A/N: I'm really on a roll here! I'll see about getting 18 up tomorrow.

Chapter Seventeen

Jasper POV

The days turned into routine.

We would start the day with hunting. I would help Dana refine her style so that she would make less mess of her prey.

Then we would move on to fighting. Every vampire should know how to defend him/herself. At first it was just basic defense, something a twelve-year-old would learn in a tai-kwon-do class except refined to work better against a vampire, but the basic structure was the same. But then, as Dana quickly mastered defense, she insisted on learning attack.

After fighting, we would sit down for a bit and share stories of our past experiences. Not just me and Alice, but Rosalie, Emmett, Esme, and Carlisle as well (Edward was still practically glued to Bella's side). This was our bonding time, and through this, Dana quickly made herself part of the family. Even Rosalie accepted her, if a little grudgingly at first.

Then came hang-out time. Dana would hang around and read, watch TV, or play video games with Emmett. As we ran out of books for her to read in her area of interest, video games with Emmett became more frequent. I would sometimes join in the fun as well but it was almost always more fun to watch them have it out. Dana was so much better at most of Emmett's games, like Halo, and Modern Warfare, that it usually drove Emmett up the wall, which was always fun to aggravate with my power.

After things settled down a bit from video games and whatnot, Dana would go upstairs to her room and write her daily letter to Bella. When that was done, she would usually sit up on the roof and watch the sky, waiting for an opening in the clouds so that she could see the stars.

It was here that I saw her at three in the morning, when Alice went to supervise Bella so Edward could go hunt.

"Hi, Dana," I said softly, not wanting to disturb her.

"Hi, Jazz."

"Whatcha lookin' at?"

"The sky."

"You do that a lot."

She just nodded in response.

"Why," I had to know.

"It calls to me."

I had to do a mental rewind for that one. "What?"

"The sky, it's like it's saying 'come to me, Dana', I wish I could."

"What do you mean? Could what?"

"Go to the sky. You know I used to have dreams, you know, when I could sleep. I would dream that I could fly, just by jumping up and spreading my arms like wings. It felt so real, I could even feel the wind through my hair and there were people below. They didn't stare or shout or freak out in any way. It was normal for me to be able to fly, it was just something that was a part of me and people weren't afraid or anything.

"But then I would wake up and it was all just a dream again. I couldn't fly and if I could people would probably freak out and probably want to dissect me or something to figure out how I worked," she sighed with longing of that dream. "But I know that was never going to happen, humans don't fly unless they're in a huge metal tube that goes 600 miles per hour. But I had the next best thing all planned out..." she looked at me with the only hint of remorse I had yet to see in her and for that matter, feel. She turned away, probably unwilling to give me a reason to hate myself more for taking her life. But she opened a can of worms, I needed to know.

"What was the next best thing to flying?" I asked.

She hesitated for a moment, deliberating. The look in my eyes was one of determination, there was no way she was getting out of telling me. She sighed in defeat. "I was working toward becoming an astronaut. The next best thing to flying was no gravity."

"Oh." Now that was something to live for. Being an astronaut, not some little kid's dream, but an honest to goodness determination to go into space. And I took that away from her. Sure she could still go on a shuttle to Mars, but astronauts are in space, sometimes for months. How would she hunt? How would she keep herself from killing her crew mates? It just wasn't possible. I vowed then that, one day, she would go into space, and I would make that happen, there had to be a way.

Instead of "moping" as Dana put it, I smile slightly at her. "Sounds like you dream big."

She brightened at my lack of negative response. "I definitely do. But there is another next best thing I can do."

"Oh really? Do tell."

She laughed and instead of telling me, she showed me and leaped high off the roof, jumping higher than the nearest treetops. She alighted on a high branch an leaped from there, arcing even higher into the sky, laughing the whole way. She was almost flying.

The clouds parted then, reviling the shining expanse of stars beyond. Dana stopped in her antics and stared up in wonder. "It's so beautiful," she gushed, tree-hopping back to her usual perch on the roof.

"Hopefully the weather holds till the morning and I can finally show you what happens in the sunlight," I promised.

"Is it cool?"

"I suppose it is."

A/N: I know it's a bit on the short side but you get another one tomorrow so untill then, R&R!