Disclaimer: I own no rights to the 'Twilight' series and I make no claims by writing this tribute.

"Well?" Jane said, with her charming little girl smile, "aren't any of you going to offer to accompany me? Aro always says that you are such charming gentlemen."

I couldn't quite believe that Jane was smiling cheerfully about killing people and asking if anyone would care to keep her company, just as if she was taking a pleasant stroll somewhere.

There was a ripple of pointed looks amongst the Cullens as they tried to silently determine the best person to go. It was Edward, of course, who muttered, "Carlisle", having read the minds of everyone present he was best suited to voice some sort of consensus

Emmett shrugged, Jasper frowned and Esme gripped her husband's arm tightly. But Carlisle put on a smile that was almost as charming as Jane's and said, "well, of course, I would be delighted to escort you, so long as you understand that I won't be joining you."

Jane giggled, "no, probably not. Your restraint is well-known Carlisle. The rest of your coven – excuse me, you like to say 'family', do you not? - are not so famed, you know. Perhaps next time you will be allowed out to play with me, Major."

I was impressed that Jasper didn't flinch. Carlisle's eyes tightened a little, and he looked fixedly, determinedly polite. Edward winced slightly, and I wondered what Jane was thinking. But, I couldn't ask.

Then, taking Carlisle's arm, as if she thought they were going to the opera, Jane darted away into the woods.

For a few moments the rest of the family stood there looking stunned.

Then Alice screwed up her nose and said, "one hour forty-three minutes, I think, though it's a little blurry. Jane makes a lot of snap decisions, it's a little hard to be certain what she's going to do next. She might be distracted by something shiny."

"Thank you," Esme said softly, grateful to have some sort of time at which to hope for her husband's return.

"He will be fine, of course" Alice said "he knows what he's doing."

Esme nodded, but she didn't look quite convinced.

"We should take Bella home," said Jasper.

"Someone should stay with her," Edward said tersely, "Jasper?"

Jasper raised one eyebrow at his brother, presumably curious that Edward would suggest Jasper staying with me rather than himself.

Edward's nervous face flickered for a second, giving a glimpse of a smile, "please don't make me say it out loud," he said softly, referring to some private joke between them.

Jasper shrugged, "can't read minds, little brother. You'll have to say it."

"I'm worried and I want you with Bella because I know that I can't protect her from Jane," Edward spoke very fast, "and you might" he sighed slightly at 'might', "be able to do so. Happy?"

"Extraordinarily so" Jasper drawled; "it's good for you to admit these things." He smirked and Edward rolled his eyes. For a moment they were back to normal, teasing each other. But their faces quickly returned to the tense, tight expressions from before. Jane, it seemed, was a far more worrying threat to the Cullens than anything that Victoria had brought.

It was another quietly tense car journey. Jasper drove and Alice sat in the back with me. It reminded me of that first time that Edward had been afraid for me: when James had decided to hunt me. He had sent me with Alice and Jasper then, too. They seemed to be the pair that were considered most formidable. I suppose with Alice's gift and Jasper's experience, they were probably the most dangerous of all the Cullens, though they didn't look that way to human eyes. Alice was tiny and giggly, she seemed like a fairy, not a daemon. Humans were certainly more wary of Rose's volatility. And Jasper, with his slow speech and soft accent, certainly didn't look as scary as giant Emmett, nor even moody Edward. Appearances were not all that reliable when it came to judging vampires, however; Jane looked like a sweet little girl and she terrified all of my vampires.

Charlie was still out with Billy, so we needn't have rushed home after all.

As soon as we entered the house and she knew that we were alone, Alice picked up the phone. Jasper lounged casually on the sofa, watching me closely.

"What?" I asked.

He smirked, "do you know how you're feeling right now?"

I realised that I'd been pacing up and down the front room; a habit that I must have picked up from Edward, I never used to pace. Mind you, I never used to be surrounded by life-threatening killers, perhaps I would have paced before, had a vampire wanted me dead.

I stopped pacing and did a bit of a self-inventory. I wasn't in pain. I wasn't frightened, was I? I didn't feel frightened. Actually, I wasn't sure that I felt anything.

"No," I answered Jasper, "I don't know how I'm feeling. What are you doing?"

He shook his head, "nothing at all. I'm not affecting you. It's a purely innate defence mechanism. You've gone numb. You're protecting yourself."

Well, right now, numb was probably for the best. I didn't want to start screaming again.

"You should eat something," he said, "even if you're not hungry."

So I walked into the kitchen and Jasper trailed behind me.

"Are you going to eat something too?"

He wrinkled his nose, "no, thank you."

"I can make a sandwich without supervision." To prove my point, I found bread, chicken, mayonnaise and lettuce.

"I know that, obviously. But, I am rather fond of my arms, and Edward will tear them off if I let you out of my sight right now."

I laughed, spreading two slices of bread with butter, then laying the lettuce and chicken carefully on top. "Do you think that he could?"

"Right now? Fully fed and furious? Possibly. Let's not experiment."

"You always tell him that you're so much stronger and faster." I said, spreading mayonnaise on a couple of slices of bread.

"No, not that. I'm slower than he is, in fact. And not very much stronger at all. I keep my head, that's the real difference. When things get exciting, Edward gets excited and then he doesn't concentrate properly. He spends too much time in his opponents' heads, you know, and not enough in his own."

While Jasper was talking, I pressed my sandwiches together tightly and cut them into triangles.

"You should also have a drink," he said calmly.

I stared at my lunch and nodded, why hadn't I thought of that? I hadn't felt at all thirsty. I fetched juice from the fridge and poured myself a big glass.

Then I sat down to eat and Jasper leant against the door frame watching me.

"I think that we spend less time eating," he said. "It's strange really. We're the ones with all the time on our hands, and humans are the ones who have so many unavoidable calls on their time: sleeping, eating, tending to growing bodies."

"My meals only take a few minutes, an hour at most. You go hunting for days at a time."

"True, but we don't actually spend all that time hunting. We probably spend about as much time on a hunt as you do on a leisurely lunch, and we only have to do that every week or so. What will you do with all the extra time, Bella? Are you going to play the piano?"

"What do you do?"

"Read. Write. Think. Watch Alice."

"And Alice has her clothes. And Rose has her cars."

Jasper smiled, "Carlisle has his hospitals and Esme has her houses."

"What does Emmett do?"

"Wander around annoying the rest of us."

"I meant, seriously."

"So did I."

I laughed, "I've never really seen you all doing your own thing. You always seem to be together."

"I suppose we do. Usually, we are all together when you visit. But, there are hours and hours in which we all amuse ourselves. I don't know what Edward has implied, but we don't spend all night, every night, in our separate bedrooms, torturing him with images he'd rather not see."

"I suppose that's a relief."

Jasper chuckled again. "You always seem to see us rushing around and getting into trouble. But, most of our life together is very slow and uneventful."

"Do I cause a lot of chaos, then?"

He laughed loudly this time, "oh, yes, Bella. You have thrown a hurricane into the midst of the Cullen coven – I mean to say family. It's a good thing, though. You make Edward so unprecedentedly happy. He's never been like this, in all the time I've known him. He's never even had a moment of the joy that he feels all the time now that he's met you."

"That's horribly sad."

"Maybe. It doesn't seem that way to me. I think it was a blessing that he didn't know what he was missing, all this time. Had he known I don't think he would have coped half as well."

I smiled, and stood up, rinsing my dishes in the sink and leaving them on the side to drain. "I am glad that I make Edward happy. I think that's my favourite thing in the world to hear."

Jasper nodded. I suppose he felt the same about Alice. It must be nice to know for sure that you were making the one you loved happy, as Jasper knew with Alice.

"Why did Jane invite you to hunt with her next time?"

Jasper sighed, "Jane knows about us from Aro, who knows about us from Edward – inadvertently, of course. So, she sees us all from his perspective. And that means that she sees me as the weakest link, the one most likely to slip and kill a human. That's Edward's opinion." He paused and gave me a slight smile, "of course, he's probably right. If he wasn't, I would be watching over Jane right now and Edward would be here with you."

That made sense, but I felt a little bad for bringing it up. I could also see why Jane's comment had upset Edward more than Jasper. He felt incredibly guilty for revealing everything he knew and thought about his family to Aro.

"Carlisle doesn't think so," Jasper said suddenly.

"Doesn't think what?"

"That I'm the weakest link," he explained. "He doesn't distrust me or my control at all, even after seeing what I've done."

"Maybe he's right."

Jasper laughed, "you trust me too," he went on. "It's strange. I'm the only one of the family who's ever come close to hurting you, and you still trust me, just as completely as Carlisle does."

"Well, then, maybe we're both right."

Jasper laughed again, and followed me back into the living room.

"We don't have much choice," Jasper suddenly replied to something that Alice was muttering into the phone, reminding me that we weren't actually alone, and he must have been listening to both conversations all this time. "Flattering as your faith in me is, I don't think that I could stand up to her for long at all."

"Jasper!" Alice hissed, angry with him for some reason.

At exactly the same moment, I asked, "much choice about what?" But then the pieces fell into place. Jasper must have been saying that he couldn't ward of Jane, if she chose to attack me. So, he must be saying that the Cullens had no choice but to do what Jane wanted and what Jane wanted was . . . me changed into a vampire very soon indeed.

All the tense looks and the frowns made sense now. I was going to die very soon indeed and none of the Cullens knew how to stop it. All our great plans were going to fall apart. I wouldn't be able to plan this carefully to avoid hurting Charlie. He was going to lose his only daughter suddenly. We were going to have to arrange an accident, something that would leave Charlie and Renee traumatized and break the treaty with the wolves. I had to die.

As all of this crashed into me, like being punched in the stomach, I felt Jasper's arms wrap around me in a firm embrace.

"Whoa!" he said, as if he thought I was a horse about to bolt, "too much and too sudden, Bella."

Then I felt a thick, smothering blanket of calm wrap itself around me, even tighter than Jasper's arms. It was almost suffocating; too many warm fuzzy feelings forcing themselves on me all at once.

"Fine," Alice was saying soothingly into the phone, "she's frightened, but Jazz has it under control."

While Alice spoke, Jasper carefully lifted me over to the couch and laid me down.

"No, he's still out . . . Well, if that's what she wants . . ."

Alice hung up and turned to us, "well, that was a very short burst of calm. They're all coming over here to discuss the revised plan. It's not a good idea. You'll bounce everyone's fear all over the place. Edward won't like all the minds running so fast, trying to find some solution, and I'm going to be bombarded with hundreds of possible visions. We would probably be better off if we kept Edward away from you and I right now. But, Esme's agreed to come, and I can hardly argue with her. Edward seems to think that if we're all together we'll be able to come to a magic solution."

Jasper sighed, "I can't think of anything."