I'm sort of blown away with the response I've gotten from this story so far! Thank you heaps again to those of you who have followed and favourited, and especially those of you who have taken the time to review. I really love knowing what people think.

I think this chapter is the longest so far (but I have been known to be wrong about technicalities), and is mostly made up of a flash back. I wanted to give you an insight into Jasper's past, and possibly justify a little as to why he is so messed up.

Disclaimer: If I owned the rights to Twilight I'd be able to afford to pay someone to write witty disclaimers for me. But for now, you're stuck with my lame ones.

Enjoy!

*also, important author's note at the end!*

Chapter Six

JPOV

"Tell me about your dream, Jasper."

"I've told you everything before."

"I want you to tell me again."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Jasper…" An exasperated sigh came from the Doctor.

I knew I was being difficult, but that was her problem. I could do it all day if need be. I'd already told her that I didn't feel like talking today, let alone listening to the psychobabble that shrinks were able to spout so seamlessly. To be fair to her, Charlotte was actually pretty cool. For a therapist. Sitting in her chair, she was giving me the same look she always did when I decided to be annoying, which was a fairly frequent occurrence. If it were up to me, I wouldn't be here at all today.

Pushing a stray stand of hair behind her ear she sighed again and tilted her head, "What if we talk about something different then, hmm?" We'd spent forty minutes already with her trying to pry more information out of me, and it was clear she didn't think it was going to work. I told her already that I had another nightmare and a panic attack from it, to which she'd reprimanded me for not taking my medication, again, and told me how dangerous it was, again.

"What'd you have in mind Doc?"

"Is there anything you want to talk about?" Charlotte did this thing where she would try to lead me into a topic to get me to open up. It never worked though; I don't know why she bothers.

"Nope."

"Nothing at all?"

"Nup. Nothing."

"Oh really?" She sounded as if she knew something I didn't, which worried me a little.

"What…?"

"Nothing." She grinned at me and I scowled. I was the one that played games and frustrated people, not the other way around. "I was just wondering about Edward."

That was odd. "What about Edward…?"

"Tell me about him."

"What about him?" I was genuinely confused at what she wanted me to say. I'd never really gone into detail about my friendship with Edward in any of my sessions; I'd mentioned him, sure, but never anything specific.

"What's he like? I want you to describe his personality for me, tell me about your friendship."

"Okay, umm…" I figured that talking about Edward would be easier than talking about myself. "We're close, I guess, like best friends. Um, I dunno, I tell him almost everything." Okay, so apparently talking about other people is just as hard talking about yourself.

"Almost everything?" She questioned, after scribbling something on the notepad she kept on her lap.

"Well, yeah, I mean, I don't really tell anyone everything, I guess.But I tell Edward and Rosalie just about everything."

More notes. "Does Edward tell you everything?"

"Uh, yeah I suppose so. He's a pretty open person once he trusts someone."

"Do you trust Edward?" I couldn't tell if Charlotte actually thought she was on to something, or she was just pulling questions out of thin air.

"Uh, yeah, of course I do. He's the only one that isn't in my family that knows… w-what h-happened to me." As much as I hated it, every time I even tried to talk about what had happened to me I either jumbled my words or stuttered like crazy. Sometimes both.

"Right, of course. And you told him exactly what happened?"

"I didn't go into detail, I just told him enough to make him believe I was telling the truth."

The night I had told Edward about my past had been awful. He had stayed the night at my house to keep me company while Emmett was out of town once again. Everything had been normal, eating pizza and watching TV as usual, until I had gotten up to go the bathroom while was Edward channel surfing, looking for something to watch. At first I didn't pay attention to what he had landed on, being preoccupied with emptying my ready to burst bladder, but when I came back into the room, the TV show caught my eye. It must have been some crime investigation show or something, one of the ones that have the flashbacks to what had supposedly happened. Currently on the screen was a young boy, probably about ten or eleven years old, sitting in a dark room. I could see the tears in the young actors eyes and they looked all too real. There were loud footsteps coming from somewhere in front of where the boy was sitting. It was when he heard the noise and tried to curl in on himself, his young frame shaking, that I realised he was hiding from whoever had just opened the door to the room. I sat silently staring it the screen as I saw a tall man advance toward the boy, who had abandoned all hopes of being quiet and let out a terrified sob, knowing there was no escape from what was coming. The man grabbed the boy and hit his face and I couldn't help but flinch. If Edward noticed, he didn't say anything. The camera angles changed rapidly as the boy cried out, making it near impossible to see what was going on, creating the desired effect to the viewer. The camera panned out in the darkness and man's large frame covered the boy's as I realised, with the bile rising in the back of my throat, what was happening to the boy.

Exactly the same thing that had happened to me, time and time again.

Everything suddenly went cold and all I could hear were the screams of the boy and blood rushing in my ears. I felt the room begin to spin and I could feel something gripping my shoulder, calling my name. I turned to look at Edward and the look on his face told me that the screams were in fact coming from me, but I couldn't seem to stop them. The room wouldn't stay still and my eyes were blurring, I could see Edward's lips moving, but the pounding in my ears was too loud to hear his voice. I closed my eyes and felt like I was standing next to a raging ocean with the wind chilling me down to my bones and the angry waves deafening me. I pushed through the haze and ran to the bathroom, smashing my hip into the kitchen counter on the way past. I barely registered the shooting pain as I bent over the toilet bowl and emptied the contents of my churning stomach into it. After a minute or two of heaving, my stomach was empty and my throat was raw. I moved away from the toilet and lent my head back against the bathtub. I felt more than saw Edward sit down on the floor next to me. I stared blankly at the wall until my brain registered that he was holding a glass of water. With shaking hands I took a tentative sip of water and let out a shuddering breath.

"Look, Jazz, I don't know what that was, but I'm here okay?" He spoke in a hushed tone, as if I was likely to be spooked by loud sounds. I guess, for all he knew, I was. "If you want me to leave, that's fine, I'll go."

My head snapped up to look at him. "Please don't leave… I don't want you to leave…" A sob threatened to break through the carefully placed walls I had built over the years. Edward had never seen me cry.

"Shh, Jazz, it's okay, I'm not going anywhere." He shifted to sit by my side and carefully wrapped an arm around my shoulders, waiting to see if I would react. Normally I would cringe away from someone touching me, especially when I was on the verge of a breakdown, but Edward's arm was comforting and I found myself leaning into his side, attempting to stifle my sobs in his shoulder.

I don't know how long we sat there on the bathroom floor, but Edward didn't protest at all, he just kept whispering soothing things in my ear. To this day I can't remember what he said, but somehow it pulled me back from the brink of a full-blown panic attack, something that only Emmett had ever been able to do. Eventually my sobs withered down to occasional hiccups and I pulled back to look at Edward. I remember thinking that I had no idea how I was going to explain what had just happened, and that thought alone almost sent me spiraling right back to the point of brink, but I realised that Edward deserved the truth, and now was as good a time as any.

"Ed-edward…" I didn't know what to say. " Edward I… I need to tell you s-something."

He must have heard the hesitation in my voice, because he was quick to jump in and say, "Jazz, it's okay, really. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to." The fact that he was entirely sincere almost made me want to start crying again.

Taking a deep, albeit shuddering, breath I said, "No, I need to tell you. I need to tell someone. And I trust you."

"Okay. But if you want to stop or anything, just tell me, I wont question it."

"Okay. I don't really know how to say this, or how you'll react… I'll just start from the beginning." I tried to take deep breaths, just like Emmett always told me to do when I got like this. Edward just sat waiting for me to get my breathing under control.

"Okay… Okay. Do you remember me telling you that my Dad drank a lot?" He nodded. "When I was Eleven, Mama used to go away a lot for work, like for a week at a time to support us because Dad had lost his job. When he got laid off he started to drink even more and he also started to get violent… He never hit my mum, or Rosalie either. He started to hit Emmett though… That's why Em moved out eventually and came here. He couldn't stand it anymore…" Edward waited for me to gather my thoughts.

"After Emmett moved out, things started to get worst and Dad would take his anger out on me. Mum blamed herself for Emmett being gone, so she threw herself into her work and she was away all the time. Rosalie practically lived at our Uncle Garret's place with his daughter Kate because she hated being at home when Mama wasn't there."

"He beat you when your Mum was away?" Edward said, piecing together what I was saying. I think he was asking questions to show he was truly listening and trying to understand.

"Yeah. Dad was careful not to let anyone find out. He didn't leave bruises that I couldn't cover up with my clothes, otherwise people would ask questions."

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Edward asked sincerely. I'd been asked the same thing countless times, and every time I answered I realised how stupid my reasoning was.

"I didn't want to tear my family apart more. I didn't want to be the reason my family fell apart…"

"Okay. That's understandable." No one has ever said that before. "What happened next?"

Staring forward at the clean, white tile walls of the bathroom, I continued. "Eventually it got really bad. He was always drunk. When Mum was home, he kept to himself mostly. Their marriage pretty much fell apart, I never saw them speak other than in passing, and Dad started sleeping on a mattress in our basement." I visibly shuddered at the thought of that god-awful basement that still haunted my nightmares. "That went on for a few months before it happened." My voice broke on the last word. I didn't know how I was supposed to tell the most important person in my life that I was this filthy, unclean shell of a person.

Edward's face grew more worried, so I squeezed my eyes closed and just kept talking. I couldn't bear to see the disgust in me that would surely show on face when I told him. "One night while Mama and Rose were away, he hit my face. Hard. He'd never hit my face before; you can't hide a black eye. He was more drunk than usual that night and I guessed he figured since he'd already left a mark that it didn't matter what he did. He started to hit me in the stomach and kicked me the ribs when I fell to the ground. After a while I couldn't take the pain and I passed out. When I woke up I was in the basement with a rag tied around my mouth and my hands and feet tied." I fought to keep my voice and breathing under control as I went on.

"I lied there for I don't know how long, then he came into the basement with a knife. I tried to get away from him but I was tied up and in a lot of pain. Then he started to cut off my clothes. I got really scared at that point and started to scream, so he hit me in the ribs again. I had no choice but the lie there while he cut away my clothes. He kept saying things like, I deserved what he was going to do to me, and it was my fault Emmett was gone and that Mum and Rose were gone. Then he… he…" I was crying again at this point and I opened my eyes to see Edward's face full of emotion. I couldn't say it. I couldn't bring myself to say the words.

"He raped you, didn't he Jasper?"

"Yes," I couldn't hold back the sobs that once again ripped through my chest so hard I thought I might physically break under the force. My body folded forward in on itself and I hung my head in hands. I hated him. I hated what he'd done to me. I hated myself for letting him.

I felt Edward's arms wrap around me, seemingly trying to hold my shaking frame together. He kept silent as I finally let my pain surface, rather than pushing it down, as I was so accustom to.

I'm not sure how much time passed before I felt too weak to cry anymore. "You must think I'm disgusting. You can leave, I don't blame you." Wiping my eyes on my shirt, I looked at Edward's face and saw exactly what I had expected. Disgust. "I'm filthy. He made me filthy."

Edward pushed me back and held me at arms length away from him. I knew this was coming. I had always known it was coming; he deserved a friend that wasn't so damaged.

"Jasper. Don't. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not disgusted. Not at all. Only at your father. I don't understand how someone could do that to their own child… I just can't even comprehend…" He sounded exasperated, shaking his head.

"You're not?" He wasn't disgusted in me? I didn't understand how he couldn't be?

"Of course not! Jasper, you are my best friend. Nothing could change that. Nothing at all, ever. Okay? I swear to you." A tear rolled down my cheek, joining the already wet patch on the front of my shirt. "Come on, you look exhausted. How about you take a shower and I'll make us some hot cocoa?" I deftly nodded my head as he stood up and offered me his hand. I felt like a massive weight had been lifted from my chest and I could now breathe a bit easier.

That was the first night I ever fell asleep in my best friend's arms.

"And I'm assuming he believed you?" Charlotte's voice brought me back to the present.

"Yeah, yeah he did. Without question, actually."

"Okay, well I think we've made good progress here today Jasper," she said, while scribbling on the notepad.

"How, exactly? I didn't even say anything?"

"It wasn't what you said, it was how you said it. I really think you need to cherish what you have with Edward. A good friendship is hard to come by. You are prone to pushing people away and not letting people in. I want you to start opening up more when you get upset. No more running off into forests okay?" She smirked at me from her place in her red chair. "And for crying out loud, I prescribe you medication for a reason, okay? It won't do anything sitting in the bottle, you actually have to take it," she said with an exaggerated sigh, making a show of throwing her hands in the air. That was one thing I liked about Charlotte, she had the ability to make heavy subjects lighter, and I appreciated it more than she knew.

"Yeah, yeah, I will." I said while shaking my head and standing up to leave.

"I do have an exercise I'd like you to do for me though."

"Really Doc, homework?"

"Oh, don't be like that, it's easy. I know how good you are at drawing, and I've seen lots of people work through complicated emotions by being able to put it on paper. Next time you feel overwhelmed or upset, I want you to draw me how you feel. It doesn't have to be anything specific, just draw whatever comes to mind in the moment, okay?" Charlotte smiled at me from across the room.

"That sounds absolutely crazy, but then again, I think I may be crazy sometimes, so I guess it's fitting. Alright, I'll give it a go," chuckling to myself, I waved to Charlotte before telling her I'd see her at next week's session and walking out the door to where I had parked my bike in the parking lot.

Despite the heavy topics and the memories I had talked and thought about in today's session, I actually left with a smile on my face, something that rarely happened. Charlotte had said I was making progress. Maybe I was actually starting to be able to wade through the thick fog that clouded my mind.

Maybe.

Author's note time!

Okay, so that was my last pre-written chapter and so far I've been having a bit of writer's block with the next one. It's in progress; it's just slow going at this stage. Also, I'm going to be going on vacation in two days to stay with a friend across the country for almost two weeks, so it's quite likely I won't have the chance to write, or if I do – the chance to update. I will try my best, But I can' promise an update next week at this rate.

Pretty please with Jasper on top let me know what you thought of this chapter, I'd like to know how you felt about the flashback. :)