I Never Meant to Start a War

Bella did become better, but she never became perfect. She began to hang out with a boy from the local Indian reservation about twenty minutes away, someone who was a family friend, and I was happy that she at least found someone to just enjoy the company of. Jasper didn’t approve. Every time he learned she was there, he would growl under his breath. I didn’t understand why until Bella told me about what those boys were becoming.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been so naïve. If vampires could exist, why couldn’t werewolves?

Several months passed over the absence of the rest of the Cullen family, but the hype of their flight had extinguished to next to nothing. It was a known fact, just as—well, I’m not sure what is a fact or what is fiction anymore. It all seemed to blend together after a while.

Bella and I became best friends over that strained period in her life, closer than her and that boy Jacob. She told me everything that she had on her mind and always knew that I would let her cry on my shoulder if need be. We were closer than I ever thought that we would be, and I was still smiling because of it.

It all changed on Spring Break.

Everything turned upside down. And it all began with a tap on my window late at night, while I lie awake after a horrifying nightmare, just staring at the ceiling, thinking and breathing. I started and looking toward the window, hesitating, until I heard it again along with a hurried whisper.

“Marie, it’s me!”

I would have recognized that voice anywhere.

I rushed over and threw the window open, moving as Jasper skillfully maneuvered into my room, closing the window to block out the night air. I gave him a look. “Have you done that before?”

“Once or twice,” he said, but he smirked because he was bluffing. He spoke before I could ask. “Alice came back to Forks. Apparently, she had a vision of Bella dying. She got a shock when Bella showed up at her house that night, when she was totally sure that she had drowned.”

“Back up,” I called in a whisper, my heart beating quickly. “What did Bella do?”

“Apparently, she went cliff diving.”

I stared at him blankly.

“She regards it as a recreation rather than a suicide attempt.”

“I have to talk to her.”

“She’s not home.”

“Then where is she?”

So he told me all about what had happened—Rosalie’s miscalculation and Edward’s need to end it all. Jasper explained all about the Volturi and their purpose, both what they presented themselves as doing along with their bloodthirsty (no pun intended) tendencies. He said that Edward was planning on going to the Italian Volturi and asking them to kill him. Jasper never admitted it, but I saw the fear in his eyes when I asked him if they would.

“More than likely not,” he answered with a calm voice, but his eyes screamed of the fear that I knew I possessed as well as him. He exhaled heavily. “They will most likely feel that his gifts are too valuable to waste and will refuse. But there are other, more creative ways to die at the hands of the Volturi. We just must hope that he gets creative.”

And he did.

Bella, Alice, and Edward returned all in one piece about three days later, three days that I spent on edge with Jasper in about the same state, glancing nervously toward the cell phone that he left out so we would both catch sight of if it became anything more than dormant. In the middle of the third day at about eight o’clock in the morning, the very first call came.

Jasper had it to his ear before I even registered it had been ringing.

“Carlisle,” Jasper breathed, obvious distress in his tone. I reached out and touched his arm, our silent communication. “Have you heard from Alice?”

He listened as his adoptive father of sorts answered in a murmured flurry of words that I couldn’t make sense of it even though I was right beside the phone. Jasper’s mouth tipped upwards from a worried frown to a slight smile of relief. He nodded to me, almost as if he felt the need to relay that everything was going to be okay, before he reacted verbally to the phone.

“Do you want me to join you?”

I heard enough to hear Carlisle chuckle and answer, “Stay with her.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” was Jasper’s reply before he snapped the phone shut, looking toward me and my distressed expression. He smiled toward me lackadaisically, as if this hadn’t taken a load off his shoulders, too. He said to me, “The rest of my family are returning to Forks. Alice predicts that, this time, they will be staying indefinitely.”

I smiled widely because he didn’t know I could see the happiness that brought him, because he always did so well when he wanted to hide his own emotions. I leaned forward and kissed his cheek before laying back on my bed, closing my eyes as I felt him do the same, and his fingers slid over my cheek so softly, like he was afraid of hurting me with just that one single gesture. I never thought he would hurt me because I had never given anyone the power to be able to do so before. And I believed strongly at Jasper would never use that power against me.

And with that thought, I drifted off to slumber.

~*~

When I awoke it was dark in my room, no light shining, not even the streetlight, it seemed. But something had woken me. I rolled over and looked around, reaching toward the side of the bed that Jasper usually inhabited, but I was met with nothing but the sheet. I sat up suddenly, as if I had been shocked awake, with just enough time to hear the window slide shut.

I clambered out of bed and blinked rapidly as the blood rushed to my head, sliding toward the window and ripping it open. I peered into the darkness, and caught sight of a frozen Jasper on the tree line, a guilty expression on his face.

“Where are you going?” I whispered, knowing that it would carry down to him with the wind. He heard it and move back closer to me, so I would be close enough to hear with less sensitive ears.

“Home,” he answered, and even I caught the wave of emotion that radiated off of him when he spoke the words. “Edward and Bella called and asked me to be there because they want to discuss something with me. I didn’t want to wake you; you were deeply sleeping.”

“I’m up now.” He felt and observed my eagerness, and knew it wasn’t only from Bella and Edward’s safe return, but because I had a fleeting thought that I would see Bella happy again, and Jasper knew how much it haunted me to know that I was slightly feeding to that pain. He hesitated and looked up at me with a slight grimace, judging my reaction to his cautiousness. Then he smiled and I knew I had won.

I grinned back and darted into my room to find a pair of jeans and a shirt, ducking into the bathroom only to change before I was leaping back out again. Jasper was sitting, waiting for me on the foot of my bed. He rose when I approached.

“Shall we?” he asked before he scooped me up, and we were flying.

Not truthfully, I knew that—but the feel of it was something amazing. I had never joined him when he ran, usually preferring normal locomotives than that of just his arms and the wind. The feeling was something I almost couldn’t explain. The feel of the wind, the feeling of security, it all came together in the one form of being free that I could think; to close your eyes and feel as though you were flying.

Almost as quickly as it had began, though, it had ended.

Jasper smiled down at me and set me down on my feet from where he had been carrying me bridal style, watching my reaction as if to make sure I wasn’t about to either faint or be sick. But I just smiled and pointed myself in the direction of his house and began to walk. He chuckled from behind me, taking long strides to catch up.

“They have yet to meet you, but they know a lot about you,” Jasper informed me.

“Have you talked about me often?”

“That and Alice.”

I nodded, but the mention of his former mate still made my stomach flip uneasily. As if, at any moment, he would decide to drop me and go back to her.

It was possible, but I tried not to house the thought.

I had been to the house several times before and never before did I have this uneasiness radiating from inside of my chest, egging me to turn around and run as quickly as possible. I supposed that it was because never before had it been populated when I went to visit it. I quickly glanced at Jasper to see him gazing down at me with a caring, reassuring look that not only made me blush, but gave me the confidence I needed.

Right as Jasper was opening the door, the worry and the rage of what Bella had done rushed back to me, and I felt a small scowl tug on the corners of my mouth as I slipped through the door. My eyes immediately landed on the subject of my thoughts.

Bella knew.

She grimaced. “Hey Marie.”

“Recreation?” I managed to spit out incredulously, rolling my eyes and shooting her a grin when she was obviously expecting me to yell. I laughed instead. “You are such a bad influence, Miss Swan.”

She gave me a look before smiling kindly, glancing toward the vampire who held his arm around her waist with so much protectiveness that I almost wondered if he would ever let go. I recognized him as I did all of the Cullens, but I recognized something more—the way he looked at Bella, because I recognized it. I was too modest to voice is aloud, but it gave me joy when I realized that it was the same look that Jasper often gave me.

I turned red with the thought as Edward Cullen smiled kindly to me. Bella immediately picked up the baton. “Edward, this is Marie. Marie, Edward.”

The introductions only had just begun.