers.)
...
Alice thought she was his, too. (What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine...)
...
After drifting listlessly, Jasper found himself in the one place that would shape the rest of his life. He wondered later how he could have not instantly noticed her the second he walked through the doors. As always it was the blood he felt first. Then the crawling dirt of emotion, slithering up his spine. (Envy, disgust, sorrow, pettiness.) Then the lighter stuff. (Calm, easiness, light laughter.)
He took his seat, and tried to focus on the tacky wood in front of him, barely restraining himself from digging his fingers into his as he fought not to kill everyone. If he took one, he would need to take them all, and he didn't want to. He didn't want to feel them die.
He didn't want it to be his fault.
Jasper felt her before he saw her.
The steady ebb and flow of flat emotion was suddenly upheaved. A tidal wave upon calm shores.
(Excitement, joy, pleasure, hesitance.)
(Hope.)
(Love.)
Jasper looked up into butterscotch eyes, and was overwhelmed. Inexplicably, he felt like crying. Falling to his feet like the sinner he was... and weeping.
She looked nervous, but her emotions contradicted her. It was as if she could not control them, they spilled over and flowed into him.
(Destiny.) And he just knew this was how it was meant to be.
For the first time in over a century, Jasper felt hope.
"You've kept me waiting," she said. Her voice hummed through his very soul.
He almost couldn't answer, but for some reason, her presence had coaxed out of him something he thought he had been denied forevermore. A remnant of humanity, and the Southern gentleman he had once been emerged to address this strange, beautiful creature. (Because she did not deserve to be addressed by a demon.)
"I'm sorry, ma'am."
She smiled.
(And the sun came out.)
Jasper smiled, bemused.
(And he belonged.)
She took his hand.
(And there was hope.)
He let her lead him away from the blood.
(And he was of the earth again.)
A/N: I know you probably hate me for not updating, but OMJ I would love you so much if you still reviewed :) Jasper-and-Alice-taking-hands-and-smiling-in-the-diner cookies for you sweet people who are lovely enough to review. :)
On a little side note, as more penance for not updating this in ages, I have started a Buffy/Twilight crossover, if any of you guys are Buffy AND Twilight fans. (And if you are, you're awesome.) ;)
Love and peace,
Raven. x