Chapter XII (The Final Chapter!) Twilight Fan Fiction

[rennaise]

A/N  Last chapter.  I hope you enjoy

CHAPTER XII

Damned bucket seats. Alice was no more than two feet away from him, but it was too far. And even if they weren't separated by a gap between the seats, Jasper still couldn't reach out and tuck her against him, as Carlisle had admonished her to keep her healing arm completely immobile. Instead, Jasper let his eyes drag the smooth pale flesh of her shoulder before flicking them back to the road. Her arm seemed to be mending well. There was a faint seam just below the round of her shoulder, but even that was fading. Alice drummed her fingers along her leg, as she had done for the last couple of hours or so, testing her increasing range and ability. Eventually, her hand came across and landed atop his on the gear shift. Kate preferred a standard. As did Jasper.


It made his heart race to feel her fingers on his, but he only said, "Carlisle told you not to extend your arm."

"It's fine," she said, giving his fingers a squeeze, but she brought her arm back to her side and lay her hand in her lap.

They were headed to Chicago where Edward still had some property--his family's old home. Bella wouldn't be able to stay there in the city, of course, but it would serve as a good base for the family. There was no telling how long Kate and Tanya would stay, and Rosalie and Emmett had promised to meet them there.

The four-vehicle caravan was moving speedily eastward. Edward and Bella had brought up the rear, originally, but as usual, Edward had been unable to keep his foot from the floor, and passed them on a rare straight stretch through Idaho half-hour previously. Jasper hadn't caught sight of them since.

They were heading up a long pass in the middle of nowhere, when they came to a shoulder on the outer edge of a long curve. The full moon poured down like quicksilver, and Jasper stopped so quickly he could smell rubber on the asphalt behind them. Alice scarcely had time to give a surprised little cry before Jasper was pulling her out her passenger's side door and into his arms. She clutching him tightly and he savored the feel of both her arms around him. With a desperate groan, he took her collar bone gently between his teeth. Alice shivered against him.

"Didn't see that coming, did you?" he asked her.

"You decided too quickly," Alice said, and flicked her tongue against the little hollow of his neck.

Jasper sighed, stepped away from his wife, and crossed his arms in front his chest. His desperate, painful fear had faded, only to be replaced with a dull frustration. Nevertheless, he found himself captivated momentarily by the moonlight shining on his beloved's face, her dark eyes reminded him of amber set in platinum. As he gazed at her, those beautiful eyes widened and went vague; Alice had read his body language, and now was attempting to read ahead.

"No. You stay here with me," he said firmly. He didn't move toward her, or touch her to bring her back in. The words alone were enough, but she focused in on him with an obvious effort, and a rueful look.

"What have you been playing at?" he asked.

To her credit, Alice didn't feign ignorance, just shook her stubborn little head at him.

"I know there was a lot you couldn't see once the Quileute got involved," Jasper continued, volume rising, "but before that? You could have come to us. You could have left any time!"

"I'm sorry," Alice said, and put her right hand to the back of her neck. It was one of his favorite gestures on her, such a masculine posture on her petite pixie frame, but he wasn't going to let it distract him tonight.

"You could have been killed! I couldn't bear to be without you, Alice."

Her expression twisted as if she were in pain.

"I'll tell you someday, Jazz. I promise. But later, all right?"

"How much later?"

"Later later. Please, trust me."

"It had better be good, Alice. Damn good," Jasper said, drawing her back to him. "I love you so much," he murmured into her hair. Alice snaked her arms back around him, and he felt her passionate strength down her arms-both of them, and he let her hold on this time.

"I love you so much too," she said.

By the time the burn in Bella's throat was hurting too much to hide, Edward was already turning south off I-80 in Iowa. It was late morning, but he promised there was no one who might inadvertently cross into her line of scent during her hunt. Be that as it might, he stuck close, sprinting alongside her effortlessly as she took down a fat white-tailed deer only a couple of miles from the parking area in Springbrook State Park. And while she drank, Edward watched her with a carefully guarded expression.

She drained the animal quickly, in frantic gulps, and pulled away sated as possible on animal blood alone. The best Bella could say about the taste of whitetail was that it was better than moose, and she tried to keep the disgust from her face. There was a spray of blood on the front of her shirt from when she bit into the doe's carotid, and she looked down at it in dismay. She had been getting neater in her hunting, but she had been too thirsty to make a good job of it this time. It was frustrating not to have performed better with Edward watching.

She rose to her feet and considered that for a moment. Their ride so far had been amicable on the surface, but strained beneath. There were long periods of silence broken by longer stretches of idle chatter as they assiduously tried to avoid the painful reality of the past few hours, and the preceding weeks. And as much as Bella now wanted to prove herself to Edward and impress him, she was angry at wanting those things as well.

There was a very faint smile on Edward's lips as he stared back at her. The sunlight glinted off his lips as he spoke.

"What is it, Bella? I can't read your mind, you know." he said lightly.

"What do you want for us, Edward?" she asked, walking toward him.

"I want for you to be happy.."

She shook her head with a snap. "Not good enough. Do you want me?"

His expression was stunned and hurt. "How can you ask that?"

"How can I ask that? I've been gone for weeks and the only letter you send takes half a sheet of paper?"

Edward licked his lips, anxiously.

"I have letters for you. Long letters," he said. "I wrote to you every day. I kept them in a folder."

"Why didn't you send them?" she hissed. "Lots of good they do in a folder!" She cuffed him on the shoulder so hard he actually staggered back a step. Bella choked on a sob, but was glad he didn't fall, or she might have been tempted to kick him, shrieking.

"I didn't want you to feel obliged to me," Edward explained, taking her hand between them as if keeping her from attacking him, or perhaps comforting her. "So many things could change. I had no idea whether you might see things differently from. . . this side. If you were having second thoughts, I didn't want to make it any worse. Everyone in the family had a choice--" Edward stopped himself with a wince; it wasn't exactly true, not in every respect. "Everyone had the choice to either follow natural vampire instincts, or follow the 'higher nature,'" he amended.

"Higher nature," that's what Carlisle called it.

"I made the choice on my birthday," Bella told him.

Edward looked down at her hand, watching the sun sparkle along her knuckles as he rocked it back and forth in his own.

"But that was a lifetime ago," he said. "Everyone made the choice after being turned. You needed to be able to make it without feeling pressured."

"You didn't want to put your thumb on the scales, of whether I'd take human life or not? Whether it meant losing you or not?"

Edward dropped her hand and drew his fingers roughly through his hair. "Let me assure you, that even if you chose to take human blood, I would still want you, Bella. You were not going to 'lose' me." His voice was hoarse and low--repentant. Whether toward his behavior toward her or the admission that he would keep a murdering vampire mate, Bella didn't know. "I just didn't want you to feel obliged to me in any way," he finished.

"It wasn't fair to do that, to keep that from me," Bella said evenly. "But it wouldn't have made a difference. It didn't make a difference. I want you, Edward. That's why I'm here."

He nodded, eyes closed. "I'm sorry."

Bella's heart was warmed suddenly toward him, as if the sunlight was somehow penetrating her dead, marble flesh. "Me too. I think I understood how you felt, a little. That's why I went for Forks." She could scarcely bear to think, had it been a mere eighteen hours ago that she pulled into her old home? How long eighteen years had seemed to her as a human--but now, with years upon years upon years stretching out in front of her, she could truly understand Edward's reluctance to change her. She was starting to realize how young she truly had been. Truly was. How much more might she understand in fifty years--or one hundred and fifty-years from now? Time had changed drastically, and with it, her own emotions. Whereas before, as a human, guilt and embarrassment lingered long, now they seemed to linger even longer. Did those emotions cling with respect to a person's lifetime to feel them?

The guilt she felt over killing the two hikers in Alaska was still palpable, and she would long grieve Irina and her role in Irina's death. How much more profoundly would she grieve her father and mother, even her human friends? She knew Esme still grieved the son whom she had held in her arms for mere days over half a century ago. Edward still grieved his parents. Even Alice grieved her family-- the parents who might have put her in a mad house; she grieved for what she did not even know.

How could she deal with all of these things? It seemed almost unbearable, and Bella wished there was a way to lay them aside, even momentarily, just long enough to find her strength again before shouldering the burdens once more. Maybe she could ask Jasper to teach her to meditate after all.

She struggled from the maelstrom of guilt and reached out to Edward with what strength she did have.

"I love you, Edward, and I want you. Just as dearly as I always did; with all of my. . . heart, and whatever else I could possibly give."

"And I love you, so very much. I ache with it." He kissed her hand, pressed it to his chest, and bowed his head fervently over it. "I'm so sorry."

"No more sorrys, Edward," Bella said, drawing his head upward by his chin. "I can't bear for you to be guilty over a change I wanted. If you suffer, I bear the guilt twice."

Edward's eyes were glimmering gold and piercing. She could almost see her reflection in them, and her pleading somber expression.

"No more then." Edward breathed the words against her lips, and when he kissed her for that first time, she released all of her longing, and desire and desperate hope into the act. It was strangely foreign to her, this kissing. There was no more of the careful delicacy as when she was human, only a yearning for a deeper intimacy and consolation. Both, Bella admitted to herself, went unmet. Kissing Edward now, was almost like kissing a stranger, and she snuggled herself into his shoulder so he wouldn't see her fear and disappointment.

Maybe he felt it too, because Edward pulled away and cupped her cheek. It was almost as if he were reading her mind.

"I understand, Love. Lots of changes. We can take it slow."

Jasper gave up adjusting his boutonnière and set to straightening the white shirt under his tux jacket. He was hovering in the foyer of the river house that Esme, Carlisle, Bella, and Edward were currently sharing. Alice was upstairs with Rosalie, prepping Bella before her entry, and Jasper found it more restful at the front of the house than in the main room to the back, where an anxious Edward awaited his bride-to-be with the rest of the family. As it was, he could still hear Emmett chatting with Eleazar and Tanya, and Edward whispering with Carlisle, as he fiddled a trilling little tune on the treble end of the piano. Kate and Esme were probably out back, putting the finishing touches on the bower of roses they had dreamed up just for the occasion.

Jasper had been unsure whether Tanya and Kate would come at all. Their families hadn't come together again since Carmen and Eleazar had first met up with them in Chicago two-and-a-half years ago, and the four remaining Denali members had gone back to Alaska. It was a painful reunion back then, thought marginally less so once Bella stopped apologizing for her unwitting role in Irina's death. Since that time there had been frequent, if strained, communication with the Denali family. The wedding was going to be a delicate time for them all, but one designed toward moving on and mending fences.

Jasper turned to the mirror above the entry table, adjusted his collar, and snapped his arms to make the fabric lay right over his shoulders. Why am I so anxious? He asked himself. He couldn't simply pass it off as someone else's anxiety this time, Jasper knew it was within him.

He tried to turn his mind to his classes for the upcoming week. He was teaching night classes at Waubonsee Community College. It was a ways out of the city, which allowed him and Alice to keep a home nearer to the river house and Emmett's and Rosalie's, and also to steer clear of the downtown and its higher concentration of humans. Jasper had been uncertain about teaching at first, but found he liked it, and was able to keep his thirst in check with frequent hunts on the outskirts of the city.

To his surprise he enjoyed teaching quite a bit. Maybe he would have liked it still better had he been teaching graduate level classes, as he tired easily of undergrads who still needed their hands held and their noses wiped for them. Most of his students took his Intro to Philosophy or Logic and Critical Thinking simply because they served as prerequisites for other courses, and had no real interest in the subjects. And while that in itself was supremely frustrating, it was also thrilling to watch one of these same students gain an appreciation and interest in the subjects because of his class. "That's what good teaching should be about," Alice said to him when he expressed his surprised satisfaction on the topic. Alice had actually encouraged him in the pursuit for many years before, but he might never have done it if not for Bella and their few weeks together at Denali.

Jasper wasn't the only one following a new path. Rosalie was in law school, and fully intended to practice once she passed the BAR. Emmett had enrolled again as well, in architecture, this time. Alice had just purchased an independent clothing boutique downtown, and was designing clothes in the evenings. Esme had even been volunteering at a safe house for abused women and their children.

Jasper's reflection shook its head in wonder at how much had changed, and how much they had all grown. Not for the first time he wondered if Edward's singleness had kept them living together as a family unit for so long. They weren't any less family now that they were maintaining separate residences, but Jasper wondered whether they had lived together so long, simply so Edward wouldn't feel left out. Now, they didn't have to play roles anymore, no more foster parenting or unwieldy groups of over-age high school students. Having Bella allowed the entire family some freedom; no one was abandoning Edward, and they were still a family. How odd that it was Bella who helped him to accept his own place as a member in that family.

"Don't you touch your hair. Not a finger!" Jasper heard Rosalie's admonishment just before she came sweeping down the stairs followed by Alice, who stopped to quickly tidy the flower on his chest.

"Bella wants to see you for a moment," Rosalie told him, as Alice disappeared quickly into the other room. He stared after her, wondering at the new anticipation radiating off of his mate, then turned to Rosalie who quirked her dark red lips at him, as it to say, "You'll know soon enough." All right, then.

Jasper went upstairs and tapped a knuckle on the door at the far end of the hall.

"Come in."

He opened the door to find Bella standing in front of a full picture window. The sun pouring in from behind her reflected off her faceted skin and frosted her a shimmering glow. She saw him blinking in the brightness and stepped into the shadow of the wall.

"Oops."

Jasper chuckled.

She was as beautiful as any vampire had a right to be, but she looked suddenly anxious and smoothed the white sheath skirt over her thighs abstractedly.

"You look lovely," he told her.

She took one long breath, and her shoulders relaxed on the exhale. Her fond smile answered the one on his own lips. "Thank you. Come on in," she said, motioning for him to shut the door. Jasper caught a familiar, unpleasant scent as he entered, and it raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Werewolf. Not overpowering at least, just a faint drift of odor as his entry stirred the air in the room.

"Jake," Bella explained, seeing his reaction. "He wrote back to me." The "finally" went unsaid, and for a funny moment, Jasper appreciated the pungent, musky smell. Bella had written to her old friend several times over the past years, but as far as he knew, Jacob Black had never replied. The fact that he had reached to span that bridge now was as much a gift to Bella as a physical wedding present might be.

"He wished me a happy wedding and marriage," she continued. "And I think he meant it."

"I'm glad," Jasper said. "Is there something I can do for you?"

Looking anxious again, Bella twirled one long brown curl around her finger, and pulled it free, letting it spring back to her shoulder. "I didn't think to ask you earlier because I had always thought of Charlie giving me away. Of course he can't, now. . ." she wasn't accusing, but there was a faint wistfulness in her expression, as she struggled to find the right words. "And I don't really want to be 'given' away anyway, but I thought, maybe someone could 'present' me to be married. . ."

An invisible hand squeezed something in Jasper's chest, and he could scarcely wait to hear Bella's next words, and could hardly believe it when he did. "If you would present me at my wedding, Jasper, it would mean a lot to me. Just. . . to walk with me."

He stood blinking at her, not really seeing her, just the slope of her cheek and the halo of silky hair framing her face. Time must have slipped away because Bella's face became even more anxious suddenly, "If you don't want to, I under--."

"I'd be honored," he said quickly. "I'm just really. . .touched." He managed another encouraging smile, feeling suddenly very thick-headed.

"Thank you," she breathed. "I've thought a lot about what you said when we were first in Denali. About being a 'being' and creating your soul. "L'etre et l'ame." Sartre, right? 'Existence precedes essence."

"Yes," he said simply, wondering where Bella was going with this.

"I wanted to tell you, that I'm glad you're a part of. . . not just my existence, but. . . my ame." Jasper watched as Bella's hand slipped out to collect his own, and she squeezed it. He began nodding and found he couldn't stop. "I'm glad you're a part of mine." Bella blinked rapidly in reply. She wouldn't cry tears, but her body had not lost all of her human reflexes yet, and her eyes still stung with the tears that would never come. Jasper found he wanted to cry to, and would have given much if he could have.

Suddenly, Bella leaned into him, hugging him tightly, and Jasper wrapped his arms around her without having to think about it. He took a long second to take a mental snapshot, to live the moment and let it become a part of his ame, his essence. His soul. He would never have a daughter, and he had never even realized his own longing, or believed that his capacity to love could extend beyond Alice without taking anything from her. But, in fact, in his loving Bella, he found he could love Alice more fully. And that there was still so much love left for others. Amazing.

They parted slowly.

"Ooh!" cried Bella. A curl caught in a link of Jasper's watch, and she reached up reflexively to hold her up-do in place.

"Rosalie will put me through a meat grinder if I mess your hair up!" Jasper said, as he carefully disentangled them.

Bella laughed, and turned to the mirror to poke the wayward curl back into place.

"You're stunning, Bella. Edward's going to be beside himself," Jasper reassured her, and he was right.

Edward was completely stunned, and still as only a vampire can be, as Jasper walked Bella across the green lawn toward her husband-to-be. Jasper managed his role without a hitch and settled beside Alice who was absolutely giddy with delight. He placed a restraining hand on her bouncing leg and she gave him a dark look as if to say, "Stop killing my buzz." In front at the rose-laden bower, Edward was so lost in Bella that Carlisle had to prompt him twice to say his vows. Emmett snickered, and even Eleazar shook with silent mirth.

They had chosen the Anglican vows, not because Bella had any particular religious penchant, but because Edward didn't care either way, and Bella particularly liked the line, "With my body I thee worship."

"It just makes sense to me," she explained simply.

Alice twined her fingers into Jasper's as Carlisle pronounced them husband and wife, and Jasper's chest burned fit-to-burst at the look on Bella's face as Edward stroked her cheek after their first kiss as a married couple. It was silly, he supposed, but hadn't expected it to take him so deeply.

There was no receiving line, more like a little clot of congratulations and merriment. When Tanya turned on the pre-programmed music, the dancing began, and Jasper found he needed space again after a light little foxtrot with Esme, and he slipped away to the front of the house. The porch swing creaked amicably as rocked himself slowly with his heels. Peals of laughter still managed to float to him from the back yard. Emmett had threatened to throw Edward and Bella a shiveree, and Bella howled in amusement. Jasper could just imagine the outraged look on Edward's face that would have elicited such a response.

Edward hadn't been surprised earlier, to see Jasper at Bella's side as they came down the aisle together. Perhaps Rosalie or Alice told him what Bella had planned, but Jasper thought it might have been something more. He took a long, steadying breath as he sifted back through the changes of the last two years, and found that Bella had become a daughter of sorts to him-one not one born of blood or venom, but of choice. He hadn't meant to bite her, God knew, but they also hadn't had to forge the type of relationship they had. She came to him with problems and questions, the types of philosophical and religious questions Edward might have been ambivalent about. And she had decided against online education, for now, pursuing the life of an autodidact, but asking Jasper frequently to wrestle ideas and history with her. It was a way for them to share themselves as well, and Jasper knew he had filled the place in Bella that Carlisle served for the rest of the coven. It helped him to understand his own role in the little family, because now he had a better understanding of what it meant. Neither of them could have known the far-reaching implications of Bella's change, or how that would graft him more firmly into the vampire coven-cum-family.

Kate's voice came to him now, followed by more laughter after her rather explicit suggestions to Edward and Bella for an "amusing" wedding night, and Jasper he thought again back to those first days in Denali. That's where it had begun, he decided. He whistled one long, low whistle between his teeth, wondering what specifically Alice had seen that kept half the family in Forks and the other half in Alaska. But it didn't really matter. Alice must have known that Bella was going to be more than a simple "etre" in Jasper's consciousness.

He dropped his head into his hands and wished again for tears to cry. Sometimes, if only for a second or two at a time, life was good. And sometimes it was painfully beautiful.

He didn't need to open his eyes to anticipate Alice's arrival. He felt her footfalls on the porch, as delicate as petals blown across a still pond.

Jasper knew then exactly why Alice had chosen the way she had. Why she had insisted Jasper stay with Bella during those first difficult weeks.

"It's later," said, not bothering to hide the satisfaction in her voice.

"It was a hell of a risk," he said, raising his eyes, but not his head.

"But it was worth it. Wasn't it?" she asked, almost cautiously.

"Yes," he said softly. "Thank you."

Alice knelt before him. She placed a kiss on the end of his nose then laid her head against his chest where, if his heart worked any longer, it would be thundering with unutterable joy.

Fin


Author’s Notes (Again)

Thanks to all my readers out there.  It was thinking of you that helped me get this finished.  I hope this last chapter wasn’t completely riddled with errors; I’m so busy I don’t have a lot of time to re-read, and I’ve lost all shame-I just need to get this done so I can move on to other projects.  If you see anything egregious, please email me and I’ll fix it J

Special thanks to my beta readers Ava Sinclair and SiDEADDE who are fine writers in their own right.  And, if you’re looking for other Twilight fic to read, I’m a huge fan of Minisinoo and her Twilight fan-fiction (and her Harry Potter and X-Men stuff too, truth be told).  And, In the Blink of an Eye by thatwritr is one of my favorite Twi fan-fictions ever!

(You can find all of their work at fanfiction.net.)

~Renn