I'm back! A lot faster than I thought I would be, to be honest. Okay, so this is officially the longest chapter so far, and should leave you with a nice little (big) cliffhanger that you should all hate me for.

TRIGGER WARNING! This chapter contains fairly graphic details of self-half, so if you don't think you can handle that, please please don't push yourself to read it. If you like, you can skip straight to Edward's point of view at the end. I can't promise it will make total sense, but it should be doable.

Thanks for putting up with my long update times, for those of you that are still with me, it means a great deal. And lots and lots of love for those you continue to review favourite and follow, those emails honestly make my day.

I don't own Twilight. Simple. Done.

Chapter Nine

JPOV

Two days after

I shouldn't be doing this. I promised.

Yet here I was, down on my hands and knees attempting to reach the object of my desire out from under my bed. God it's dusty under there. Why the hell did I put it so far back?

To be honest, these past two days haven't been the greatest. More or less the exact opposite actually. Despite being back to taking my medication when I was supposed to, the mood swings and that black feeling in the back of my mind are worst than ever.

So far I've managed to avoid Edward since I left his house on Saturday morning, claiming I had something important to do at home. I didn't, but he'd believed me enough to let me go. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to him, just that the more distance between us, the better. For his sake, anyway.

"Got you, you little fucker."

I raised my head in a small victory. I don't know why I'd thought it was a good idea to put it under my bed in the first place. I guess some part of me hoped I wouldn't need it again, but as usual, I was wrong. Sitting on my bed with my legs crossed under me, I looked at the little blue box in my lap. It was pretty non descript, fairly light and only about the size of my palm, but the contents felt to me as if they weighed the world. Breathing in deep I removed the lid, only to be confronted with a torn piece of paper scrawled with my own familiar cursive. Don't do what you're about to do. You promised.

Fuck off, past-me. I don't need a guilt trip from myself.

Screwing up the paper in frustration, I threw it in the general direction of the trashcan. Underneath, the gleaming metal of what I sort after was winking from inside the box. I picked up the blade in its impeccable condition and turned it between my fingers, the familiarity of the situation playing on my mind.

I hadn't resorted to this in almost a year, and part of me knew how weak I was being for caving now. But the relief was too much to resist, I needed to feel the sting in order to have something I could really feel, to be able to pin point exactly where I was hurting, rather than having the pain inside constantly swirling with no definite location. I needed some part of me that I felt I could control. With the constant medication and my family hovering over me, making sure I was kept in check, I needed one thing I could control for myself.

I needed this.

Tossing the blade back, I took the whole box to the bathroom and locked the door. I hurriedly stripped off and inspected my marred skin. It may seem crazy – to add only more scars to an already marked canvas, but then again, maybe I am crazy. At least these scars are my own doing, my own choice. I control them. Or maybe they control me, I'm not entirely sure.

Stepping into the shower I let the water run too hot for a moment before adjusting it, feeling the burn run over my skin. I had planned to take a shower first, but the temptation of the blue box sitting on the bathroom bench was too much and I could no longer think straight. The razorblade was out of the box and in my hand before I realised that I had shut off the water. Sitting down on the wet floor, I looked at the skin of my left hip, just above where my jeans would normally rest. I was never one to cut anywhere where one might risk someone seeing it. I didn't do this to draw attention to myself, I did this for me, and people finding out would only get in the way of things. Two-inch long white scars littered my hip, spread out over a space about the size of my hand. Taking a shuddering breath, I reached down and pressed the blade to my skin with just enough pressure that when I drew the metal back, it ignited a line of crimson against the white of my hip. The too familiar sting flowed through my system as I drew another line, cross-hatching against the pattern of the old scars.

This is weak. I am weak.

A year and a half ago, Rosalie had been visiting Emmett and I, when I had stupidly forgotten to lock the door of my bedroom. She had walked in and found me sitting on the floor, blade in hand and blood blooming from my side. At first, she didn't say anything. She just stared, as if mentally willing away what she was seeing. She continued to stare in silence as I pressed my hand against my hip to staunch the bleeding, and I watched as the tears filled her eyes. She had looked so much like Mama when she cried that it cut me deeper than I ever dared to go myself. I remember wanting so badly for her to scream, to yell, to have a reaction that was typical of my baby sister, but there was nothing. She had turned on her heel and walked into the bathroom, returning a minute later with a handful of toilet paper. Still silent, she crouched down next to me and pulled my hand away, replacing it quickly with the tissue and applying pressure. Rosalie seemed to crumble next to me; the only strength left in her body was the hand pressed against my side. Her head fell to rest on my shoulder, the space between us silent enough that I could hear her trying her hardest not to cry. After a few minutes she composed herself enough to drag me to bathroom and clean off the already drying blood. Neither of us said a word until we were lying side by side on my bed, staring at the ceiling. "Promise me you'll stop. Please, even if it isn't right away. Just promise me you will."

It had taken almost six months of on and off relapses, but I had eventually gathered the strength to make right on my promise to my sister. Until now, that is. Just thinking about the look in her eyes when she had seen me, like she was the one to blame, it killed me.

I knew at some level both my sister and my mother harbored feelings of guilt over what my dad had done, as if somehow it was their fault he had become a monster. Rosalie blamed herself for not seeing it, partially because she spent a lot of her free time at Uncle Garret's, but mostly because I knew how to hide it from her. Mama blamed herself because she felt that somehow it was her that had put me in that position, for marrying him, for going away for work so often, and for not knowing. Neither of them were justified in their guilt, and I hated that they felt it. Worst still though was Emmett. I knew he felt that he should have been there to stop it.

The only person to blame though is myself. I was the weak one. I was the one that didn't tell anybody. I was the one who didn't fight back.

I could see rather than feel the tears dripping from my face, mixing with the blood-tinged water on the shower floor. By now, about a dozen fresh crimson cuts adorned the top of my hipbone, their trails making their way down my leg.

I can't do this anymore. The cuts weren't helping, I felt the sting, but not enough to distract me, and they only served to remind me of the fact that I had broken a promise. Pulling myself up from the shower floor, making the red trails run patterns down the length of my leg, I stepped out of the shower and walked over the mirror.

Pathetic. Useless. Broken.

I absolutely despised the kid staring back at me. He deserved everything that had happened to him. It was his fault, and he deserved to have died on that basement floor, instead of being found in time to be taken to hospital. Ugly hatred bored back at me from the mirror, the bloodshot, dark ringed eyes of a person too filthy to ever be clean.

Grabbing a towel, I quickly dried myself, wiping away the blood that had now mostly stopped flowing. I walked back into my room, blue box in hand and threw back under my bed, certain I would only be fishing it back out within the week. After getting dressed in the first clothes I could find, not caring in the slightest that my hip would probably stain them, I stood in the middle of my room, uncertain of what to do. I wanted to break down and cry again, but that would accomplish nothing and would only make me feel like shit. I wanted to call Edward, purely so I could hear him tell me everything would be okay, though I knew I wouldn't believe it. I didn't need to drag him into this though; he'd been through enough of my shit lately. Instead, I let the anger at myself bubble up inside me until it reached a boiling point, and I struck out against the nearest surface; my bedroom wall. Numbing pain ran immediately from my knuckles up through my arm as my fist broke through the drywall. I screamed, not in pain, but in rage, and thanked god that Emmett wasn't home right now. The last thing I needed was him to come check on me.

Without bothering to inspect the damage I had no doubt done to my hand, I walked over to my desk drawer where I kept my assortment of prescription medication, and for a heartbeat let myself consider gulping down every single one. I wouldn't go that far, at least not tonight. My hand was beginning to throb, making it difficult to open the childproof lid on the bottle of sleeping pills that I reserved for nights where I desperately craved a full nights sleep. Finally managing with the bottle, I shook out two pills and dry swallowed them. I screwed the lid back and shut the draw before I became too tempted to swallow a few more. I collapsed on my bed, my body suddenly feeling as though it was made of lead. My limbs, marred hip and swollen hand, stayed where they had fallen as I relinquished my consciousness in favor of a sweet black nothing.

"Jasper? Why aren't you at school?"

I gave a groan in response to Emmett's question as I tried to ignore him and go back to sleep. I wasn't sure of what the time was, but at this point I didn't see the appeal of getting out of bed.

"Jasper, c'mon wake up!"

Ugh, apparently wishing for him to go away wasn't going to work. Sitting up in my bed I went to run my through my hair, only to have an excruciating amount of pain shoot down my arm. I could feel the involuntary tears sting in my eyes as I looked at my hand. My knuckles had ballooned over night and were now an angry purple colour. Great.

"What happened to your hand?" Emmett looked at me in confusion as I pointed sheepishly, with my non-potentially broken hand to the fist-sized hole in the wall. "What the fuck happened to my wall?!" He leaped up from his position sitting on the edge of my bed to inspect the hole.

"Glad to know you're more concerned about the wall than you're brother, Em." I joked with a strained voice. It really did hurt.

"Shuddup, you put a hole in my fucking wall! You deserve a broken hand!" After gauging the damage of the wall, Emmett turned to me clutching my hand in pain and said, "We should probably get you to the hospital, huh?"

"You're brilliant."

"So why did you break my house?"

We were sat in the Forks hospital waiting room, that even for a small town on a Monday morning seemed to be relatively busy. Half an hour ago when we arrived a nurse had handed me a clipboard and told me to fill in my details and wait to be seen. Because I was currently incapacitated, Emmett had been assigned the task of filling out the forms, on which he wrote 'cause of injury: tried to break his brother's wall.'

"Seemed like a good idea at the time."

"You're fixing that, ya'know."

Just at that moment, none other but Carlisle Cullen walked into the waiting room, calling my name with an amused look on his face. He turned and led Emmett and I through to a bed in the emergency room, where he pulled a curtain around to create some semblance of privacy in the bustling ward.

"So Jasper, what did you do now?" Suffice to say that this wasn't the first, or even second time Carlisle has treated me, though most injuries didn't require an actual trip to the ER, with Carlisle tending to me at his house. I was pretty accident prone, a fact that Edward found hilarious, more than once laughing when I tripped over something before helping me up.

"I, uh, punched the wall."

"And why did you do that?" Carlisle looked to be finding this far too funny as he looked at my swollen hand.

"Dunno. I was angry, I guess."

"Right, of course. Here I was thinking you punched a wall in happiness. I'm going to have to order some x-rays to see if you've broken anything, but my guess is a small fracture at the worst." After writing a few notes on a chart, Carlisle called a nurse over to administer a mild painkiller, before leaving to check on other patients.

"Jay, what's going on?" Emmett asked after the makeshift room had been vacated.

"What do you mean?"

"With you. Punching walls."

"Oh, that. I'm really sorry Em, seriously I will fix it." The painkillers were starting to kick in, and my head was getting a little fuzzy.

"Christ Jay, I don't give a fuck the wall." Emmett sounded exasperated, "I wanna know what mad you so angry that you punched the wall in the first place? Did something happen? Did you and Eddie have fight? Did Rosie say something?"

"No, it's nothing like that, I swear I'm fine, I just got a little, angry. I don't even remember why, honestly. I'm fine. I promise." It was starting to get troubling how much I was lying to people that I cared about lately. Emmett lent back against the wall at the head of the bed and crossed his arms. He didn't look convinced at all, but didn't say anything more.

A nurse returned about fifteen minutes later, taking me to the radiology department to get x-rays, leaving Emmett in the waiting room. I was made to straighten my hand on the table in order to get a clear image, which even with the painkillers I'd been given, hurt like a bitch. After a total of about ten minutes, I was being led back down to a separate patient waiting, to wait for Carlisle.

EPOV

"So Edward, do you know what happened to Jasper today?" My attention snapped up from pushing the peas around my plate, not at the mention of my name, but at Jasper's.

"What do you mean what happened?" I hadn't seen or spoken to Jasper since he left my house in a rush on Saturday morning, though it wasn't from lack of trying on my behalf. I had tried calling him three times over the weekend and had sent him an embarrassing number of texts. I hadn't gotten any replies, and his phone just rang out. Between his radio silence and not being at school today, coupled with dad's question, I was starting to freak out a little.

"Well he was at the hospital?" He said through a mouth full of mashed potato, as if it was no big deal.

"Hospital?!" Okay, now I was really starting to freak out. That must have been why he hadn't been answering me. God, what if something had happened, was he sick?

"You didn't know?"

"No! All I knew is that he wasn't at school; I haven't spoken to him since he was here. Why was he in hospital?"

"Oh, I thought you've would've known. He and Emmett came into the emergency room this morning because Jasper thought he'd broken his hand."

Broken his hand? What the fuck? Why would he not have told me that?

"What happened?"

"Apparently he punched the wall of his bedroom."

"Oh wow, why?" My mother piped up from the opposite end of the table.

"I don't know, that 's why I thought Edward might know. He just said he was angry. By the looks of his hand, I'm guessing that it happened last night." Dad replied, a hint of his 'doctor voice' that he used with patients crept into the end of his sentence.

"Is he okay?" Mum asked, concern clearly evident in her voice.

"Yeah, we x-rayed his hand and he'll be fine. It's not broken, just very, very bruised-"

"-May I be excused?" I barely waited for my mother's confused nod before leaving the table and running to my room, taking the stairs two at a time.

When I got to my room, I flung the covers off my bed in a frustrated attempt to find my phone that was lying between them somewhere. The thud of it hitting the carpet made me leap across my bed to pick it up, hoping that maybe I had just missed his call. Clicking the screen to life I felt my heart deflate slightly when I saw that I didn't have any missed notifications. Maybe he was just asleep, that was a possibility right? It didn't necessarily mean he was purposely ignoring me, right?

Taking a deep breath I didn't know I needed, I dialed Jasper's number and waited. On the first ring, I was hopeful. The second, I was nervous. On the third, I tried my best to think that maybe he was just away from his phone. One the fifth, and then sixth, I had given up. I waited a breath longer before ending the call. If he wasn't going to answer, then I was going to go find out for myself what was going on.

Throwing on a hoodie, I ran back down stairs and went to grab my keys from the hook next to the door, when my mum called me back.

"Where are you going, it's dark out?" She questioned for the kitchen doorway, soap bubbles drying on her hands from the dishes.

"I was just gonna go over to Jasper's, I wont be long, I promise, I just want to see if he's okay."

"Your father said he was fine Edward, I'm sure you can wait until tomorrow." She put her hands on her hips and gave me her patented Mum look.

"Mum, please… He wont answer my calls-"

"-He's probably asleep, Edward."

"He hasn't spoken to me since Saturday, Mum. I'm just really worried…" My voice got slightly smaller, and her face softened. She wiped her hands and walked over to me, pulling me into a hug.

"I'm sure everything is fine, but I understand if you need to see that for yourself. Be back by eleven, and drive safe." He kissed my forehead before returning to the kitchen.

I pulled out of the garage and took off towards Jasper's house, all the while considering the all too likely possibility that he may not let me in. Was it because I'd yelled at him? Fuck, of course it would be, that wasn't just going to be swept under the rug.

The roads were dark, only illuminated by the stream from my headlights, the forest running from ground to sky along side me, and my thoughts running circles in my mind. Before I knew it, I was crying, the road in front of me started to blur. I continued to drive, wiping my eyes on the back on my hand, determined to make it to jasper's as fast as possible.

As I followed the bend in the road, my phone flashed from the center console beside me. Though I knew I shouldn't, I picked it up to look at the screen. It was a message from Jasper. The tears that had stopped at this point started again, at the thought that maybe I was overreacting. Maybe he didn't hate me. Maybe I hadn't fucked things up so badly they couldn't be fixed. Maybe I hadn't lost my best friend.

I went to open the message, far to anxious to see whether it was an explanation or he telling me never to speak to him again. I must have taken my eyes from the road for a second too long, because when I looked up all I could see was the flash of another car's headlights. My reactions kicked in and I swerved out off the oncoming cars way. Everything happened so fast that I barely had time to register the tires losing grip on the road and sending the car into a side toward the nearing forest edge. I tired to pull back, to take back what I had done and regain control of the car, but it was too far gone. I couldn't stop it.

I heard rather than saw the driver's side hit the trees at the edge of the road. The crunching of metal on wood was so loud, that if I survived this, would be permanently imprinted into my brain. The impact threw me hard against the seatbelts constraint, two forces pulling me in different directions, the car crumbling in towards me. My head was slammed against the window, and I felt the world around me start to fade. All that was left was the glow of the headlights and the pain that was all consuming, until there was nothing at all.