He sneaks away to join the army when he is sixteen and gets dragged into a war halfway across the world. He’s back less than a year later, wrecked and ruined. Broken. 

He never heals, certainly not fast enough for his family. He might be the first born son, but there is still another boy, and they only needed one to carry on the Whitlock name. 

They call it respite and help. That he’s too strong and difficult and violent to be reasoned with when he’s in one of his episodes. That they will heal him and fix him and send him back home, good as new. 

It is none of those things, and it’s the last time he ever sees his family. 

(For a while, he misses his sisters. Then he doesn’t remember that he has sisters to miss.)

—

Everyone knows of the Brandon girl. The one that’s not all right in the head. 

The one that has an uncanny knack for guessing what’s going to happen. Like that Marlene Fisher’s baby would be stillborn, or the Jenkins boy had drowned long before the search party found him. The gossip is that that’s the only reason that her granddaddy saved Brandon Imports - he gambled on his granddaughter’s oddity and won.

She really is a strange creature, always laughing and dancing and running around town like she’s still a girl and not a woman grown. Her sister is always chasing after her, and everyone worries both Brandon girls will turn out the same.

Especially their father. No one notices the bruises on Mary-Alice anymore; they don’t change anything so why should they care. 

They all think they know how the story will end - Mary-Alice will be a spinster, because no one is interested in her as a bride, trapped in her father’s house laughing at a joke no one else heard. 

Instead, Mary-Alice disappears in the night, walking home from her father’s store. It’s a Friday night, and everyone says that it was the same as always - Mary-Alice might not be good for much, but she is trusted with the money box. The other shop assistant reports that she finished cleaning, donned her coat and hat and gloves, picked up the money box, and bid him good night. That everything was quite normal - the Brandon home was only a twenty minute walk through the park, very safe, and many young women walked unchaperoned through it. 

But she never makes it home. They find her hat and one of her gloves - torn, with blood on it - and nothing more.

—

He wakes up suddenly, as if he was never asleep at all. 

It’s as if this is the first second he has existed. It’s night, and he is alone in the stillness, covered in mud and dried blood. 

He has nothing. 

Just a chain knotted around his wrist with a bent pice of metal that says ‘Jasper W-‘ on it in worn-down letters. 

It’s as good a name as any, honestly. 

He’s more focused on the raw, burning feeling of his throat, and he would do anything to end it, to make it stop. 

(That is his beginning. Alone, thirsty, and left in the mud. If he remembered anything from the war, he’d laugh at the parallels.)

—

There’s one thing that they all agree on - Nettie and Lucy, Peter and Charlotte, Alice, and the other few that last beyond their newborn year. 

You have to be a little bit mad to survive the Southern Wars. You have to let go of everything and anything you know about yourself and simply be. That’s the only way you’re going to make it through to the other side.

Luckily, Alice’s has always been a little be mad. It suits her as well as anything does, and at least now when someone hits her, she can hit them back twice as hard. 

//

He finds her in Philadelphia and he’s in awe of her. Five foot-nothing, in a powder blue ensemble, she’s beautiful. Shiny black hair falls to her collar bones, and her lips are painted shiny red. She’s slim and tiny and utterly covered in half-moon scars, and he’s like a moth to a flame. 

(Even after decades together, he will still be obsessed with her hair. The way it tries desperately to curl when she leaves it alone; the way she twists it and braids it and ties it up a million different ways. The one curl by her left eye that seems to escape every single time. How soft it is, and how he’s the only one that she lets touch it, let’s only him stretch those hopeful little wannabe-curls out. But then, he could wax lyrical about every part of her, of her orange-red eyes that are so big and round that they make her seem more like a doll than a person right up until she gets her hands on some cosmetics and lines her eyes with kohl and glitter to look like a devilish dream. She’s so perfect, so unbearably beautiful to him.) 

For her, it’s like coming home to someone she’s missed dearly, the person whose face she’s been looking for in the crowds. He’s perfect in all the ways she can count, and he smells exactly right and he’s just… beautiful, even in an ill-fitting coat and bare feet, looking slightly bewildered when she approaches him. (He’s hungry, starving; she knows that immediately. He flinches when she reaches for him, only relaxing when he registers the glove she’s wearing. She’s not sure if she wants to laugh or hug or start sobbing because she’s waited for him forever.)

//

She knows about the empty space where his human memories should rest, like dusty, forgotten books. Somehow she uses her memories to fill his spaces, to give him back some of his understanding of family and humanity without shaming his own lacking biography. 

Apropos of nothing, she will tell him her story in little fragments, like pages torn from a book and tossed into the air. 

“Mother was terribly unstable after my sister was born. She used to hit, used to scream and rage. Then I walked into the sitting room one day when I was twelve and she had hanged herself from the chandelier,” she had told him, as if she was commenting on the weather as they watch a woman hurry down the street with her children, her arm looped in his. 

Or

“Oh, we had an orchard behind our house! We had peaches, though. I used to make myself utterly ill on them when I was small - I’d climb the trees and sit in the branches with the fruit gathered in my skirt,” she bounces as she descends towards the neat rows of trees, tugging him along behind her, and there’s a memory made as she kisses him in the branches of apple trees.

//

She wears three necklaces, always has - a little gold cross she took off a body down south; a brass one with ‘Alice’ in script that he bought her years ago at a street fair; and a little amethyst flower with tiny tanzanite leaves. 

That necklace is her legacy - one of ten her father designed to display in the shop window, to attract wealthy clients. He had claimed there was one for each of the women in his life - Diamond for her mother, sapphire for her grandmother, ruby for her stepmother, amethyst for Alice, and pink sapphire for Cynthia. Opal, topaz, aquamarine, pearl, and emerald rounded out the collection, for his sisters and cousins. 

“He’d talk about them as if they were gifts to us, a token of his love for us,” Alice had sighed, as he examined it closely. “They weren’t. They were props, to make him seem like a loving man. To make us seem like high society, to lure in the rich.

“I spoilt it all when I stole Mother’s and through it into her grave when no one was looking. The collection was incomplete then, and no one wanted to buy the set from him with two missing. Went back when I was eighteen and stole mine right from the cabinet one night. I figured I deserved it since I would never need a dowry,” she had said carelessly, and he understands how hard she fought to keep that delicate necklace. That it is the tragedy of her human family, the victory of her own rebellion, and her private legacy in one tiny necklace. 

It’s nearly a year after they meet that he shows her the chain with the tag that gave him his name. He feels ashamed when he confesses he doesn’t even know if Jasper is his name, it was just all he had. 

Alice had kissed him hard, and held the chain so carefully. “It’s yours now, if you still want it. If we can ever find out your story, find your first name, then you can use whichever one you want.”

There’s something freeing in that, that Alice accepts him exactly as he is, borrowed name and all. He asks her to keep the chain safe for him. He expects her to zip it up in the little pouch she pins to the inside of her clothing, but instead she puts it around her neck. 

“I’ve got you,” is all she says, tucking the disc down the front of her top. 

//

When it comes to the south, Alice tells them all stories that say everything but nothing. Maria looms large in those tellings, a vicious and conniving warlord with no empathy and less compassion. She tells of her own abduction like it’s some kind of comedy of errors, her years as a soldier as a hard-knock life.

He knows better. He knows what her survival cost her, and what haunts her in the dark. He knows that Maria built her from her ashes, strung her together like her personal little marionette. He finds teeth marks on the inside of her legs and is horrified at the implications until Alice tells him the entirety of her and Maria, of at least a decade wrapped up in each other. Simultaneous parasites, Alice says as she twists her fingers in his hair. 

“She didn’t make me a good or nice person, Jas. She made me into something monstrous, something vile and rotten. And I made her manipulative, vicious, cruel.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t love or like or anything good. It was destructive.”

The idea of Alice and Maria together makes him pause, only because he hadn’t considered the two of them like that before. He spent his life haunting libraries, yes, but he had always been invested in world histories, in the biographies of great men. Salacious novels had never been to his tastes. The only people he spoke to were his victims. He’s socially stunted, so behind, that he finds himself faltering in the face of so many new things. Alice seems to know when he needs her guidance, an explanation. And she’s never seemed to falter telling him the uglier things she’s seen and done. 

Perhaps there was subtext he missed in all her stories of Maria. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s had to stop and spell something out. 

But the very idea of someone else seeing Alice like this, with her slip pushed up her thighs and her breast exposed as she reclines in the bed makes him feel snappish and possessive, makes him crawl up the bed and cage her body underneath his, his arms bracing him on either side of her head. 

“You’re mine now,” he says in a low voice, and she leans up to snag a kiss, a desperate pleading kiss that he resists for a moment before he sinks against her, against violet-and-moonshine scented satin and moon-white limbs, against the flutter of her hair against his cheek.

“All yours,” she says breathlessly, and it’s girlish and giddy and so very genuine that he falls a little bit more in love with her (as if there is a bottom of the well that he feels for her). 

//

Peter is a tall, skinny, and vaguely sly man who was changed at twenty-two-ish with a mop of blond-brown hair and a suave grin that makes Jasper not trust him. 

He trusts him less when he sweeps Alice into a hug with, “Hello beautiful,” practically purred at her. And Alice just laughs and hugs him back. 

Peter’s mate is a sugar-sweet looking girl named Charlotte with strawberry blonde curls and eyes just a little too far apart for her to considered conventionally beautiful. Around the same age as Peter when she was recruited, she smiles politely at Jasper and hugs Alice briefly. 

He’s aggravated to discover Alice and Peter’s history from Peter’s never-ending innuendo; his emotions are joking and light, there is no attraction or lust or bitterness directed towards him or Alice. Some curiosity. And it’s reassuring that Peter isn’t looking for something from Alice, but the way he moves around her, talks to her… it makes Jasper irritated. 

(They’ve only been together a few years, and he still finds himself a little awkward around her. Like when to take her hand, and when to steal a kiss, and when to start unzipping her clothes. Alice says it’s because he was alone for twenty years, with no maker to guide him and no memories to remind him. That he’s still finding his rhythm, and she doesn’t mind being the one to take his hand or pressing surprise kisses to his cheeks. 

“It doesn’t help you’re so tall,” Alice says but with a flicker of delight in her emotions. She dances around the fact that she loves their size difference, that she adores feeling precious and protected for once in their life, with him at her side. That every part of being with him makes her feel less like the killer, monster, soldier that she spent so very long being.)

//

The thing is, he knows she’s not normal. She knows it too. And she has no excuse. Maybe it’s the visions. Maybe she really was nuts as a human and it came with her that night Maria found her in the park. Alice thinks it was years in a vampire army that curdled her brain - or finished the job, at least. 

But he loves his half-feral, crazy wife. He loves that she laughs too loud and asks strange questions and has no sense of modesty or propriety. He loves that all the shadows and spaces on his body line up with her slender curves, that she moves over him with awe and lust in her eyes every single time; that the reverence in her gaze and her mood are better attributed to some greek god than his sharp, bony frame. 

That for every comment whispered across a locker room or behind hands that he’s weak or sickly or somehow lacking, Alice is there with her eyes full of him and only him. That she’s not above a filthy kiss in a classroom to stake her claim and remind everyone - including him - that he is utterly desirable, the heart-throb and prince of her story. That their easy dismissal of him is the joke she’s always laughing at.

He doesn’t bother to try to explain to their family that he had nothing before he woke up in the middle of what he assumes was Texas, alone and unknowing. It was only old dog tags with ‘Jasper W-’, the surname worn away, knotted around his wrist to give him a name. Ragged clothing and old dog tags - he had nothing else. And then he found her and she grounded him, tethered him into a time and place at her side. That she had poured out everything he ever needed before she’d even kissed him for the first time. 

She’d been upfront too, looking him in the eye at her grand height of five feet high, that she was a mess but maybe they could be a mess together. He’d initially assumed she meant the scars, but it had taken him only a few hours to realise that the scars were nothing. 

(He loves the scars, loves pinning her to the mattress so she can’t squirm away, and reopening them, pressing his own venom into her tissue to make every single of them his; to make her his for forever and a day. She hisses and cries but she still begs with him not to stop, to at least fuck her as he tears her open. If he could, he’d carve open her chest and take her heart for his own; a bloody trophy she’d be all too willing to give.) 

That Alice might be crazy, unpredictable and volatile, but in her heart of hearts, she’s soft and fragile and ephemeral; a girl who is half rabid and terrified of slowing down and desperate to be loved as she is. That only he sees the vulnerable part of her, when Esme gets frustrated with her riddles and double talk, when Rosalie gets angry at her constant innuendo, when Edward storms out at her twisted little thoughts, he stays at her side. 

He watches her face fall when one of their classmates calls her crazy, insinuate things about her to the new girl; feels her lean against him, her emotions a cocktail of disappointment and shame and hurt; one that makes him drop a kiss to the top of her head, to take her hand. Every school in every place claims Alice struggles with impulse control, from calling out inappropriate things in class, to skipping school, to having sex with Jasper in empty classrooms. It’s not like the Cullens can explain all the pieces that make up Alice - the ostracised daughter, the vampire soldier, the powerful psychic, the repentant murderer… that she still struggles with the unspoken rules, with remembering she’s supposed to be human, acting like a human teenager.

But she does try - she has a whole section of her closet dedicated to high school clothing that she carefully curates from magazines and online. Her own tastes opt for couture, for vintage dresses and cocktail dresses. She mutters and complains as she is forced to pick out ‘school approved’ garments - today’s ensemble is a graphic t-shirt, a satiny red skirt that glides against her thighs in a way that should be illegal, and shimmery tights. Her hair hangs in loose waves to her collarbone, and she’s perfectly lovely. A normal human girl would burn to be as genuinely pretty as Alice is.

"You're biased," she sighs when he tells her that. "And stop saying that in front of Rose, you know it pisses her off."

//

The nomads are sauntering towards them with the arrogance of predators. They are dirty and blood-stained and look every bit threatening as a vampire should. 

Alice is standing beside him, and he’s reassured that she’s wearing a long sleeved shirt under her baseball shirt; leggings, a mini-skirt and knee-high socks; it means the only scars that can be seen are Maria’s and his (he hates it, a little, that her Cullen choker covers up those scars like there is something shameful about her past, that she should regret her marks.) 

He feels like a traitor, thinking that. But it wouldn’t be the first time that a nomad has come across the family, seen Alice’s scars and things have gone sour. He wants her beside him, safe, unthreatened by these nomads - she looks utterly innocent and harmless, with her hair twisted up into cute little buns. 

He washes the females of their group in mundanity and it should be enough, it should make things easier. Except Alice reaches out and grabs his arm, her eyes flashing to their whites as she utters his name. It’s a bad vision, one that has her emotions punch him straight in the chest and scatter his intention - her horror and shock and rage. 

The vision lasts seconds and Alice’s knees buckle for a second before she is rigid and furious. 

It’s just enough time for Jasper’s influence to fade from the nomads, for them to take stock of the Cullen family. 

And James’ face stretches into a delighted grin, his pleasure sickening as he moves closer. 

“Major Jasper Whitlock! What an unexpected surprise!” 

“Do I know you?” 

Alice is full-on growling now, her body leaning forwards and he’s suddenly and intensely aware of how much she’s restraining herself, how angry she is. 

“I never thought that you’d make it this far.” James is pacing back and forth right now. “And you brought a snack!”

“Get Bella out of here, Edward.” Alice’s voice is low and angry and he’s not sure if he should hold her back or get everyone else clear of whatever is about to happen. He’s seen Alice fight before, when they were travelling together and the nomads then weren’t nearly as high stakes as this moment. 

But this man knew who he had been. Major Whitlock? That was more than he’d ever had before. 

“Alice, please,” he murmurs but Alice is already slinking forward.

“Don’t, Jasper,” is all she says. And then she lunges. 

—

The fight is not fast, but it is thorough. Laurent gets away missing a hand, and Victoria’s face is disfigured, but James is shredded and strewn around Alice, her shirt torn and her eyes black. 

She’s practically trembling as James’ remains burn, and Jasper pushes aside the horror of the Cullens, of finally seeing what Alice is capable of when threatened. 

It’s not fear that has Alice coiled up; the tension is primal - ready for the next attacker, ready to fight, still processing the threat to her mate and coven. The absolutely rage and terror has her limbs alight for the next strike, and he moves forward cautiously, telegraphing his movements as he gets closer. Her eyes track him as he gets closer before his scent catches her and her body visibly relaxes, a flash of a vision passing over her as she reaches out to pull  him closer. 

“I let the other two get away,” she mumbles into his shirt. “He was a goddamn monster.”

“You got them good, though,” he says, his hands gentle on her back.

//

Alice is quiet after the Cullens’ meeting; he finds her up to her nose in a bubble bath. But it’s not the usual bubble bath, where there is incense burning - the stuff that smells like forest flowers and moss - and Alice’s hair is tied up in a scarf with some pointless but indulgent green face mask on, music playing, and maybe a magazine held just above the bubbles. 

No, her hair hangs wet and lank in the water and half stuck to her face. Her eyes are a dark gold, even after hunting. She just lies there, staring, and he leaves her be.  

He doesn’t say anything, not even the she pads out of the bathroom in actual pyjama bottoms and an oversized t-shirt; not one of her lingerie sets that she takes so much pride in teasing him with. Her hair is still wet and she looks inhuman and sad. 

He opens his arms to her, and she reaches for him, as they curl together on their bed. She buries her face in his neck, and then she tells him everything that she saw - that James was involved in his change, that James had known him back at some kind of hospital and had hunted him to his death.  

That Jasper had once been Major Jasper Whitlock. 

That there had been someone on Jasper’s side. Another vampire who had not lived to see through Jasper’s change. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I couldn’t let you find out more… he would have attacked; we would have gotten hurt.” Her lips graze his neck as she speaks and he hears what she’s saying but he doesn’t listen. He can’t. It’s so much more than he’s ever had before that it doesn’t seem real. 

Major Jasper Whitlock. It feels like a joke. So many years he thought that his name was nothing more than borrowed boots, but it was his all along. That someone had cared enough to make sure he had that little token with him through the change. That awakening alone had never been the plan, just a tragedy. 

Her fingers trace under his shirt, dipping around his ribs and he tightens his grip on her. It’s easier to focus on her right now, when he’s feeling so distant from everything with the new information rattling around in his brain.

He’s sorry she washed her hair; the little pigtail-buns were cute and made her eyes bigger. He could drown in those eyes, gold and ochre and lemon. Or scarlet, ruby, burgundy. Whatever colour she has, they swallow him whole every time. 

If they got married now, he wouldn’t have to be Jasper Brandon, he realises suddenly. They don’t talk about marriage - Alice says it’s a Cullen thing, that they don’t need to be married. But he still thinks about it, and wonders if she rejects it because she still hates herself for some of the things she did in the south, because of how steadfastly she rejected it as a human. 

She’d be Alice Whitlock now. That makes him feel odd; a little guilty that he’s somehow letting her down wanting her to take his name even when she’s mentioned a lot of times she hates it. Hates Brandon and the human life she lived. 

//

There’s smoke and yelling and he cannot see or hear her anywhere on the field. There’s too many people to filter out emotional flavours and panic is beginning to rise in his chest. 

Alice isn’t dead. Alice can’t be dead. There isn’t a world without Alice. He doesn’t exist without Alice. He doesn’t know how to be without her. 

Panic is like stinging nettles and running out of air underwater. Every fragment of body scattered on the battlefield could be her. 

It feels like someone has carved away half his chest. 

Then Emmett is there, grabbing him by the shoulders - Emmett has a nasty bite mark and a long scratch down his arm, and one over his eye.

“Jasper, what is it?”

His knees are buckling and he can’t get the words out. The family knows he gets depressed, gets anxious. But they never see the panic attacks - he hasn’t had one in a good amount of time, and Alice is the one that takes care of him then,  takes him somewhere quiet or says something outrageous so that everyone is too busy being annoyed or shocked to notice him. He needs her violet-and-liquor scent to ground him and she’s not here, she’s not fucking here. 

It’s because she’s dead, he knows it. There are pyres scattered all over the battlefield, the smoke a gathering haze around their ankles. 

“Alice,” he croaks and Emmett’s eyes widen in understanding, in terrible comprehension. 

“She’s here, I saw her tangling with Caius,” Emmett says, looking around. That’s worse, somehow; he knows she’s lethal, a death wish in a cocktail dress, but Caius. The one who destroyed the werewolves, who is legendary for his fighting skills. Not his Alice, no. 

Peter and Charlotte are heading over, and the tangle of panic and outside emotions round him feels like an ice shelf cracking, like something has to break inside him for it all to stop. Charlotte immediately goes to him; he doesn’t need a mirror to know he looks haunted and hollow, and Peter darts off. 

He’ll find her body and bring it for me to burn. Then he can finish me off is the most lucid of his thoughts and the look of horror on Emmett’s face, of shock on Charlotte’s makes him realise he’s said it aloud. 

//

Suddenly she’s limping from the back of the field, tossing Caius’ head onto the fire without ceremony. She’s a mess, with a crack spiralling from the corner of her mouth to her ear. Her eyes are black, and her shirt is torn open. He can’t see why she’s limping but she is, quite obviously. There is something utterly inhuman about her in that moment, like a righteous deity arriving to deal out bloody justice. 

As his eyes meet hers, all the steel in her stance melts away and he realises with a shock that she had assumed the worst too. Assumed that he was gone. Assumed that the battle had cost her him.

She slams into him, or he into her, he’s not sure because they were both moving. She smells mostly like ashes and venom and smoke, but she’s a secure weight in his arms, holding so tight to him, as they fall to the grass clinging to the other. 

I love you I love you I love you

I thought you were gone

I thought I’d lost you

A Little Bit of Light

One.

Honestly, he has no idea what he was thinking. 

It’s been two days since they left the city, heading into the rural areas - his plan is to Wisconsin for a while, where they (he) can get lost in the woods for a while.

They. What was he thinking?

She’s a strange kid, trotting beside him with an air of satisfaction. She’s particularly tiny and honestly, he could snap her in half before she’d realised he had moved. He’s trying not to think about how she smells, trying to focus on the goddamn pompoms in her hair, at the worn and filthy clothing she’s wearing. 

Alice doesn’t look like any fifteen year old he’s ever met; there were a handful of newborns changed at that age, and … well, Alice doesn’t look or act anything like they did. But what does he know about modern teenagers? 

They travel slowly - Alice is only human, ad she appears to be limping. He can smell the raw wounds on her, but she’s not actively bleeding which is a relief. 

Fuck. He’s with a kid who needs to eat and drink, sleep and pee, and bleeds and cries and he has no idea what to do about any of those things. He remembers enough from his human life that contaminated water can kill her, and food goes rancid quickly. She’s clearly got a few things in her backpack, but eventually those will run out and she’ll need more.

What the hell is he doing with her?

It’s the first day they’ve been able to travel during the day, the grey clouds obscuring the sun helpfully. She’s been chatting at intervals, about anything and everything, whilst he’s remained silent. He can try and convince himself that he still might take her as his next meal, but his internal voice - that switches between Maria and Peter, depending on his level of self-loathing - mocks him for that. He’s not going to intentionally murder her. 

It might still happen by accident, but he’s not going to plan this kid’s death. He might still try and leave her somewhere safe in the next town they pass through, but he’s going to do his damnedest not to be the cause of her death. 

“Jasper?” Her voice is quiet and he looks over to see her falling behind. She’s got her jacket zipped up now, hands deep in her pockets. “Can we stop for a while?”

It takes a moment for him to register that it’s gotten dark enough that Alice can probably only just see. The temperature has dropped as well. But if they stay here tonight, they won’t be able to travel again unless the clouds linger. But Alice rubs her eyes and something about the sight of her doing that is enough to make him relent. 

“For a few hours,” he says finally and she beams at him. 

She looks exhausted as she makes up her little camp - spreading a thin blanket over the ground, exchanging her sneakers for a second pair of socks, brushing her hair out and braiding it loosely. She drinks the rest of her water bottle but doesn’t eat anything as she lies down on the blanket - it can’t do much to make the ground more comfortable or even warmer, he realises suddenly. 

He has to admit that his first thought is still to wait until she’s asleep and then slip away - this is really the first opportunity he’s gotten, with her essentially stranded in the darkness if he leaves her behind, and by the time the sun rises he can be long gone. 

And it is tempting - she’ll go to a local town, and they’ll take care of her, let her sleep in a real bed.

Except, she immediately looks up at him; big, worried eyes pleading with him. 

“Are you going to stay with me, Jasper?” She asks, her voice croaky and rough from exhaustion. She reaches out one hand towards him. The fear creeps in - she’s trying to push it down, but he still catches the flavour - and it’s a kind of fear he hasn’t felt in a very long time. An easy fear, a childish fear.

“Please don’t leave me, Jasper,” she sounds distressed now, and he hasn’t said a word, just leaning against the tree. “Can you come closer?”

“Why?” The ‘why’ is for so many reasons. Why would anyone invite a vampire closer? Why is she so desperate for him to stay? Why is she so afraid? 

Why him?

“I don’t like the dark.” The words are soft and mumbled, and the hazy fuzz of exhaustion are dulling her emotions but her heart is still beating like a rabbit; her eyes darting around to try and find his shape in the darkness. “I’ve never had to sleep in the dark before.”

Her eyes unknowingly meet his and something about them… it’s the same well of compassion that caught him in the park, the reason she’s here with him at all. 

“Go to sleep, little one,” he says, and he’s surprised how warm his voice is, how kind it can be. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“I can’t see you,” Alice says, and her voice has a hint of a whine in it, but he can feel the genuine anxiety in it. She’s not lying or playing on his emotions: she’s genuinely afraid of the dark. Of being left alone. 

If you don’t take me with you, he’ll kill me. And if I have to die, I’d rather you be the one to do it - you won’t try to make it hurt. 

Those words make him feel mildly ill. She was just so young and so small, the idea that anyone would try to make her hurt was repulsive. 

He moves closer to her, settling close enough beside her that her fingers can grip the filthy jacket he wears. “I’m here. Get some rest.”

“…kay.” He’s rather impressed that having him within arms’ reach is such a reassurance that she’s asleep in seconds, her head pillowed on her backpack. She looks even younger asleep, and she’s so… trusting. So goddamn trusting and vulnerable, deciding that not only is he not a danger to her, but a comfort. 

Watching a human sleep has to be high on his list of boring things to do, but he doesn’t move. He watches her curl in on herself as the temperature drops, and that’s an entirely new thing to worry about. Just add it to the list. Her emotions flutter as she dreams, and she stirs a few times, her heart rate picking up and her emotions flaring once again with fear, but laced with confusion and urgency. It’s easy enough to soothe her, and at some point he realises two things - the first is that she’s moved closer to him and half off her blanket; and the second is that the night has passed faster than he anticipated, and dawn light is streaking across the night sky. 

It’s not that big an inconvenience, he decides. They’re away from other people and when she wakes up, they’ll need to find more food and water for her. Probably a warmer blanket, too. 

He has no idea what he’s doing, but if he’s going to let this happen, he might as well try and do it right. 

Two.

He’s been gone too damn long on this hunt, and he’s annoyed with himself. Alice timed everything so she wouldn’t be left alone when it got dark, but he had to go and fuck things up. 

They’ve got a few more weeks of fall before they have to find decent shelter for the winter - they tried to tough it out the first year, and that was a disaster. Alice might have forgiven him, but he hadn’t. And there’s an old, pretty much abandoned hunting cabin about sixty miles north that looks promising, one room with running water and not much else, but they can make it work. At least, they can try. 

It’s been a rough year, but things are getting better. They’re headed to Nevada in the spring - Alice seems to think the hunting will be easier there, and is having dreams of some kind of abandoned apartment or motel room they can hole up in for a while. They have a plan.

He finds the campsite quickly; it’s too dark and he’s left her alone too long, and it takes him a moment to realise she’s not there. The little bed area is made up, her snacks are still in their packaging on her pillow but Alice is nowhere to be seen. 

Her backpack and water bottle are gone as well, but that means very little. They’ve learnt their lessons before, and it’s law that Alice keeps her bag and bottle with her at all times. 

He shouldn’t panic, she’s a sensible girl about most things. And he doesn’t want to recreate the day he thought she’d gotten lost and gone after her, when she’d just needed to pee. She’d been embarrassed. 

This is only the third time he’s ventured into a town to get supplies, food and water not withstanding. And it’s a good haul, she’ll be happy - a new hoodie (purple, with front pockets, it’s going to be a little big), and a new pair of sneakers (measuring her tiny foot against his hand so he could make sure he got the right ones had made her giggle, which had made him chuckle. She really was a tiny little thing); a fleece blanket, a decent first aid kit, some gloves, and a whole bunch of food. He’s positive she’s not eating enough but she never complains. 

She’s still not back yet, and it’s definitely dark now. She’s been gone too long. 

It’s not hard to pick up her scent, to follow it back down the hill. The water and cooler air muffles it a little, but he only needs it long enough to find her emotions. 

He doesn’t need to wait long. 

He can hear her singing. 

“The birds flew off with a fallout shelter… Eight miles high and falling fast…” Her voice wobbles for a moment and he’s moving faster to wherever she’s hidden herself. He’s told her a million and one times that it’s better to stay quiet and hidden to avoid anyone else hunting in the area, but she never does. She doesn’t like the quiet, and tends to fill it up with sound when she’s alone - especially when she’s worried or afraid. 

The reflective patch on her sneakers is what gives her away, and he finds her seven feet up a tree, clutching her backpack like a life preserver, the fear bubbling around her as she tries to calm down. 

“Alice, are you okay?” She jumps at his voice, and he needs to remember to alert her to his approach. Plus she can barely see him, even with him less than a foot away from her. 

“Jasper?” It’s one motion, the way she reaches out for him to catch her, and he’s kind of confused how she got herself up in the tree in the first place, but he’s seen her do crazier things. Within seconds, he’s got her and lifting her down, her backpack over one arm. She’s not injured, landing easily but wrapping her arms around his waist as soon as she’s on solid ground. “You were gone too long,” she mumbles into his shirt, and he can feel her indignation overwhelming the fear and worry. “It got dark really fast.”

It did. And he was late. 

“I’m sorry, I got held up.” He hugs her tight back until she lets go. She’s calming down but she’s still frowning. “Everything is back at camp.”

She nods, and he grasps her hand to guide her back safely. She’s calmer but still on alert as they pick their way back towards their things. 

She hasn’t really been able to explain why she hates the dark so much, but she’s mentioned a few times that in the hospital, the hallway lights stayed on at all times, and the nurses checked on them at night. Before that, when she lived with her grandmother, she was still young enough to have a nightlight.

Even the park they had met in had little solar lights on the pathways and dotted throughout to prevent crime. She’d never been in the real dark before she met Jasper, and it scared her. 

He quickly sets Alice up in her blanket nest and brings the things over to her to inspect - she’s extremely pleased with several of the food items, and the new clothing. 

When he brings over the first aid kit, Alice rolls her eyes. She thinks he’s overprotective and paranoid, but it just seems dumb to roam around without some way to patch her up. 

“I got you a surprise,” he says, sitting beside her.

“Bandaids and aspirin?” Her voice is mocking but she’s already cramming in some of the snacks he got, so her cheeks are round like a chipmunks. 

“Don’t sass me, darlin’,” he says, mock sternly as he pulls out the slim black object from the first aid kid. “It’s not much, but I thought it might be a sensible addition to our stockpile.”

Alice lets out a huff of annoyance at the word ‘sensible’ - she’s not a big fan of doing what he deemed the safe option, and was more likely to follow her dreams blindly even when they were unnecessarily risky. She also had a terrible habit of assuming that because of him, she was bulletproof. That any trouble she ran into, he would protect her from. 

And he would, if he could. But he couldn’t protect her from every single thing and he was intensely aware of all those hundreds, thousands, millions variables that could harm her. 

But he was distracting himself, as he slipped the gift into Alice’s hand. 

She fumbled with it for a moment before her fingers find the button and the flashlight turns on, throwing light on both of them. 

“No more nightmares,” he says softly. “It’s only small, but it’s solar powered and light enough for you to carry.” They had all divided their belongings between two bags - her original backpack, and one that he’d acquired quickly when he realised that if he wanted to stay in the forest longer, they’d need more food than Alice could physically carry. 

She looked at him and leant over to hug him, the flashlight still clutched in her hand. 

“Thank you.” Her happiness and relief and affection is a wonderful feeling, one that has him pressing his face against the top of her head. It’s not the first time in the last year that he’s appreciated the little pieces of joy and hope and light that she’s brought to him. Never before has he spent an afternoon wading in a river, or watching jackrabbits dart around the underbrush. Or having to hurriedly get mud off of a pair of powder blue boots that he told her were impractical, because she was visibly upset. 

“Should have thought of it before,” he admits, and he begins gathering everything up so that she can get some sleep with her new blanket. 

“You take good care of me, Jasper.” She kicks off her sneakers and exchanges them for her sleep socks. 

“Could say the same thing about you,” he murmurs but she doesn’t hear him as she tucks herself up for sleep. 

“Come sit with me,” she asks, and he obeys, taking his seat next to her, close enough that she can reach out and grab him if she needs to, or for him to soothe her if she has one of her nightmares. It’s the same every night since they met. 

“I’m here, Alice,” he says, as she flicks her new flashlight off and tucks it beside her. “I’m right here.”

Three.

Time passes oddly as a nomad, especially with a human in tow. 

It’s been more than a year since Alice joined him, but it feels both much longer and a much shorter amount of time. She half-skips along next to him, her backpack bouncing against her. She’s still way too skinny for his liking, but she’s grown a few inches - enough that they had to replace all her clothes and shoes. But she takes good care of her things, and she’s not precious about keeping many of her belongings after they’re no longer useful which helps. 

It’s late winter, by his guess - the ground is still frozen but there is a sense in the air that the worst of it has passed them. They spent the winter season holed up in a dump of a hunting cabin, but it had been warm and dry, and easy enough for him to run to the nearest town to get supplies as necessary. Alice had remained pretty sunny about the whole experience, even though it had included a few scrawny birds nesting in the rafters and stinking up the place; having to boil buckets of water on an ancient stove any time she wanted to wash or drink anything; moth-eaten blankets that smelt like dust and dirt, and broken, rotting furniture as the only place to sleep. 

They’d do better next winter, he’d make sure of it. 

They’d left a few weeks earlier than planned after Alice had woken up and announced they’d be discovered if they stayed any longer. And that was the opposite of what he was aiming for - after living in such close quarters with Alice and her sticky, persistent little emotions, he was confident that he wouldn’t snap and feed from her. She smelt good but she wasn’t a temptation. 

That couldn’t be said for other humans. And the very last thing in the world he wanted was to have Alice witness him hunting. More than once, he’s been forced to hunt animals in forests to sustain himself, a disgusting act. But better that than leaving her alone. Better that than letting her get too close to him when he was feeding. 

But they’d left in such a rush that they’d lost track of time, and he wasn’t entirely sure where they were headed. What their plan was - California would have the best weather for Alice, but it’s too far down the coast made him nervous and Alice is reluctant to return there, still worried someone will find her and drag her back to the hospital.  

“Stop worrying,” Alice said, bumping against him. “It’s going to be okay!” It’s hard to take her seriously when she’s bundled up in about six layers to stay warm, her face peering at him from under an oversized beanie. 

“Hmm,” he says, non-committedly.

“It has to be March soon,” she adds, hopping over a tree trunk with what can only be described as an adorable little bounce. 

“Good.”

“Do you think it’s been February 14th yet?” Her brow is furrowed as she looks up at the sky, as if she can divine the date and time from the clouds. 

“Maybe.” He’s never been one to take account of dates, even now with Alice. 

They mark time by the sun, by the season, and by how often she outgrows her clothes. By how many times he’s very, very carefully cut her hair; by the food she eats and the way she's more relaxed and calm; by the way her injuries go from blood to raw to dry and healed and gone. He counts the scars she carries - cheek, arm, legs - as another mile marker of how long they’ve been together. 

It’s easy to forget that it won’t always be this way, that one day she's going to grow up and get older and he’ll be alone again. He likes to pretend that she’ll always look at him like her knight in shining armour and that he will always be able to fix everything for her.

He’s brooding again. She always laughs at him, teases him, when she catches him; especially when it’s because he’s worrying about her. But she always hugs him around the waist and points out that it’s an upgrade from being depressed about Maria and the Wars.

“If you have to worry about something, I’m glad it’s only about me.”

“…it just doesn’t feel any different. I thought it would? Without all the pills and stuff making me blurry,” Alice finishes with a shrug, and he realises he’s tuned her last few sentences out. “But it always gets warmer afterwards, so things will get better!” 

“After Valentine’s Day?” He says, confused at where this conversation has gone. Alice is disturbingly practical about their lifestyle and all those things she can’t do - like go to school or sleep with a pillow - and he can’t imagine that she’s lamenting a lack of candy. Especially since he’s positive her backpack still contains at least one full package of her favourite cookies. 

“My grandma used to say the candles on my cake was what made the snow melt,” Alice says, looking wistful for a moment. She’s mentioned her grandmother enough that Jasper knows that Alice misses her, and had loved the woman. It always felt cruel to him that a girl who had faced so much misery had had the one family member who cared about her taken away from her so young. 

“Your cake?” He echoes, trying to catch up to whatever the topic at hand is. 

“Mmm hmm. I don’t remember what kind they were or what they tasted like. I just remember she’d let me pick out the colours because there wouldn’t be any presents. Just a cake and a candle.”

Her birthday cake. It hits him suddenly.

February 14 was Alice’s birthday. 

She’s a whole year older.

And they’ve been together long enough that he’s entirely missed one of her birthdays. She’d never mentioned it before, and he feels like he’s made a terrible mistake. 

There's not much he can do, really. They’re miles from the nearest town, and it'll take a hunt or two to get together enough cash to get the things she needs, let alone something just for her. He can steal, but its simpler in the larger towns and cities. They’re less likely to be noticed if he just pays cash,  and Jasper is intensely aware of the attention that they could get from both humans and vampires. 

And what that could mean for Alice.

The plan comes together in bits and pieces, and it’s easy enough to find a reasonable place to camp near a river that isn’t entirely frozen over - the water is far too cold for her to wash in, but at his casual suggestion Alice is occupied washing out and refilling her water bottles and giving some of her dirtier clothes a good scrub. She’s close enough that he can hear her moving around, and it gives him a little time to put something together. 

The campsite wasn’t much, and lighting the little fire in the middle of it had taken a lot of time and sent him back into memories of a place he’d rather not be. But it was lit and burning strong enough to last a few hours. Alice could sleep warm, and dry out her laundry and that was certainly a treat these days. 

“Jasper, d’you want me to wash out your stuff?” Alice came trotting back to camp with her arms loaded down with stuff before she froze, staring at the campsite he’d just finished setting up - at the careful lean-to he’d made with the tarp and a spare blanket from the house, at her bed all folded down and ready with her bunny on her backpack. At the fire burning merrily in front of her, and the little package of crackers and chocolate he’d gotten on the last supply run. 

“Happy Birthday,” he says awkwardly. He only vaguely remembers his own birthdays as a human, and he’s sure that modern teenagers get more for their day than some crackers and a chocolate bar in the middle of the woods. "Belated, I think."

The smoke from the fire is making him agitated and she’s looking at him with a stunned expression on her face. 

“You made me a fire?” She asks softly, looking up at him with wide eyes. 

“It’s freezing out here, and I thought you could do that thing with the chocolate on a stick you like to do.” He sounds gruff and uncomfortable even to his own ears but Alice just looks delighted. 

It’s another one of her hugs that he’s certain will leave bruises on her, the way she half-flings herself at him. She’s a warm little bundle of scents and emotions that he associates with contentment and affection now. 

“You didn’t have to make me a fire,” Alice says, her words muffled against him. She had been insistent about getting to know him, and he’d finally acquiesced and told her a few things about the South - highly sanitised and edited because he doesn’t want to give her more nightmares - but fire being the thing that can destroy him had stuck in her mind. She’d refused to let him carry the lighter or the matches for months, until he once again explained that they’d have to snap him into pieces first. 

“Something to keep you warm and safe in the dark,” he says. “No marshmallows, but we’ve got chocolate and crackers.”

Alice is suitably delighted by the treat, inhaling her dinner before she moves onto the treat, taking her time to choose a stick and careful construct a disgusting looking cracker-chocolate-peanut butter concoction to hold over the fire. She places her water bottle next to her, eyeing him and the flames several times before her dessert takes her focus. 

“I’m sorry it’s not more,” he says suddenly and she looks up at him, still chewing. “For your birthday.”

She shakes her head. “Back at the hospital, they had too many of us to do real birthday parties, so once a month there would just be a sheet cake in the day room - always vanilla, always with ‘Happy Birthday!’ In yellow icing. And they’d read our names out and cut the cake and that’s it. No one has ever done anything just for my birthday before.”

It’s the nonchalant way she says it that makes him wrap his arm around her. 

“Next year, we’ll do anything you want,” he promises rashly. “Anywhere you want.”

She laughs and leans against him and beams up at him. 

“I want to do this again. But with marshmallows. Maybe pizza,” Alice announces, as she licks the remaining chocolate off her fingers.

“This? Out of anything in the world?” Camping in a snowy forest with nothing more than a sleeping bag and a tarp to keep her warm and dry seemed like a miserable option. 

“Yup. But with pizza and marshmallows,” Alice said with a nod. “Perfect birthday.”

“Perfect birthday,” he echoes. It’s dark now, but the heat and light from the fire seems to make it softer and kinder. “You should get some sleep.”

“Uh-huh,” Alice yawns, and he’s quick to steer her carefully towards her bed, so that she doesn’t trip into the fire. She zips herself into the sleeping back, her bunny pillowed under her face. “Thank you, Jas. You’re the best.”

He watches her go to sleep - easily, because of the reassuring light of the campfire - as he settles beside her, those words echoing in his ears. 

You’re the best. 

He’s not. He’s done terrible, awful, monstrous things. He has more blood on his hands than Alice can imagine. He doesn’t deserve peace or joy or anything good. 

But he’s here, with this young girl who carefully tucked the wrapper from the chocolate bar into the front of her backpack, like he’d given her something precious. With a girl whose first thought at their little campsite was that he had lit her a fire and - in her eyes - risked himself. 

She lets out a soft snore, a smear of chocolate still on her cheek. He leans over to wipe it off carefully. 

“Sweet dreams, Alice.”

Four.

“Jasper, look at this.”

The sound of Alice rushing down the stairs interrupts the conversation the Cullens had been having. He’s only been back with the Cullens a few days, and Alice has been bubbling over with excitement and joy - it’s like she’s full of energy, the way her emotions feel. Never in his life has his presence inspired such delight and it's humbling, honestly. That Alice is so attached to him that his arrival is treated like a party.

And she’s so very much better than last time he saw her, lying in a bed with blue lips and her breathing rattling, Dr Cullen frowning and asking a lot of questions that he couldn’t answer, making him feel like he had failed her out of sheer carelessness. 

She darts back into the room, clutching something luminous purple in one hand. So far, she’s shown off the bedroom the Cullens gave her (the bed piled with blankets, and she’s finally got a real pillow), and a closet full of clothes - she shows him a pair of glittery blue shoes and solemnly declares them the greatest things that she has ever owned with so much conviction he knows that he now has another pair of her footwear to protect at all costs. 

She’s also shown him her new bike - apparently, there’s a common trail a mile down the road to get to town and she loves riding her bike there alone with her music playing - a little bit of independence, Esme confides in him later; it takes her about an hour, and she can get her own snacks and magazines. 

He’s still going to worry. 

She climbs onto the couch next to him, half on his lap as she presents the purple object - a cell phone. It’s got half a dozen dangling charms on it already, and she’s showing him the photos she’s taken with it (so, a cell phone and a camera). 

“And it has a flashlight,” she says and he chuckles. 

“Alice,” Esme says. “It’s almost time for bed.”

Alice nods but is annoyed at that reminder, as she shows Jasper another photo on the phone, and Dr Cullen chuckles - since Jasper has arrived, there has been a very informal schedule, with Alice falling asleep on the couch most nights. 

Esme has been very kind but seems very cautious around him - especially when addressing Alice in front of Jasper. He feels a spark of frustration from Esme at Alice’s response but she doesn’t flinch or say anything. 

“I think it’s time for bed,” he murmurs to her, and she lets out of huff of frustration. 

“Fine.” She stands up, spontaneously reaching down to hug him again, as tightly as her bony little arms can manage, before she flits off to the stairs with Esme who follows her up the stairs. “Good night!”

“Good night, Alice!” Emmett hollers back, grinning.

Alice’s bedtime routine seems more complex than bedding down in their campsite used t be. Esme disappears upstairs with her and returns thirty minutes later. 

“She’s very excited to have you back here, Jasper,” Esme shakes her head. She’s carrying the purple cellphone now, and he’s curious why it’s been taken.  

“Maybe now we can get a break from ‘but Jasper said…’” Rosalie mutters from behind her magazine. 

“You do appear to be a high authority on everything,” Dr Cullen says, bemusedly. 

He’s uncomfortable with that idea - he and Alice haven’t even spoken about the fact she lied about how old she was when they met, though he understands why she lied. But the idea that she was so young and his presence had been so formative to her… he didn’t want that responsibility, to shape how she would see the world. Dr Cullen had believed him when he said that he had no idea that she had lied - he was entirely disconnected from modern humanity, let alone young girls. 

There is something far more heartbreaking in the way she bonded to him, knowing she was barely thirteen instead of fifteen. 

“I tried to do right by her,” is his response, and the rest of the Cullens seem to accept that. 

“And you’ve done a very good job,” Esme says firmly, even as the near-fatal case of pneumonia lingers unmentioned. “But we wanted to discuss your future plans.”

“Obviously, we would happily welcome you and Alice to become permanent members of the family…” Dr Cullen began but Jasper is immediately distracted by the faint traces of anxiety and fear trickling down from the first floor. 

“She’s fine,” Edward reassures him. “She always lies awake for a while, usually thinking about you and wondering where you are.”

“She’s upset,” is all he says as he gets up and heads upstairs without a backward glance, ignoring Rose’s offense at his apparent dismissal. 

The bedroom Esme has provided for her is very pretty - all purple and white, with a million different ornaments, fancy furniture, and bits of artwork. The room is dark, the curtains draw tight, as he slips into the room. The only evidence of her presence is the lump under the blankets in the middle of the bed, and the worn flannel ear of her plush rabbit peeking out. 

“Alice?” He says softly. Her distress is familiar and he hates that she’s still having panic attacks now that she’s safe. 

“Jasper?” Her voice is small and she pops out of the blankets, the rabbit clutched so tightly to her chest. She sounds miserable. 

“What’s wrong?” Within seconds, he’s sitting there, reaching for her - to smooth down her hair, and trying to push calm on her. But she latches onto him so tightly, his mind flashes back to the incident in Idaho for a moment; that terror that they were going to be separated. 

She doesn’t say anything, and slowly her heartbeat evens out.

“Alice?” If she’s unhappy here, at all, they can leave tonight. If any of the Cullens have scared her or upset her, she doesn’t have to be around them. He only wants her to be safe and happy, maybe they can…

“I hate being in the dark,” she finally whispers. “And you haven’t been here.”

He pauses for a moment at the simplicity of the problem. 

She’s a warm little ball against him, her thin arms around him, and god, he’s missed her. It took everything in him to leave her behind, to stay away.

“Why didn’t you tell Esme?” He asks, absently playing with her hair. “Or use the flashlight on your cell phone?”

“I didn’t want to make a big deal about it,” she mumbles and he can hear the embarrassment in her voice. “And Esme thought I was playing on the phone when she caught me, so I’m not allowed to keep it in here at night anymore.” Her hands are fisted tightly in his shirt, she’s not letting go even though she’s calmer than when he walked in. “I just thought about other stuff so Edward didn’t hear me.”

She always lies awake for a while, usually thinking about you and wondering where you are.

“Well,” he carefully gathers her up so he can lie on the bed with her, amongst the mounds of bedding that smells like laundry soap and Alice. She’s half curled up against him, and he makes sure her rabbit is tucked beside her, the one that her grandmother made her when she was small. The only thing she has from her family. “Tomorrow, maybe we can go and get you a new flashlight or something.”

“You’re here now, I don’t need one,” she yawns. 

“Well, let’s get you one anyway, just in case.” That statement has her opening one eye to glare at him. 

“Just in case?” She’s worrying again, and he immediately begins to stroke her hair again. 

“We’re close to town, I’ll have to hunt at night while you’re asleep,” he explains. “I’ll come back to you afterward, you won’t even know I’m gone.”

“…Fine,” she huffs and wriggles around. “But you can stay tonight? Until I fall asleep?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me about what you were doing while you were gone. Did you see Charlotte and Peter? We haven’t seen them in ages. Carlisle says they have friends in Alaska that we’ll visit with in the winter,” she says drowsily. 

He honestly has no idea if this Cullen plan of Alice’s is going to work out - a vampire family for her and for him. One that hunts animals exclusively and keeps up the appearance of humans. But right now, listening to her talk herself to sleep, cuddled up against him in a real bed, in a real house, with proper pajamas and no fear of damp or cold or trespassers. 

Well, it feels like it could. Like he wants it to, just for her. 

“Sleep well, darlin’.”

Five.

There is nothing auspicious about their arrival in the Pacific Northwest. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and Jasper has to wonder again why they didn’t just stay in the house in Canada a few more years. But the Cullens had a plan they had to stick to and going to the Olympic Peninsula was what they had to do. 

At first, it was just little things - packing was a chore, even with Edward and Esme helping both him and Alice organise their things between ‘transport, ship, store’. There had been an entire week in the house with half their possessions en route to the new house, which meant Alice was irritable. Then they had to pack the three SUVs and trailer with all the stuff they needed on hand, only to have to delay departure when one of the SUVs' transmissions blew without reason and put Rose on the warpath. 

The Cullens were also unprepared for the realities of traveling with a human teenager, with even Emmett getting annoyed when Alice requested another bathroom break. That had sparked his annoyance, since Alice had already accepted eating and sleeping in the backseat, and she can’t help needing to pee, Emmett. 

Two days of travel, and when they finally arrived at the house it had not been ready to house a human. The power wasn’t on, there was no hot water, and the years had done a number on the house - Alice had put her foot through one of the stairs and had to be rescued by Rosalie. 

So for three nights, Alice had been sleeping in a sleeping bag on an air mattress that Emmett had hastily acquired from Port Angeles, in what was or one day would be the living room, surrounded by stacks of luggage and boxes. She looked exhausted but hadn’t complained much - mostly about being forced to boil water to fill the old tub enough for a bath (and the discovery of an impressive number of snails living in that bathroom had elicited a screech and a long rant about how she could deal with a lot of things, but not snails in the bathroom when the entire family came to her rescue.)

The house was in a bad way in more than one way, and each of the Cullens was put to work every day to try and get the place up to some kind of code - Rosalie and Esme had ripped out entire walls to redo the wiring; Emmett was pulling up and relaying tiles and floorboards to banish any form of rot or mold; Carlisle was replacing roof-tiles when he wasn’t being inducted at Forks Hospital, and he and Edward had somehow come out with the cushy gig of replacing broken windowpanes.

Alice was mostly left with cleaning and sanding things down, and she took that job quietly, looking pale and tired with her headphones a constant companion - a very clear sign that she wasn’t in the mood for company. She had stopped talking about how much she was looking forward to going to school, how exciting it would be to decorate her new bedroom, what prom would be like…

But constantly dodging broken glass, rotten flooring, bathroom snails, a leaking roof, and stray live wires would get old for any human. Especially when the Cullens barely noticed any of those things, let alone considered them hazardous. Not to mention the broken sleep with all of them fetching clothing, tools, and other supplies from the room as she tried to sleep. Alice always got mean when her sleep was interrupted. 

At least they had another week or two until they were enrolled to start school. Long enough for the rest of the furniture to arrive, for Alice to get a decent night’s sleep in a real bed after a hot shower. Edward might have teased her about being precious and spoilt but none of the family begrudged her human comforts. 

Hell, when Esme had set up her makeshift bed, she’d left some camping lanterns around the room to make sure Alice wasn’t alone in a dark room. All of Alice’s things were immediately accessible, and there was plenty of food - Emmett had brought back a camp stove so that she wasn’t stuck eating sandwiches until the kitchen was finished. 

She was still grouchy and distant, not even responding when he tried to comfort her. Carlisle reassured him that Alice would be fine once the house was done, and she was in her new bedroom - the one that was opposite his study and would look out over Esme’s rose gardens. That teenagers were prone to being moody, and it had been a long week. 

He thinks something is still off when he finds her curled up asleep on a pile of ancient drapes that reek of dust and moths in one of the empty rooms at the back of the house, her headphones still playing. She doesn’t sleep long, and it doesn’t seem to have to a profound effect on her but he doesn’t mention it. 

Something isn’t right and he doesn’t know what it is. Her emotions are mostly irritation tinted with frustration. Nothing that clued him into anything. 

So when she starts screaming one night, after one in the morning, he’s not really that surprised. She had to break at some point, had to give in to whatever was bothering her. 

But the screams broke his heart, how terrified and desperate they are. He’s surprised how fast he moves to get downstairs, to find her in the corner with her rabbit clutched so tightly, he’s surprised the fabric hasn’t torn through. She’s shaking like a leaf, and her eyes are wet but the fuzz around her emotions indicate that she’s barely awake and still disorientated from sleep. 

“Alice.” The rest of the family have arrived just as suddenly, Carlisle looking halfway between sheepish and concerned. 

She reaches for him immediately, his arms folding around her with ease. Hers bite into his shirt, latching on tight as she tries to pull herself together. 

“Like the hospital,” she manages, words for his ears only. “Leaning over to check the pills worked. To make sure you were asleep.” The shudder that runs through her body is one that horrifies him; she’s still only a kid and she’s lived through things that would break other people. It’s easy to forget that despite Alice’s joy and happiness and energy, there were still very raw scars and fears. 

“I came in to get the tile box, and one of the lanterns on the ledge was tipping. I didn’t want it to fall on you, Alice,” Carlisle placates, and she nods, but the horror is still fresh. The old vision of the orderly who was planning to kill her, who watched her and stalked her. The one that sent her to find Jasper in the first place. 

It takes him hours to calm her down enough to get her back to sleep, even after Carlisle’s apologies and Esme promising they’d set her up in another room the next day. The horror of her nightmare lingered, along with all the other things that had happened to her - Las Vegas. The tracker in Wisconsin. The chase in Ohio. So many nightmares. 

She’s drowsy in his arms when she wiggles around to get comfortable, the exhaustion written on her face. 

“The nurses always used to come in at night,” she mumbles. “Making sure we were asleep. In and out of our rooms all night. Sometimes the orderly would come in and just watch us in the dark, so no one could see him, and he never got caught. That’s how he knew he could kill me. He’d done it before and got away with it.”

She burrows tighter against him and - after an order for him not to try and leave - she falls asleep. He tries to help her stay asleep, tries to keep her calm, but she’s still agitated, dropping in and out of an uneasy doze before the sun comes up. She picks over her breakfast, even as Esme tries to fuss over her, and for the first time, Jasper wonders if he’s let her down. If he should have insisted Alice stay in a hotel until the house was ready, instead of camping out. If Carlisle’s early offers for therapy might have been a good idea for her. 

If maybe keeping her with a family of vampires was hurting more than it was helping. 

Edward appears suddenly motioning for him to follow him upstairs. 

Alice’s room is now the priority, and Rose and Emmett are tearing out and replacing the rotting bathroom today, whilst Esme finishes the wiring and Carlisle tackles the flooring; tomorrow is painting and furniture assembly - her mattress will arrive by then. So two more nights on the air mattress. 

“Esme’s already redone the schedule,” Edward says in a low voice. “The kitchen is next after Alice’s room. Carlisle agrees; it’s not fair to keep her living like this.” 

He’s relieved that he doesn’t have to beg or argue or plead; that Esme and Carlisle are aware and willing to fix the issue. 

Edward leads him into the room that will become his study - the floors and wiring and plaster are done, the ceiling is pinned. The only thing left - other than Esme building in the bookcases and adding the crown molding and aesthetic elements - is to replace the windows. But the glass is a few days away, the order having been split up in transit. 

But several unpackaged panes are resting against the wall, ready to be installed. Jasper frowned, looking for the label markings - E-MR are written on them in Esme’s handwriting and it takes him a moment to realise that Edward is offering the glass from the music room - the room Edward will occupy until his actual room is finished. 

“Alice needs somewhere she can sleep, and she’ll feel safe in here,” Edward explains awkwardly. “Esme was going to let her move her bed wherever she wants, but I thought we could replace the windows so she can sleep here tonight.”

Edward is the Cullen that is the most awkward about Alice - she’s delighted with her new brother, having to tease and be teased - but this gesture shows how badly Edward wants Alice to be his sister, a part of the family. That he cares about her, and as polite as he has been to Jasper, Edward only wants what is best for her. 

“Thank you,” he responds, and it’s a mostly silent project, getting all three panels of glass replaced quickly. Alice is busy sanding floors, and it takes them little time to bring up her bed, her luggage, and all the little things that she needs without her noticing, and arrange them in Jasper’s study. 

It’s a little after nine that Alice announces she’s going to bed, after another boiled-water bath, and ramen dinner. She protests when Jasper gently steers her up the stairs, scooping her up so that she doesn’t get splinters on the new wood, and carrying her down the hallway to his study. 

The lanterns have been replaced with a strand of fairy-lights Edward had found (or gone looking for) amongst some of the packing. They’d spent an embarrassingly long time pinning the fairy lights in the rough silhouette of a bedhead and pushed her mattress against it, the rest of the strand running along the bottom of the wall. 

“Edward and I…” he begins, but she’s already hugging him tight. 

“How do you always know how to fix things?” She looks up at him with a smile, the one she gives hime when it’s just them, the one that feels like peace and hope and affection. 

“Edward helped.”

“He’s a good brother. But you’ve always got my back, even when I'm being a brat.” She rubs her face against his shirt again, a comfort gesture that she's done ever since she met him. 

“I don’t think nightmares count as being a brat, Alice.” His arm is around her shoulders as he guides her toward her new bed. The others will be working on the kitchen whilst she sleeps so that she isn’t disturbed. Carlisle still feels terrible for scaring her, even after she explained it was all the movement around her that was making her anxious. 

Her arms fold around her old plush rabbit easily, the fabric worn thin and grey in spots. She looks more relaxed than she has since they arrived in Forks, and it’s the sort of relief that settles around him quietly. 

“You want some company?” he offers, as she curls up, crawling in with her when she nods definitively. 

“I always want your company,” she yawns, settling against him. He’s always amazed at how easily she’s taken to sleeping against vampire skin; like resting her head against concrete but she never flinches. 

“Where’s your pillow?” He asks, reaching over to push her pillow under her head so that she can be a little comfortable. She grunts in annoyance.

“Tell me a story,” she orders, and he knows it doesn't have to be a long one because she’s already sinking into that fog of sleep. “Something fun.”

He begins a retelling of one of his more comedic incidents with Peter, and within a few moments she’s sound asleep. 

It’s still boring as fuck to watch a human sleep, but surrounded by fairy lights in his room, Alice a hazy ball of warmth and peace… 

Maybe Forks will be good. Maybe Forks will be home. Maybe they can make this work. Give Alice the high school experience she’s been dreaming of. 

Mortal Sin

(trigger warnings: physical and psychological torture, violence, anatomy, assault, period-typical medical neglect.)

Dark Jasper x Alice, Canon AU.

—

Sometimes he wonders how far there is to fall. 

What does hitting rock-bottom feel like? And what makes the intangible ‘them’ thing that he won’t just keeping digging further down? That if they tell him there is no crime, no heinous action that he hasn’t tried, that he won’t take it as a challenge to find some new way to debase himself?

(He remembers humanity better than he should, and he knows that his family worried. He was so charismatic, so charming, but it was like his mother and grandfather could see the vein of rot inside him, the potential for something terrible buried there. He resented them then for being so harsh with him, for correcting him so often and pleading with him to be better. Now, he resents them for being right. And then he wonders if they hadn’t made him into the monster with their sharp fear and urgency and utter lack of faith.)

He’s not that foolish, of course. Rock bottom will be on his knees in front of the Kings, waiting for his sentence. There’s a line drawn firmly in the sand of what is unacceptable, what is criminal, to those ancient bastards, and he will walk confidently down that line to see which of them falters first. 

His story will always end at the pyre. It’s just a matter of when.

—

The asylum is an hour outside of the nearest town, in the middle of nowhere. Just a clearing and forest. A grim, grey building this is not the type of hospital beloved people are sent to - that hospital is closer to civilisation. 

This is where the dregs of humanity are left to be forgotten and lost. Most of them have to be locked up, alone, for the safety of the staff. The rest are locked up to make things easy. All of them are drugged and beaten and starved and tormented; the same hollow look in their eyes, the clawing kind of desperation. 

It is a special kind of hell that admits a child. 

He finds her in the basement, where the hopeless cases were kept before the hospital was filled to the brim with them. She smells like many things - few of them good - but the underlying aroma is that of lemon sugar and mint. Fresh and sweet and he wants it. 

Then he finds her, and he wants more than her blood.

(She’s a little marionette that he wants to take apart and restring. He wants to break her into a million little pieces and then put her back together. Maria always laughed at him, said that he should have been a surgeon with the way he carries on.)

She’s tiny and delicate, stuck halfway between gangly adolescent and malnourished orphan. Her eyes are such a light grey he marvels at them before he gets closer and realises that she’s almost certainly blind. Her black hair curls around her head, uneven and dry, and bruises stand out on her skin like brands. Her little home is tiny and dark, with a filthy pallet against one wall, and about four inches of filthy window to provide light. 

Her emotions are like moth wings against him; they swallow him up so gently that it feels like being full, being satiated, for the very first time since he began this half life. 

He breaks in whilst she’s sleeping, curled tight into a little ball. Under the stench of sweat and piss and medication, the lemon sugar wafts out at him, pulling him closer. 

(Her wrist is so tiny, the skin is nearly transparent. Her eyelids too; just membrane with blue and red veins. She’s a little marionette of  . She’s perfect.)

She sighs in her sleep, and a strand of discomfort drifts outwards. But she doesn’t wake and doesn’t move. 

He’ll leave before dawn, down the maintenance tunnels and out into the woods. He’s not sure why the girl is still alive, honestly, but somehow his human brain is overpowering his predatory side for now. She is something special, and she will be savoured carefully. 

(Down, down, down another few steps to hell.)

—

It has to be said that Maria isn’t thrilled that he vanishes between battles but then, it’s also easier for her if he entertains himself; less to clean up. So he’s allowed to prowl the forests of Mississippi with the blind girl swirling in his mind. 

She is grossly neglected, even he recognises that. The scant meals she is offered are often rancid; she is washed twice a week, if being hauled into an ice bath, or hosed down count as such things.  

But he slowly learns. The girl is Mary. She’s of-age for a vampire - the one rule of Maria’s that is law beyond all else. At least, the only one she enforces without question. If it got back to her that he was stalking anyone under fourteen, his head would roll without ceremony. 

And there’s no doubt that Maria knows exactly where he has occupied himself. 

She’s treated for various things that are just fancy words on the page. Nothing useful, but he prefers to know all he can about her before he approaches her. 

(Ward of the state, signed over by both her parents - the mother’s signature unsteady - when she was ten. Mary Alice Brandon. Babbling visions and nonsense, struck dumb at random intervals. Hysterical. A more perfect victim he could not have imagined. After all, no one is going to believe a raving girl with such a helpful history.)

His plans take shape slowly, and the anticipation is such a sweet thing. He haunts the shadows, watching sweet Mary and cataloguing everything; she behaves like she’s completely blind, her head tilted up as her gaze hunts impossible light. She taps the wall with her fingers as she walks, with a limp (her left ankle is slightly crooked - a badly healed break). Her black hair curls around her ears, but is uneven and unkept. 

She is a mercurial creature, humming and chatting at the nurses and orderlies. They aren’t kind to her and she’s regularly slapped and hit, pushed and tripped. It explains the bruises and abrasions that litter her limbs. The black eyes, the swollen cheek, the ways she coils herself up tight in her sleep. 

But with no specific trigger, no provocation, she turns into a hissing, spitting, feral little beast that hollers and screams and fights tooth-and-nail against the staff. 

He almost admires her rage.  

(The heaving orderly slips into her cell well after midnight, and she lets out a sound of protest that sounds like a sob. It takes no effort to cause a distraction that sends the orderly from her cell; to lure him outside. The man is no one and nothing, human refuse who dares to put his hands on Jasper’s prize. 

It is not a quick death or an easy death, and those that find his remains won’t forget the sight any time soon. But the Major was never known for playing nicely with others.)

—

“Hello, Mary.”

The first time he speaks to her, she’s lain awake for hours - like she’s waiting. He takes that as an opportunity - better that he doesn’t wake her from a dead sleep, panicked and disorientated. 

(As pleasing as a thrashing, panicked victim can be - the pounding heart, the rush of blood, the futility of their fight - he has bigger plans for her. What could be more enjoyable than a terrified victim?

An adoring one.)

She jerks upwards, eyes wide and unseeing. “Who’s there?” she demands, but he can feel her fear, hear the tremor in her voice. The moths’ wings are frantic and he can feel himself leaning into it. 

“My name is Major Whitlock.” He uses his gift to comfort her, to reassure her, his voice smooth and kind. “I’m here to look after you, Mary. I’ll take very good care of you, I promise.”

She’s shaking now, pressed against the wall, her hands clasped tightly at her collarbones, her dead eyes darting futilely. 

“How did you get in here?” she asks, one hand drifting down to tug her blanket around her, and her emotions are punctured with the flavour of dread that the heaving orderly would inspire, and that makes him frown, annoys him. 

As if he would be so crude and clumsy in his pursuit, as if he is no better than that smear of humanity…

“I came because I felt your pain, Mary,” he tries to resume the calm, enticing tones but even she can hear the edge in his voice. “I came because you called me. But I can leave if you don’t wish for me to be here…”

Curiosity spikes and she relaxes somewhat. “You… felt my pain? W-What are you?”

“Someone who can help you, Mary. If you’re willing to help me in return.”

A deal with the devil, a story as old as time. 

The classics are classic for a reason, after all.

—

Mary, of course, allows him to stay. She’s suitably suspicious, but she tells him not to leave. She has many questions about what he is and what he wants. He is amused and a little irritated she thinks she has any power in this situation. But he lets her have this, lets her think that she has any say in what happens next.

(The groundskeeper had been a problem at first. And it would have been so easy to kill him without ceremony. But he’s been so bored for so long that it was more fun to get Peter to lead the old bastard far and away, on a wild goose-chase. Peter was amused that Jasper was going to so much theatricality for one meal, one crazy little blood bag, but he had laughed and called it ‘sport’, and Peter had agreed - keep the old one on the other side of Mississippi, and don’t kill him unless Peter’s own life was in danger. A harmless game so that Jasper could do his work and get all the pieces where he wanted them.)

She never makes the connection between him and the groundskeeper; she cannot see their matching eyes, their matching pallor. She doesn’t notice their icy skin or the fact they only attended to her in the night hours.

He breathes in her scent and lets the emotions wash over him; it’s fascinating how such a slip of a creature could make him feel so full up, his thirst slaked and his gift not needing to stretch out and find something else, something new. He’s never felt that way before. 

(It makes him want more.)

—

It takes a few weeks for him to begin to enjoy the drugs they dose her with. At first they are an inconvenience, because he cannot get a sensible word out of her mouth if she’s conscious in the first place. Mostly, she’s just a limp pile of bones on her pallet, and that takes some of the fun out of it - because he gets inspired to be creative. 

One of the medications gives her back-breaking seizures (he hears the strain and crack of her little bones as she thrashes); he enjoys the way her joints roll and press against the socket, the way her skin oh-so-nearly tears. The way she gasps for air and lets out sad little kitten noises, unconscious and unaware of how he hovers over her like a bird of prey. 

He loathes whatever they give her when they take her out of the cell, when they drag her deeper into the hospital. She returns in a wheelchair, dumped unceremoniously in her bed. She’s still conscious but no longer lucid, and babbles the strangest things into the air. 

(“We are going to be so happy. So happy. A blue, blue ribbon, Jasper. It’s okay, I forgive you, I’m not going to remember a single thing, I promise. Your eyes are the wrong colour. Why are they like that, Jasper? Jasper?”)

Sometimes when she’s like that, he leaves to hunt. Or he holds the rotting pillow over her face until she stops because he’s never asked for forgiveness before, let alone from someone like her. As if he needs some kind of absolution from a girl who can’t even stand without assistance, who is so weak that she screams for the mother that locked her away in this prison. He scolds her afterwards, for forgetting herself. But she’s usually dazed for a day or too, and apologises faintly, confused but agreeable. 

Those are the days he worries that she’ll just go and die on her own. That thought agitates him enough that he kills one of the nurses in a temper, just to calm himself enough to be alone with Mary. 

No, he doesn’t like that medication at all.   

The medication that makes her sleep also offer a pleasing result, where she is limp and pliable. She doesn’t even notice when she wakes up with new bruises littering her torso and limbs; doesn’t suspect a thing when her elbow has been so very precisely dislocated, the bruise spreading like a heart up her arm. Isn’t surprised at the delicate abrasions on her wrists and neck (just enough for the blood to well up, for him to lave up - teasing and taunting and testing himself. Nothing worse than if 

(He grips her by the throat and leaves behind a necklace of finger prints. He praises her lavishly the next day when he sees the burst blood vessels in her cloudy eyes, like she’s smart and clever. She manages a smile at him; she’s still cautious but she gets more comfortable with him night by night. The fastest way, he has found, to gain her trust is through food. She deigns to sit on his lap the day that he brings her fruit and bread, and he praises her some more. She’s right to be grateful to him, but it’s good that she has such nice manners. She smiles for him, and he smiles back even though she cannot see a thing - not the scarlet of his eyes, not the blood on his shirt, not even the vein of mould on the bread.)

—

She cries when he puts her joints back in the socket. 

She cries when he takes them out, too. 

(“Mary, what have they done to you?” he exclaims. She’s confused. “Your poor ankle!”)

 He starts small, with fingers and toes. He cusses out the doctors as he dislocates them and lets the bone roll underneath his fingers for a little while before he puts them back. Then he moves on - ankles, knees, hips, jaw… She howls in pain some nights, and no one comes to her aid. Her face is white and clammy, her eyes wild and panicked but she still thanks him for taking such care of her, and he smiles back at her proudly, 

(He wonders how long it will take her to so willingly allow him to take them all apart at the same time.)

—

He strikes her once. Hard enough that he probably fractured her orbital bone; left her with two black eyes and a bloody nose, cowering in the corner. 

She’d been fretting for days, weeks, over the absence of the groundskeeper. And it had been very rude of her to worry over another man when she already has a guest to entertain. 

But she hate kept on, insisting that something must be terribly wrong. She can’t even remember how long he’s been gone.

(“But you can’t remember much of anything, can you Mary?” he had mocked her, and she had deflated. He began the list of things that she cannot remember, cannot get right - her full name, her birthday, her age, her family, his name… she called him Major Hale one night, after fumbling and stammering for several moments for his name. He’d been cold with her, that she could be so rude as to forget his name, and she’d cried and begged for forgiveness until he’d let her sleep.)

Helpfully enough, Maria had sent a runner to retrieve him, and he’d left without a word for nearly four days. Maria had been annoyed enough when he’d informed her that Peter was occupied with an important task that he wasn’t going to keep her waiting. It was the best part of a week before he made it back, and she had been rocking on her little pallet, waiting. She’s quite clearly drugged, can’t form a sentence, so he puts her to bed and reminds her that no matter how much she hurts him, he’ll always come back to take care of her. 

She cries then, and begs him not to leave her alone again, in a garbled, slurring monologue that only peters off when she finally gives into whatever injection they’ve forced upon her. Just before dawn, meaning that she will only get an hour of sleep before the orderlies come for the patients, to feed and wash them. 

(The drugs are helpful, but the sleep deprivation is better. He can use his gift to keep her from falling asleep well enough. She snatches what she can, mostly when she’s medicated because she’s quite useless when she’s in that state. He never considered sleep as such a valuable linchpin, leaving her disorientated and obedient. It’s very, very easy to rewrite everything she knows when she hasn’t slept in 72 hours because she hasn’t earned it yet.)

She cowers from him again, when he visits, until after the bruises fade.

She doesn’t mention the groundskeeper, but he knows she looks for him, she knows that she waits for him. He can see it in her body language, waiting for her knight to come and save her. 

So he brings her an apple picked from the tree and helps her sleep for almost six hours, calls her pretty and sweet and clever and rewrites the memory in her mind, basks himself in a warm glow in her mind. 

(The next thing she forgets is her own name. But she never, even forgets his again. He finds that amusing, that he is more powerful than all of the rot and damage in her soft little brain.)

—

The day he calls Peter back home is the night after she looks at him, wracked with seizures but still impressively conscious and lucid, and asks him the question. Her shuddering body doesn’t allow him to get closer. 

“Are you going to kill me, Major?” she asks innocently, her head flopped to the side. Her hands are curled, arms bent awkwardly against her chest. It’ll take hours for the muscles to relax, for the limbs to loosen up - that it took a whole day last time, and she had cried with relief as she got each joint back under her control 

“Excuse me?” His voice is quiet and cool, and he’s furious that she’s implying his plans are so easily untangled. Is death his goal? No. Will it be the end result? Probably. But she’ll die willingly, devoted and trusting with lemon sugar on his tongue, and the softness of moth-wing emotions against his skin. 

She chokes for a second and closes her eyes. “I-I see so many things,” she rasps. “No one ever believes me, but the things I see…”

“What do you see?”

She arches her back as the seizure takes control before she’s blinking owlishly at him, as if she’s going to open her eyes just once and be able to see him in all his glory. 

He almost wishes she could. The blood on his mouth and his clothes, the filth, the black-red of his eyes… just once, to see who she so willingly shares her space with. 

“I… I want Eli to come home,” she manages, disorientated. “He’s been gone so long…” Tears slide down her cheek and this time when she slumps over onto her bed, she doesn’t try to resist. 

“If that is what you want, Mary,” he says, and she is too far gone to heed the warning in his voice. 

“Please bring him home,” she whispers into the dark, and he nods before he lets her go, pulling his gift back enough that the seizure swallows her up and she is unconscious in seconds. 

Be careful what you wish for, Mary. I might get jealous. 

—

The Groundskeeper returns on a Thursday, and he stinks of horror and worry and fear when they face off. He’s older than expected, rough and worn. The affection and protectiveness he feels for Mary is practically written across his face, and Jasper is utterly certain that the Groundskeeper has his own plans for Mary.

“You leave her be,” he says with an edge in his voice that Jasper almost respects. “You leave this place and leave her alone. She’s a child.”

“She’s very much not,” he manages with a smirk; letting the old bastard imagine the very worst. But she’s certainly not a child. He would have killed her clean and moved on if she had been. 

The Groundskeeper snarls at him, the rage wafting off him in clouds - fury, resentment, frustration, fear…  

“Are you waiting for that, old man? To play house with the little angel? Make her pose as a pretty, very obliging daughter who would do anything for her adoptive father?”

The Groundskeeper lunges, but he is faster. 

“I can tell you how this ends, if you’d like,” Jasper continues, darting around. “You lose, for the record. And she dies. She dies thinking that I’m the second coming of God, and that you were just another monster in a prison full of them. She’s going to die thinking that you were nothing, and apologising to me for making a mess. That’s what’s going to happen to your beloved Mary.”

“Her name is Alice.”

—

The fight is over surprisingly quickly, and the pieces burn fast. 

Mary is on her feet when he arrives, her worry burning against him. 

“Is it you?” she finally asks with desperation and Jasper almost feels sorry for her. 

“Who are you hoping for, my dear?” he asks and Mary stumbles backwards, sliding down the wall, her dead eyes wide and horrified. 

“You murdered him,” she whispers, her hands clasped in front of her. “You took away my only friend…”

Her tears are silent, and she just stares ahead, her hands shaking. 

“Oh, Mary,” he crouches beside her, reaching out to stroke her cheek. “Would you have been so unhappy had I lost that fight? If he had taken my head?”

She jerks away, shuddering at his touch. “He protected me, he cared for me,” she manages. 

“He was so dangerous,” Jasper cooed at her. “He was letting terrible things happen to you, my dear. He did terrible things to you.”

“No, he was my friend,” Mary turns her face away from him - or she tries, but he has a firm grip on her chin by then. “How could you?” More pretty little bruises for her collection.

“To look after you, Mary. To make sure that you are safe,” he repeated but there’s an edge this time. A warning. “I did this for you, Mary. I thought it was what you wanted. To be safe, for me to look after you.” He looks wounded for a second, going to move away. “I can leave you alone, if you’d prefer. If that would be easier for you, I can go away.”

Three, two, one…

“No, don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.” Mary’s thin body is against his instantly, her thin arms wrapping as far around his waist as she can reach. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know you only want to help me.”

Lemon sugar washes over him. “I accept your apology. I’m sorry your ‘friend’ was such a monster. All those terrible things he did to you, Mary…”

“…I don’t remember any of them,” she says, her face pressed into his shirt. “A-are you sure?”

“Oh Mary,” he coos. “We’ll talk about that later. You need your rest.”

“But…”

“I’ve got you, Mary. I’ve got you.”