A/N:

I can't believe I forgot to mention in yesterday's AN that Twilight premiered 15 years ago :O

By the time the movie came out, I'd already read all the books and I was a diehard fan of the saga. Without the movies, I don't know if I'd ever have started writing fanfiction, so it was a bit of celebration. April of next year will mark my own personal 14th anniversary as an author, and I can't quite believe it's been that long :P

Title: Origins: Living in my Future

Author: MarieCarro

Beta: Alice's White Rabbit

Pre-reader: BitterHarpy and brierlynn03

Genre: Supernatural/Mystery

Rating: NC-17

Summary: Mary Alice Brandon had always been different. She seemed to know things that had yet to happen, and the people in town avoided her at all costs. But the cries of 'Witch' or whispers of 'Changeling' wasn't her biggest concern. Someone much closer to her than the townsfolk couldn't accept her differences, and it put her in life-threatening danger.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.


CHAPTER 19

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21st 1948

I comfortably lounged on the big bed and enjoyed allowing the sun to heat my skin and cast rainbows onto the walls while Jasper stood pressed against the corner in the shadows.

"I promise no one's coming up here today," I reassured him. "It's okay to bask in the sun every once in a while, even for us vampires." Sitting up on my knees, I reached out my hand, offering it for him to take. "Please, come here."

He pushed away from the wall and slowly joined me, accepting my hand as I pulled him closer, and the prisms the light reflected when he finally allowed himself to sit in it danced with each movement.

"I'm not scared of the sun," he said and directed his eyes to the orb outside. The bed was situated far enough away from the window so no one would be able to see us even if they happened to be in a building across from our hotel. "I'm just not accustomed to freely enjoyin' it. We were all under strict lockdown durin' the days on Maria's orders. She never corrected the newborns' belief that we'd burn in the sun since it gave her more control over them. While I knew it wasn't true, it was just easier for all of us to stay inside."

"You must've snuck away at least once though, right?" He didn't answer, and I had to push down my surging anger toward his creator. "The more I learn about her, the less I like her."

"She was all I had for a long time, but you're right, she's not particularly likable. Terrifyin' and demandin', but not likable."

I studied him and his seemingly relaxed state and wondered if I could ask him about his relationship with her without having him shut down on me. No vision warned me not to, and I wanted to take the chance of having a normal conversation with him.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" I started carefully, which caused him to smile.

"You can, if I can do the same?"

"Of course. I don't want to have any secrets from you."

He smiled in response, and I felt the small nudge of warm joy radiating through our touch. "Then ask whatever you want."

"I will admit I've seen a lot more of your ... relations with Maria than I would've preferred." He undoubtedly could feel my discomfort and guilt for having witnessed such private moments, but I refused to shield from him. He deserved to always know I wouldn't manipulate him with false emotions as I knew Maria had. "I can't control what my gift will show me, so I'm sorry for that invasion of privacy, but what I'm actually asking is what was your relationship like?"

"You mean, did I love her?"

A tiny part of me said yes to the question in my head, but I'd seen his conversation with Peter. He didn't even know himself if what he had with Maria was love, so there was no reason for me to push him on that. "No. More of wanting to know why you stayed for so long when you clearly already resented her at the time I started seeing your future."

"I've asked myself that more times than I can count," he replied and slowly turned our clasped hands around to make the rainbows dance. He wasn't making a single move to pull his hand back, so I saw that as a win. "From the day I opened my eyes to this new existence, she knew how to make me need her. Every time I doubted, even for the shortest second, she did somethin' that roped me back in. It was the same with Nettie and Lucy for a long time before they turned on her."

I frowned in response to the unfamiliar names. "Nettie and Lucy?"

He sighed. "I haven't said those names out loud for a long time, so it's no surprise you don't know who they are. Perhaps it'd be easier if I just tell you how it all started."

"Only if you want to," I assured him. "I don't want you to feel forced to tell me anything you're not comfortable with yet."

"It's fine," he insisted. "That part of my story is far from the worst." He reached into his pocket and pulled out an ornate golden button that I identified as having once been part of his uniform. "I've reflected over my time in the war a lot. Why I wanted to join despite bein' underage; what I did to rise through the ranks so quickly; how it led me to become what I am today. Most of it, I'm not proud of, but at the time, I didn't see it as bein' wrong."

There was a churning discomfort rumbling in my stomach as I realized what he was saying without speaking the words directly. Of course, I'd always known since his time in the Confederate Army wasn't news to me, but it didn't make the truth easier to swallow.

Because the Civil War had already been so far in the past when I was changed and Jasper became a part of my life, I'd willed myself into not thinking of his reasons behind fighting on the Southern side. It had been easier to do that than to confront what was staring me in the face.

A small sound left Jasper as he took in what I was processing. "Even without your feelings givin' you away right now, I knew you wouldn't have been on the Confederate side despite bein' the Southern missy you are."

I nodded because I didn't know what else to say. I wasn't judging him for his diet, or his past with Maria, or any of the murders he'd committed in her name. I wish I could say the same about his human past, but I couldn't.

"I'm not goin' to dive into all the details right now," he said. "I reckon that's better to discuss another time, but what I am goin' to say is that my beliefs have changed. I'm not the same man I was, but I won't deny it was part of who I used to be."

"Same as hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other men," I said and slowly lifted my head to meet his eyes. "I won't say it doesn't matter because it does. Some of the most wonderful humans I've come across have been black or non-white, and the thought that my soulmate once saw them as inferior because of the color of their skin makes me more than uncomfortable" His red irises studied my gold ones with caution. "But if you say you don't hold those beliefs anymore, I'm choosing to trust you. And I have no idea what sort of person I was as a human, so who am I to say people can't change."

The silence stretched for a moment before he spoke again.

"I should've listened to my instincts that night. But I was mesmerized by their beauty, much like a siren's voice pulls sailors into their watery graves, their appearance was like a mirage in the desert. I'd already been ridin' for days, first from Galveston to Houston to evacuate the women and children, and then back to Galveston. I hadn't been eatin' properly, and the sun had baked me durin' the day. If I'd had all my senses together, I would've kept on ridin' instead of approachin' them.

"I mistook them for stragglers of the evacuation party I'd guided there because we were still so close to the city, but the second I was close enough to properly make them out in the dark, I knew that wasn't who they were."

"So Maria had companions before you?" I asked, but for some reason, the question made Jasper scoff.

"I wouldn't say Nettie and Lucy were ever Maria's companions. It was a precarious alliance of convenience. It was the destruction of their respective covens that brought them together and nothin' more. There was no loyalty between them, and it didn't take long for the other two to rebel against Maria's authority. So she ordered me to kill them."

"And that didn't make you question her?"

He shook his head. "No. I still considered myself as young and new to this life, and I did everythin' to please her. She was almost like a goddess I worshiped. Approval from her was all I sought for the longest time."

"So what changed?"

"Nothin' really changed. But I stopped makin' excuses to myself for her behavior, and I became aware of the mate she lost when her coven was destroyed. It wasn't until Peter came around that it sank in for me that she was only stringing me along because I was useful to her." He clenched his jaw, and a flicker of anger sparked through our connection.

I gave his hand a light squeeze, and when he turned back to me, I encouraged him with my eyes to tune into my emotions instead of losing himself in his dark ones. As the tension faded from his expression, I smiled, and he finally relaxed again.

"Thank you," he said softly. "No one's ever done that for me before."

"What? Help you calm down?"

"No." He sighed. "Maria always wanted me to feed my instincts with my emotions. If I got angry, she only stoked the flames."

Slowly, always so slowly, I scooted closer to him until I could lean my head on his shoulder. "You wanted to ask me something?" I wanted to change the subject away from Maria to give him the opportunity to process everything he'd admitted to me since I could see he was growing uncomfortable with the prolonged conversation about his creator.

He let out a small chuckle tinted with relief. "You called me your soulmate."

"I did," I said without hesitating. He could feel everything I was feeling, so there was no use in denying how deeply involved I was.

"Does that mean you love me?"

I giggled in delight and tightened my hand around his. It was bittersweet that he knew I'd been waiting for him for so long, told him that our future was intertwined, and that he could sense what I felt for him, and yet, he still needed me to verbally verify it. "I do. I've loved you since I woke up. It took me a few days to realize that's what I felt, but since then, I haven't questioned it."

The pleasant tingle I felt by just being near him was momentarily amplified, and I wondered if it was because he tried to mimic the emotion, or if he actually started to feel it himself.

"How did you know it was love?" he asked slowly. "Without your human memories, how could you be so sure? How was it to fall in love with someone you hadn't met yet?"

I raised my head, and he was staring at me with such intensity it wasn't just the heat of the sun making me feel warm. "It was easier than you can imagine," I said and lifted my hand so he could see that my intent was to touch his chin and jaw. He tensed up for a short moment but allowed it, and when my fingers made soft contact with his skin, he exhaled in ease. "You, of all people, know how difficult it is to describe an emotion or where it comes from. Sometimes, it sneaks up on you, and sometimes, it's almost as if it came on suddenly, but then there are also those who feel as if they were always there, and you just didn't have a word for it."

He nodded as his expression filled with wonder.

"I don't know when, or where, or how it was decided that we were meant for each other. When I had that first vision of you, my first thought was how beautiful you were, and I wanted to know why you appeared broken." I traced my fingers higher until I was fully cupping his cheek, and he closed his eyes with the sensations I could feel the touch was evoking within him.

"I wanted to find you immediately, but the time wasn't right."

"How did you find the patience in yourself?" he asked, almost breathlessly. His eyes remained closed, and I was struck by how stunningly gorgeous he was in that relaxed state. And he was almost mine. Not fully mine, but he was getting there.

"I couldn't bear the thought of not having you in my life. I already belonged to you, and I needed you to equally belong to me."

He opened his eyes, and they were no longer just red. They had darkened with the lust we both felt, and then he opened his mouth, his lips slowly forming my name, and I immediately recognized my first vision.

This was what I had seen.

Jasper's face, dark with fierce lust, and the broken energy I thought I'd detected then was actually his desperation for love, affection, and acceptance. He was practically begging me to let him in as if I wasn't already there with open arms.

"I love you, Jasper," I whispered and backed my words up with my unguarded emotion.

His mouth was on mine in less than half a second, and an excited whimper I couldn't have controlled even if I'd wanted to left me when his arms wrapped around me and held me pressed against his body.

I could feel how raw his thirst for emotional connection was in his movements and how he clung to me as if I was his savior. To anyone else, it would've been overwhelming, but I'd known who he was and what he wasn't given for decades. I knew his current state was a burst of heightened feelings he needed to get out, and I happily received them.

The taste of him was also intoxicating me to a point where my head was swimming with it. I hadn't experienced a single vision of us kissing in twenty-eight years, and I could only assume it was because a vision couldn't even come close to what was happening in my body at that moment. It was simply impossible to recreate, so it didn't.

His hand snaked around my neck, and he threaded his fingers through my short hair at the back of my head, slowly gripping it to keep me in place as the kiss deepened. I unabashedly moaned out loud when his tongue parted my lips, and his sweet taste became more intense.

"Alice," he said my name again, and I felt his intention switch when his free hand began exploring the fastenings on my clothes.

As much as I wanted and craved him, I wasn't convinced it was a good idea for us to jump from our first kiss to immediately having sex, so I regrettably pushed him away. He appeared adorably confused for a second, but I gave him another light kiss and a smile to reassure him everything was fine.

I knew sex was something Maria had used to avoid emotions between the two of them, so I wanted him to know it wouldn't be the same for us.

"I'm sorry, I thought—" he started, but I lightly pressed my fingers against his lips to stop him.

"You don't have to apologize. You weren't wrong," I said. "I want you, and I know you can feel that I do. I just want you to know that I don't demand it." His brows knitted together, and I moved my fingers from his lips to his forehead to smooth them out. "A kiss doesn't have to become more than a kiss. Because I love every part of you, Jasper Whitlock. Not just your physical appeal."

My words hit something deep within him because he had to swallow hard before he gave me a small nod. Then he took a hold of both my hands and silently asked me to sit opposite him on the bed.

"Can I try something?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Something happened last night when you helped me with the tie."

I nodded, immediately knowing what he referred to.

"I've never felt as at ease in my life as I did in that moment. I want to see if it can happen again."

"Okay," I agreed softly, elated he was freely communicating what he wanted from me. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just sit right there," he said and entwined our fingers before looking deep in my eyes.

Without even trying particularly hard, his presence and the way he took me in caused exciting snippets of our future to flash before me, and they were even stronger and more colorful than before. I knew it was because of our kiss and his own building feelings for me, and I could barely contain my excitement.

Suddenly, I saw the one thing that had always been half up in the air, half a done deal.

I saw Jasper, laughing together with Edward and Emmett by his side. They were teasingly pushing each other around as they ran through a forest, and Jasper's eyes … were gold.

He and I together, alone, would probably sustain us for quite some time, but the knowledge we would have a family, knowing he'd be surrounded by peaceful people who'd all want the best for him, made my heart soar above the clouds.

Jasper could feel it. The joy and excitement I was radiating, and he ended up leaning forward, connecting his forehead with mine as he allowed the positive emotions to embrace him, and a small smile played on his lips.

"Amazing," he said but, otherwise, didn't break the moment until it naturally faded into the background. When everything had settled, he leaned back for a second, only to give me a quick kiss that made my body tingle as much as the deeper one had.

Neither of us said anything as we just existed in the peace we had created together.


A/N:

They're definitely growing closer, and Jasper's exploring his feelings for Alice. Yes, she stopped him and it was important that she did. Their relationship isn't one built on ravaging lust and physical love only. The foundation is definitely the emotional support they give each other.

I really do love this part of the story. These chapters when they get to know each other are definitely my favorite and I hope you love them as much as I do!

Until tomorrow,

Stay Awesome!