hi everyone!
so, little intro about me. i've been writing on here on and off for about a year and a half now. i'm a medical student with a hobby for writing, and i love an unconventional pairing.
this idea has been floating in my head for a while, and i had to write it before i go nuts. it features a bella swan who wakes up and has a backbone and a jasper who was not a confederate soldier because nobody wants a racist. anyways, this picks up at chapter 23 of new moon and will go through the whole drama w victoria. also, i don't hate edward i just think that jasper and bella have way more in common (also jackson rathbone is gorgeous).
i update super erratically so i apologize for that.
if you're here from the volunteer/defiance trilogy, don't think that's abandoned. this story has been consuming my thoughts for a while recently and i had to start if before i could continue on w defiance.

Bella

I could always feel his presence.

In the past months, when I had heard his voice, felt his phantom touch, and envisioned his face- it was never in comparison to the real thing. I had never once felt this ghost like my instincts were on overdrive and my entire body was filled with anticipation. My hallucinations had been as empty as I was, lacking the life that seemed to flow like blood in my veins.

And at this moment, I could feel him.

Like an old routine, I pretended to still be sleeping and he humored me in silence. For a moment, while my mind was still in a daze between sleep and wake, it almost felt like none of it ever happened. As if I was transported back in time before the wrapping paper sliced through my finger, and the world spun backward on its axis. It could all be a bad dream, the way Jasper's eyes darted around the room before locking on to mine, the cruel words Edward confessed in the woods, the unwelcome longing glances from Jake over the top of a beat-up motorcycle, the growls and snarls that had filled my once precious meadow, the way the water felt like ice as I tried to swim to the top, and the red eyes of Aro locked onto mine like a promise of death. I'd wake up and tell Edward all about it, and it could all be washed away with a crooked smile and the feeling of cold lips on mine.

It would have been so simple, so easy to forget.

But the reality was one I knew all too well. No matter how hard I hoped and wished that it was different, I had been changed irrevocably by the hole that had ripped open in my chest. My innocence and naivety died in the woods two days after my 18th birthday, and here I was pretending that it was still there. I was haunted by the pain, even if it had eased when my body crashed into his in the alleyway in Volterra.

Like a drug addict, a voice whispered in my head.

His hand brushed across my cheek, cool and soft. The familiarity of it all seemed to rip at the torn pieces of my heart.

I clenched my eyes shut, praying that perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps my dream had truly been just that, and it was just so real, so complex that I had believed it. The rational part of me begged me to stop.

"I know you're awake." His melodic voice ghosted through the room.

It was only at this moment that I realized how stiff my body was as if I had been laying in the same position for days. The feeling was familiar, reminiscent of the first few days after he left when I had completely shut down. My voice scratched in my throat as I answered him, "I know you know."

"So, I know you're awake. And you know that I know that you're awake, and yet; you're still pretending to be asleep?" I could hear the mirth in his voice.

Something in me wanted to scream at him, but I swallowed the urge and opened my eyes to stare at the popcorn ceiling. His presence was so strong in the room. How many nights had I laid in this exact spot, wishing with everything in me to feel him nearby? How many things had I done to see him out of the corner of my eye like I did now? It was real now, and I couldn't bring myself to look at him.

"I can't believe I was in Italy." My voice blurted, desperate to delay the inevitable by changing the subject.

"You should go back to sleep, you're not coherent." He answered.

"Yes, I am." I argued, eyes still trained on the ceiling, "I'm just pissed I was in Italy and didn't eat a single bowl of pasta. If Renee knew about what happened, that's what she would be most angry about."

"You're saying that if your mother knew that you just flew to a different continent to save me from ending my life via capital punishment, she would be angrier about the fact that you didn't stop for a bowl of pasta on the way?" I could almost see the way he was tilting his head at me incredulously like he always did in his voice. I wanted to check and see if I was right, that he was still the same person despite everything that had happened between us; but I didn't dare.

There was no way to know what I would do if I did.

"That's exactly what I'm telling you," I answered instead.

The chair next to me creaked as he spoke, "Well, I suppose the good news is that Renee does not know what really happened."

"What does she know?" I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

"Alice spun a story that the family thought I was going to harm myself after I had a breakdown over missing you, and then she came back here to get you to go stop me. As far as he knows, you went up to Alaska. He's still debating what to tell Renee." Edward answered.

"How mad is he?" I cringed as I asked.

"It's not good. You should know I'm not technically breaking any of his rules. He said I was to never take another step inside the door, I came in through the window." I could hear the quiet frown in his voice.

A memory flashed in my mind of Charlie dragging me out of my rocking chair and throwing me into an ice-cold shower. It was the only thing that brought me to my senses after being catatonic for nearly a week. The memory of the pain in his eyes as he gripped the shower curtain with shaking hands will probably live in my mind forever. All the heartache I had put him through as I so selfishly wallowed in my own self-pity, the guilt of it would surely eat me alive. It wasn't far to him, leaving the way I did with only a note, but I had been too frantic and desperate to think clearly. It seemed now I would pay the price for it.

"It's only to be expected," I answered, resigned to the fact that I would have to deal with it later.

"You've been asleep for over fourteen hours; do you need anything?" He asked.

Always so polite, always such a gentleman.

Water.

Food.

A trip to the bathroom.

An answer to when he'd leave again.

"I'm fine." I lied, "So, what have you been up to up until a few days ago?"

"Nothing wildly exciting, I'm afraid." His voice turned low and soft in an instant.

"Why does your voice sound like that?" I questioned.

"You'd know if you allowed yourself to look at me." I could basically feel the sadness coming off of him.

I couldn't. I'd lose my place counting the bumps on the ceiling. Never mind the fact that if I looked at him, I was sure that the love that would fill me would be my undoing when I watched him leave again. Volterra was like a dream, and it had to stay that way. I couldn't allow myself another memory of him here in this house if I wanted to keep whatever was left of my sanity.

"You didn't answer my question," I said instead.

"I was hunting." He answered vaguely.

"That's not a very good answer." I criticized.

He sighed, "Not for food, I figured I'd actually try my hand and tracking… I'm not very good at it."

"So, I take it you didn't catch whatever you were after." I had just reached 350 bumps when I lost my place at the hesitance in his voice.

"No." He answered.

I started over again, "What were you after anyway?"

His fingers started tapping on the arm of the chair, almost perfectly in tune with the rate I was counting. It was an unconscious habit he did when he was uncomfortable. The person I used to be would have obsessed over the way we were almost unconsciously in sync, but the person I am now could only focus on the fact that he was tapping just a bit too slow to keep in tune with me.

"Nothing of consequence." He muttered.

My eyebrows furrowed, "I don't understand."

He took a deep breath, and I knew I had opened the doors to the conversation I didn't want to have. I cursed myself internally for not just going back to sleep. I should have never opened my mouth.

"I owe you an apology. No." He stuttered, "I owe you more than that. But you have to know that I didn't realize the mess I was leaving you with. I had no idea that Victoria would be back, I was convinced that it was safe for you here. Maybe it's just a lie I told myself, but we only saw her the one time and I had been so focused on James. I never saw this kind of response from her coming, or that they were even mated. All I had read from her was that she was so confident in him, she didn't believe he had the ability to fail, and maybe it's what clouded the bond between them. When Alice told me- when I saw it in her mind- that you had to put your life in the hands of young, volatile, wolves, Bella, I am so sorry."

His voice caught in his throat for a moment, "There's no excuse. Even now, I feel sick to my core over it. I'm the most miserable excuse-"

"Stop." I interrupted, unsure if it was for my sake or his. My hands were twitching with the need to comfort him, my eyes darting across the ceiling as I fought the need to look at him as I answered- "You can't allow this guilt to rule your life. You're not responsible for me anymore, it's just part of how things are for me. We were together, and everything with James happened, and now Victoria wants to kill me, and we aren't together anymore. You can't keep taking the blame. So If I trip in front of a bus or stand too close to Jake when he phases, you can't go running off to Italy because you think it's your fault you didn't save me. I'm human, breakable, that's simply just how my life is. I mean, you have to think of your fami-"

He interrupted my rant- "Do you believe that I asked the Volturi to kill me because I felt guilty?"

The emotions building inside of me died with his words, replaced with only confusion, "Didn't you?"

"Of course, I felt guilty, immensely so. More than I could put into words."

I rubbed my temple trying to make sense of him, "Then… what are you saying."

"I went to Italy because I thought you were dead. Even if I had no hand in it, even if it wasn't my fault, I couldn't bear it. I shouldn't have accepted it secondhand from Rosalie, but then I called and the boy said Charlie was planning a funeral- I had to go to Italy." He responded, a whisper of something in his voice that I couldn't quite place.

"Okay…" I muttered, "So, what?" The energy in the room shifted on a dime.

I could almost feel the way he stopped moving, his eyes boring into the side of my head, "Excuse me?"

Something was building inside of me, like a dam starting to crack under pressure from the water. I wanted this conversation to end before it burst. He would leave, and I would just keep staring at the ceiling. But my wants had nothing to do with the way my heart was pounding erratically or the feeling of my nails digging into my palms as I tried to contain it all.

"What does it matter if I was dead?" I asked, rubbing my eyes to try to force them to stay on the ceiling. Greater and greater, the pressure inside of me built.

"Why would you ask me such a question, Bella?" The wood of the chair creaked again like a warning whistle echoing in an empty, evacuated town, "Don't you remember anything I told you before?"

The dam burst faster than I could control it.

My head snapped to his, my eyes meeting his truly for the first time in months, and I was surprised when the emotion that filled me wasn't love. It was rage.

Pure, unadulterated, and deadly. My voice came out like venom as I answered him, "I remember every single word you said."

He flinched, and it occurred to me that I had never truly been angry with him before. He had been this figure of perfection in my mind, and usually, I'd have forgiven him before we even got a chance to speak about what had angered me. He could do no wrong in my eyes.

And now I was looking at him, with the same messy bronze hair and the same face I had adored so much save for the dark shadows under his eyes and the pained look that overtook him, and all I could feel was anger. It drowned out everything else, tinting my vision blood red. How dare he pretend as if it never happened? As if I was supposed to believe anything he had said before he told me it was all a lie?

"I lied. I had to lie. I thought I was keeping you safe by leaving." He answered, his voice softer than I had ever heard it, "I never expected you to believe me so easily."

"You said you didn't want me, that I wasn't good enough for you. You walked away like I meant nothing to you." I repeated the words that had haunted me, ignoring the way my entire body shook and my heart clenched as I said them.

"You never would have let me go if I told you the truth, I knew you'd never move on. I thought that if you believed I didn't love you anymore, it would be easier, and you could move on with your life." He explained, gold eyes boring into mine.

Something inside of me snapped into place like a screw I didn't know had been missing. "Take me outside," I demanded.

"What?" His eyes furrowed.

"Take me outside, into the woods. I'm going to yell, and I don't want to wake Charlie." I answered through my teeth, my entire body vibrating with an innate urge to start screaming.

There was a part of me that was afraid that once I started, I would never stop. The pain and rage would flow out of me forever until I lost my voice, and the screams were only in my head.

Edward didn't move at first. All he did was stare at me blankly, his expression unreadable. I stood, fuming, trying to keep my mouth shut. At any moment, I was sure I was going to explode. Wordlessly, he swept me off the bed and out the window. Before I knew it, we were standing in a clearing similar to the one where he had destroyed me. Soft streams of the first signs of morning light peeked through the tree line, morning fog swirling around my legs as he set me down.

I allowed myself a moment, only one, to straighten my thoughts before I allowed myself to look at him again. When I did, the apathetic look on his face only angered me even more.

"How fucking dare you?" I spat, "Do you have any idea what you did to me? How broken I was?"

"I know, and I can't apologize enough. I thought I was saving you." He answered.

"From what, Edward? What magical force did you think you were saving me from?" The back of my throat burned with the need to scream even louder.

"I was saving you from me, and it was a worthless effort." He resigned.

The noise that escaped my throat was just short of a growl, "That's a complete load of bullshit. You weren't saving me; you were taking away my choice!"

"That was never my intention." He answered, but the look on his face told me he didn't even believe himself.

"Stop lying! I'm sick of this. You made the decision for me, and then you decided that the best way to do it was to destroy me in the process!" My hands flew out to push him away from me, and I knew he was indulging me when he let himself stumble backward.

"How could I have ever thought you'd believe me? After thousands of times, I told you I love you, it was one word." His voice started to get louder, and it occurred to me that I had never truly seen him yell before, "I saw it in your eyes, Bella. You believed me without a second thought, and I knew you never truly trusted me at that moment!"

An overwhelming urge to slap him overcame me, and I managed to stop myself before breaking my hand. "Don't stand here and play stupid with me Edward. You knew I thought I was undeserving; you knew I was insecure, and you played on that fear to get what you wanted." I spat, "It was never about trust, it was you deciding what was best for me without a second thought as to how I felt."

"I knew that one day you'd see me for the monster I truly am. It was only a matter of time." He frowned, looking like a kicked puppy.

"Don't you dare throw that shit in my face, Edward." I growled, "You don't get to excuse this away on some bullshit notion that you're just an intrinsically evil person. That devoids you of any blame, and you don't get to do that to me."

"I don't know what you want me to say." He shook his head.

I thought steam might be coming out of my ears, "I want you to take some fucking responsibility."

"What happened to you? You never used to curse." He frowned.

Of all the things he could have said, I was positive this would be my undoing. Tears welled in my eyes without my permission.

"You!" I answered, "You happened to me!"

I might as well have punched him in the face.

"You drug me out into the middle of the woods, told me you didn't love me, you didn't want me, that I wasn't good enough for you, that my mind was like a sieve, and I would soon forget that any of this ever happened. You took your entire family with you, and I never got to say goodbye to any of them. I loved you, I loved your family- and you abandoned me here with not even a photo to remember you by!"

The tears started streaming down my face as my anger morphed into the pain and heartache that had consumed me for so long, "Do you have any idea what that did to me? To Charlie? I was unresponsive for weeks. I had nightmares every night, replaying those words over and over again. I started fucking hallucinating you every time I did something reckless, and the next thing I knew I was throwing myself off of cliffs just trying to hear your voice! And now you have the nerve to stand here and tell me it was all a lie for my own good? Does any of that sound like you saved me?" I spat in his face.

He stared at me, anguish over each of his perfect features. I stared back, my heart shattering in my chest at the way that I couldn't seem to find my love for him now that I knew the truth.

I had called a checkmate, and we both knew it.

"Do you want me to leave again?" He asked.

The betrayal that ran through me nearly knocked me off my feet, "Why the hell would you even ask me that?"

He took a deep breath, "I don't know what to do."

I wiped my eyes, trying to regain some composure within myself, "And I don't know how I'm supposed to trust you now." I answered.

I was sure I'd rip to pieces soon.

"If there's any other secrets you have, feel free to share while we're getting everything out in the open." I could barely stand to look at him.

A strange look crossed his face, there one moment and gone the next. I had never seen him look like that before, and then he was staring at me- a resigned look in his eye. So similar to the one I saw all those months ago in these same exact woods that the world around me seemed to shift to match that day. Suddenly it wasn't crisp morning air, but a soft autumn breeze that carried the destruction of my life alongside it. The ghost of the girl I was screamed in the mind of the woman I am.

"That night, at your birthday party, Alice knew what would happen. She saw it the moment that Esme decided to wrap your present, and she hid it from me this whole time." His voice was barely a whisper on the wind of the incoming thunderstorm. The clouds seemed to mimic my emotions, brewing inside of me as he confessed the real truth. Confusion, swirling with anger and heartbreak, building to a crescendo that would flood the entire town.

"Why wouldn't she say anything?" I asked, "Why would she let that happen?"

"Because it was meant to happen." He answered simply, a grim look on his face.

"I don't understand." The sting of betrayal from someone I consider my sister could have rivaled the one I felt from Edward.

"It's complicated. I guess all that really matters is that you know that Jasper did lose control, just not in the way you think." Edward was being cryptic, and I was just about fed up with it.

"Explain this to me like I have no fucking clue what you're talking about Edward." I snapped.

He sighed, running his hand through his hair, the first cracks of thunder began to sound. A feeling washed over me, just like the one I had the last time we were here, that whatever he was about to say next would change everything.

"Jasper wasn't coming for you. I was the one who lost control, and he could feel my bloodlust spike. He was coming for me, he was protecting you. Nobody knew that except for me and him." Edward explained.

Thunder cracked overhead of us, and the wind howled. His face lit up with a crash of lightning, and the first drops of rain began to hit the treetops overhead.

He had known the truth.

And he let Jasper take the fall for it.

I had so many questions, so much to say. I wanted to know what he meant when he said Jasper lost control. I wanted to know what had really happened before they decided to leave. I wanted to know why he chose to lie to me about this.

But my words were cut short by the sound of snarling and a flash of red hair.

And then everything was just gone.