I Never Meant to Start a War

“No,” Jasper said, his voice flat and void of emotion. His lip curled back over his teeth in a snarl, and his hands flexed into fists as his golden eyes burned with a fire I had never seen quite as bright. I grimaced slightly. I had anticipated the reaction, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t taken aback even more by the hatred that radiated from him with just the slight mention of visiting La Push.

“I won’t be going alone,” I argued softly, seeing as my parents were asleep in the other room. “Bella will be with me.”

“Bella is not enough to be able to protect you from them, Marie. It’s too dangerous, and I won’t allow it.”

“Jasper—”

He was in front of me in only a short breath, his eyes still afire with the burning of his anger as he grabbed my arms and forced me to look up at him. I squirmed a little uneasily in his grasp, not used to his anger.

“The La Push wolves are unstable and unpredictable,” he hissed through his teeth. “They are volatile and violent. They are audacious beings who will not see you highly and will more than likely treat you terribly. And I do not want to have a perfect reason to go over that treaty line and rip someone’s throat out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re tempers are what propel them into the change from human to wolf. They are around to keep their tribe safe from the likes of vampires, and one scent of me on you could send them into a heated frenzy. I will not allow you to be anywhere near them where they could phase and hurt you.” The anger in his eyes faded slightly to pain when he thought of me getting hurt, but then the anger continued to burn. “I don’t care if you will be with Bella, that’s not enough. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt,” I whispered to him, reaching out to him even if he still held my arms in a stone grip. “I promise.”

He seemed to notice that he was still holding me tightly, and a little too tightly, because he was gone in a second and appeared on the other side of the room, a slight sick-looking expression on his face. I reached toward him and he stared at my hand for a long moment, but didn’t move.

I dropped it, dejected. “I think it would be the opposite. I think that then they catch your scent on me they would actually stay further away. I don’t think that they want to start anything with you or your family, so they would more than likely keep away from me. Jazz, please, I just don’t feel comfortable letting Bella go alone.”

He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes a bright beacon of shame as he looked at me, knowing that the way he had acted was unacceptable. He took a deep breath and took the steps toward me slowly, reaching out and taking my face in his hands carefully, afraid to hurt me now. He leaned down and pressed his lips lightly to mine before pulling away, looking down at my eyes and reading everything that I was feeling.

Eventually, he sighed heavily. “I’ll consider it,” he said, “but just because I hate seeing you upset. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I understand.”

He caressed my cheeks for a moment before he dropped his hands and smiled slightly to me. “You look tired.”

“I look tired or I feel it?”

“Both.” He smiled. “I thought that saying that you looked it would be a bit more ordinary than saying that I feel your lethargy.”

“When have you ever been ordinary?” I teased as I climbed in bed and curled up into the covers, not surprised in the slightest when he joined me, appearing on the bed as though he had been there the entire time. A small smile was etched onto his stone lips at my attempt to keep the atmosphere light, and he reached out to hold my hand in his.

“I used to,” he whispered into the darkness. “A long, long time ago.”

~*~

When I had been told to anticipate a trip onto werewolf territory, nothing prepared me for it being the next morning. I was awoken by my cell phone chirping a ring from beside me on my nightstand, Jasper’s hand flashing out to silence it as quickly as I could comprehend, but I heard it nonetheless. My eyes opened to sunshine.

Jasper was sitting beside me on my bed in the shade of the morning dawn, my phone in his hand and a slightly guilty expression on his face when he noticed my open eyes. He held out the phone to me and I took it, not looking down at the name flashing across the screen.

“Hello?”

My words were muffled from my lethargy. I reached up and rubbed my eyes before a yawn overtook me.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Marie, did I wake you?” Bella’s voice asked guiltily from the other side of the line. “I’m sorry, go back to sleep—”

“No, no, it’s okay. Go ahead.”

She paused for a long moment. “Um, do you want to go to La Push today?”

“Today?” I sighed into the phone, glancing up at Jasper. He was wearing the perfect poker face. “Okay, sure. What time?”

“I don’t know, it’s about ten o’clock now,” she pondered, and my eyes immediately glanced to the clock in surprise. I never usually slept in. She continued, not noticing my distraction: “How about we meet at their house?”

“Sure,” I said, knowing the generic use of the ownership was really directed toward the Cullen family. Neither of us felt comfortable with just proclaiming the surname, nor did we want to say that it was Edward’s house, or Jasper’s house, or Carlisle’s house—it didn’t feel right to single them out. So it was ‘their house’.

We said our goodbyes and I placed the phone down, rubbing my eyes. I glanced around and found Jasper hidden in the small shade cast by my curtains, careful not to stand in the cast of sunlight pervading slowly through my room. He watched me carefully, as always, his eyes slightly narrowed as he saw and tasted my emotions, and I wondered what he could sense and see. I wasn’t even sure of my own emotions.

Was there an emotion to feel?

Jasper sighed heavily and appeared in front of me. “I’ll go get my car and drive you. I’ll be back soon.”

Not the least bit pleased with the events today has brought, he kissed me fleetingly before he ducked through the window and dropped to the ground, leaving behind a glimmer of a prism of light and nothing more.

~*~

His mood hadn’t brightened any significantly by the time we reached his home, pulling into the garage they had stationed to the wide side of the home. Edward, knowing not only where Bella and I were going but also that we were meeting here, was standing on the other side of the building, leaning against the wall casually. He looked as though he could be leaning against a locker waiting for a friend’s class to end.

“Good afternoon, Marie,” Edward greeted me. He had always been rather nice to me, because I was with his brother, whom many of the family thought heartbroken, or because of the way I managed to keep Bella as close to on track as possible when he was gone, I wasn’t sure. He looked between Jasper and me, reading the underlying tension. “May I speak to you privately?”

Jasper, still in a mood, immediately moved from the structure without another glance. I watched him go, my brow furrowing slightly but I felt my eyes soften as he tread away, his hands shoved into his pockets and his head ducked against the wind that he hardly felt. Edward noticed my preoccupation, along with my curiosity.

“He has been thinking a lot lately,” he told me. “Worrying, rather. It’s only natural, seeing as Alice’s visions are not permanent.”

That sparked my interest. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t think that’s my place,” he said in a monotone voice, a small frown tugging on the corner of his mouth that he more than likely thought I couldn’t see, but he forgot that I matched with Jasper in more ways than one. I felt a frown of my own curve onto my lips.

“He’s listening, isn’t he?”

“Understandably, yes. But his actions are not what I wanted to talk to you about.” He always managed to stray toward cryptic. He blinked slowly before looking back toward me, his expression softening somewhat. Oh how I wished I had access to all the minds of the world. “I wanted to thank you for accompanying Bella today.”

“What are you thanking me for?” I asked incredulously. “I mean, what in the action entitles you to thank me?”

“She won’t be alone, for one—I don’t know how much I can trust with the mutts. Her I trust, but they are unpredictable. Knowing that she has someone rational around her brightens my outlook considerably.”

I nodded, though I was still waiting for the next part.

“And the second,” Edward said, weighing his words carefully, “is something I should have thanked you formally for when I first saw you—I wanted to thank you for keeping her alive.”

“I didn’t do the greatest of jobs,” I shared reluctantly, sighing. “She still jumped off of the cliff.”

“I didn’t just mean in her death stunts, but rather in the broader sense of the word. You were there when she needed a friend and confident more than she ever has before, and you didn’t give up on her. You helped her when I thought I was.” A flash of pain flitted across his eyes. “I will never be able to thank you enough for keeping her alive.”

For a long, selfish moment, I didn’t have anything that I could have said to him. I let the feeling of accomplishment and residual kindness radiate in my being until I couldn’t keep it on any longer. I never had much to feel for when it came to accomplishment; I could help but to be a little selfish.

We stood there for a long, silent moment.

When Edward spoke, there was hidden fear and distaste under the farce of casualness. “I won’t keep you and Bella any longer; she’s heading here now.”

Before long, the smooth silence was interrupted by the crunching of sticks and other rubble of nature under her sneakers as Bella stumbled into view, a bright smile lighting up her face when she caught sight of both me and Edward. She looked to me. “Are you ready?”