Twilight Ficlet - You Are Welcome (Jasper)
So... I'll keep a long story short, but I wrote a little ficlet. My first fanfiction writing in a long time, and while I don't exactly miss it (original fiction definitely has its perks. Beeb!) I think it was a nice feeling to be inspired. Or corrupted. However, to sillysun22 , rainpuddle13 , who is especially evil, dragonsangel68 , and heyurs , who have already read this and assured me I am insane in the same ways they are, I say thank you.
Title: You Are Welcome
Author: theliningsilver
Rating: PG
Genre: Short fic, mild angst
Characters/Pairings: Jasper, Alice, Jasper/Alice, Carlisle
Short summary: Jasper knows Alice belongs with the Cullens, but on their first night with their new "family," he's not so sure he should be welcome.
Any warnings: None, contains content through all three books
Disclaimer: Jasper, Alice, Carlisle and the other Cullens and their world all belong to Ms. Stephenie Meyer. This is for fun and I get nothing out of this other than my own strange satisfaction.
“You must ask me to leave.”
She knew he was there, knew what he was doing. He had no doubts about that, and no doubts that she would have known even without her talent, without her foresight. She had a way of looking at him that saw everything, and he had a way of loving her that showed everything.
Even this, which he so desperately wished he could hide from her.
She belonged here, and if not here, in a place like this. He knew it, believed it, even agreed with it, but it did not make it any easier. It did not ease the sting of guilt to know she deserved to belong here and he did not.
He could make excuses, if that were his way, but it wasn’t. It would be easy to say he had sought a parallel in this life from the last, soldier to soldier, battle to battle. Didn’t they all seek parallels? The man in front of him-not a man, no longer a man, we’ve all lost claim to the old and immediate words and titles, haven’t we?-was no exception. A living life spent in the deepest concern for souls and goodness, the following shadow of life spent in the same.
But he knew he could have-should have-resisted. If there was one thing he had learned in the length of days, weeks and years since he became a vampire, it was that there were degrees of monstrosity. There were monsters, and there were monsters, and there were monsters. The word remained the same, the inflection changed, the acts that colored the word.
He had not chosen the lesser degree, and he knew there were plenty who had.
She had never sought that parallel, had never sought any degree. For her, the life that came before was like being asleep, her new life like being born. He envied her that sometimes, the knowledge she did not have, the path she chose. Even the things she had done to survive were framed in the purity innate to her being-a wrinkled nose, a regretful sigh, the choice made not through sacrifice of thirst but preservation of vision.
I can see what they’re planning on doing, where they’re going, who they’re going to. It’s too hard to stop that.
Time had a way of being both brutal and casual for them, for their kind, and he had begun thinking of his own time in eras.
Pre-change.
Post-change, divided into pre-Alice and post-Alice.
And now, she was asking him to start a new era, to step into a new division, and he would rather die than disappoint her, so this was his only option.
He had left her in the room she’d so joyfully claimed, dark brows drawn together as she’d tilted her head and looked at him, and he knew there was a chance she hadn’t seen, but she had seen his intent. A press of cold cheek to cold cheek made him hate himself more, knowing what he was about to ask, knowing how selfish it was.
Weak.
The doctor had not moved from his study, fingers laced together on the desktop, expression expectant as though he’d been waiting for the visitor-intruder, Jasper thought helplessly, the quick lash of self-loathing almost unnoticed in its familiarity, reflex to him by now-and smiling. Inexplicably smiling.
“You’re welcome to have a seat,” he said, tilting his head toward one of the chairs on the other side of the desk, and the first two words all but burned Jasper. No, I’m not, he thought, but sat anyway, lacing together long fingers and looking at the patriarch of this strange clan with a furrowed brow, dark eyes full of worry.
“It surprises me that you don’t ask questions when someone just arrives unannounced and states their intention to join ranks,” he said after a few moments, realizing the doctor was waiting on him.
That smile again, not the smile of a predator, but a patient smile. It tugged at a memory-pre-change-and Jasper let it slip away. “I think you will agree that, given our current existence, stranger things have happened than others showing up on our doorstep.”
Jasper’s answering smile was tight, impatient, and he shifted. The genuine calm, the assuredness the doctor felt disturbed him deeply. “Stranger things, yes. More dangerous things?”
Calm shifted to curiosity, and that was better. A little better. “Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. We live in daily awareness that discovery is the most dangerous thing that could happen to us. Discovery leads to discipline, discipline to death, such as it is. I find that more worrisome than the defendable and dubious danger you seem to think you present.” It was not a hypothetical now, but a challenge of sorts, the direct address of his own thoughts and fears.
“That is exactly the danger I know I present,” Jasper said in a low tone, leaning forward. Urgent now. This was between the two of them, and it was important. “You see her, you think you know her. You’re right to think she’s good, to think she fits here. She knows she fits here, this is her destiny.” It was more than he usually said at a time, and each word hurt, a tiny burning slash like the countless tiny healed slashes that covered him.
“And you do not think the same for yourself?” No trace of surprise, not even really a question. It was uncomfortable how much this man saw. Not as much as she did in any capacity, but still seeing all the same. Seeing and not judging. Seeing and accepting.
“I know-” It was too hard, too shameful to echo the words he’d said about her in the negative for himself. I know I do not fit here. I know this is not my destiny. I know I cannot do this. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves, the movements slow to his eyes, deliberate. The dim light of the desk lamp would have revealed little to a human’s eyes, but to a student of anatomy, to someone who knew the body and its hints as well as he knew his own name, Jasper knew it exposed enough.
The scars were legion, overlapping one another, crowding one another, forming a complex pattern of pain and risk, of a thousand, a hundred thousand times he would have been turned had he been human. A hundred thousand wounds that would have bled once upon a time, reflecting the light and telling a story.
Now the curiosity was stronger, scientific and personal, but something else fluttered through those emotions, something that made Jasper want to recoil. “I don’t want your pity,” he said before he knew he would say it out loud. “These are from vampires I fought and killed, or those I created, or those I trained to fight and kill their own kind.” He wanted to stand, to move, but did not give himself that respite. “It was not enough to disrespect what I had been enough that I feed from it, but I disrespected this sort of life enough to create it expendably. Kill and change so they could kill and be killed.” His voice was quiet now. “Do you understand?”
Still pity. Angering, stupid, stubborn pity. “I understand that your path has been a difficult and unfortunate one. It does not have to be that way anymore.”
“Be angry!” Jasper said, not the shout he had intended, but a plea. “Be worried, be upset! I am incapable of the sacrifice you demand, now tell me I’m not welcome here!” He pushed, though he knew it was wrong-here was the selfishness, here was the manipulation, here were the reasons he had no business here or with her-and pushed again, not the calming influence he usually used, but the motivator. The one he had used more than once to create a killing frenzy in his soldiers, in himself.
It was risky, it was stupid. It was invasive, and he welcomed the reaction. He wanted the struggle.
Finally, anger instead of pity, frustration instead of sympathy. The doctor leaned across the desk and gripped Jasper’s wrist. “I will not be your judge,” he bit out. “I will be neither judge nor jury, and if that is what you want, you are in the wrong place.” He shoved away Jasper’s hand, and there was confusion in there, as well-confusion and regret that he had lost his temper, though through no fault of his own. “I apologize.”
“Don’t.”
Silence passed in unknown increments of time, and Carlisle finally sat back, his expression mournful. “You would leave her?”
Another slash, this one deeper, and Jasper shifted. “You must ask me to leave.”
It was a small difference, and she would know the whole of it, deception and all, but if he had a reason to leave, if he were made to leave, she would come with him, likely ignoring the deception.
More greed. But he could not live without her, and he would not put her existence here at risk. One night and scores of visions were hopefully not too much to take her away from just yet, just now. But he couldn’t do it himself.
“’Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.’” The words held holy fell quietly from Carlisle Cullen’s lips, and he reached across the desk again, his grasp gentle this time, infinitely more painful than the rough motions of before. “I cannot ask you to go any more than I can demand that you stay. I do not ask them to sacrifice any more than I ask them to partake. God gave us free will. Far be it from me to take that away from anyone.”
Jasper’s shoulders slumped, his head dropped, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the touch to recede, the gentleness to pass. When Carlisle finally released him, he rolled his sleeves back down, eyes still closed. He did not want to see those scars right now. He had all eternity to look at them. “I understand.” Hated, but understood. Grieved, but knew before coming that this was what would pass.
Because she had seen them here, he knew he would fail at this.
Because she needed to be here, he knew he would be unable to leave.
“Take heart,” Carlisle said, and Jasper wondered why the doctor hurt for him, this vampire-this man?-who did not know them. “‘Thy people shall be my people.’ Together, you and she, I feel you can overcome anything. And we will always help, for as long as you want it.”
Silence again, longer or shorter, seconds or days, and Jasper finally rose, moving through the house unfamiliar to him in body but familiar to him in mind-she had described it to him more than once, and while Carlisle Cullen had his own holy words, her words were always what Jasper would keep as deepest truth-to return to her.
She did not move as he entered the room, but remained sitting, gazing out the window with her arms around her knees; she did not have to move, he knew she was waiting for him. He did not speak as he crossed to her, but remained silent, his heart heavy but dedicated to her and her cause; he did not have to speak, she knew he would stay with her. She had a way of looking at him that forgave all, and he had a way of loving her that sacrificed all.
He sat behind her, wrapping his arms around the deceptively petite form of her body, resting his chin on her shoulder, and spoke the words he knew she had seen him speak as she waited here for him to fail and return.
“‘Whither thou goest, I will go.’”
Title: You Are Welcome
Author: theliningsilver
Rating: PG
Genre: Short fic, mild angst
Characters/Pairings: Jasper, Alice, Jasper/Alice, Carlisle
Short summary: Jasper knows Alice belongs with the Cullens, but on their first night with their new "family," he's not so sure he should be welcome.
Any warnings: None, contains content through all three books
Disclaimer: Jasper, Alice, Carlisle and the other Cullens and their world all belong to Ms. Stephenie Meyer. This is for fun and I get nothing out of this other than my own strange satisfaction.
“You must ask me to leave.”
She knew he was there, knew what he was doing. He had no doubts about that, and no doubts that she would have known even without her talent, without her foresight. She had a way of looking at him that saw everything, and he had a way of loving her that showed everything.
Even this, which he so desperately wished he could hide from her.
She belonged here, and if not here, in a place like this. He knew it, believed it, even agreed with it, but it did not make it any easier. It did not ease the sting of guilt to know she deserved to belong here and he did not.
He could make excuses, if that were his way, but it wasn’t. It would be easy to say he had sought a parallel in this life from the last, soldier to soldier, battle to battle. Didn’t they all seek parallels? The man in front of him-not a man, no longer a man, we’ve all lost claim to the old and immediate words and titles, haven’t we?-was no exception. A living life spent in the deepest concern for souls and goodness, the following shadow of life spent in the same.
But he knew he could have-should have-resisted. If there was one thing he had learned in the length of days, weeks and years since he became a vampire, it was that there were degrees of monstrosity. There were monsters, and there were monsters, and there were monsters. The word remained the same, the inflection changed, the acts that colored the word.
He had not chosen the lesser degree, and he knew there were plenty who had.
She had never sought that parallel, had never sought any degree. For her, the life that came before was like being asleep, her new life like being born. He envied her that sometimes, the knowledge she did not have, the path she chose. Even the things she had done to survive were framed in the purity innate to her being-a wrinkled nose, a regretful sigh, the choice made not through sacrifice of thirst but preservation of vision.
I can see what they’re planning on doing, where they’re going, who they’re going to. It’s too hard to stop that.
Time had a way of being both brutal and casual for them, for their kind, and he had begun thinking of his own time in eras.
Pre-change.
Post-change, divided into pre-Alice and post-Alice.
And now, she was asking him to start a new era, to step into a new division, and he would rather die than disappoint her, so this was his only option.
He had left her in the room she’d so joyfully claimed, dark brows drawn together as she’d tilted her head and looked at him, and he knew there was a chance she hadn’t seen, but she had seen his intent. A press of cold cheek to cold cheek made him hate himself more, knowing what he was about to ask, knowing how selfish it was.
Weak.
The doctor had not moved from his study, fingers laced together on the desktop, expression expectant as though he’d been waiting for the visitor-intruder, Jasper thought helplessly, the quick lash of self-loathing almost unnoticed in its familiarity, reflex to him by now-and smiling. Inexplicably smiling.
“You’re welcome to have a seat,” he said, tilting his head toward one of the chairs on the other side of the desk, and the first two words all but burned Jasper. No, I’m not, he thought, but sat anyway, lacing together long fingers and looking at the patriarch of this strange clan with a furrowed brow, dark eyes full of worry.
“It surprises me that you don’t ask questions when someone just arrives unannounced and states their intention to join ranks,” he said after a few moments, realizing the doctor was waiting on him.
That smile again, not the smile of a predator, but a patient smile. It tugged at a memory-pre-change-and Jasper let it slip away. “I think you will agree that, given our current existence, stranger things have happened than others showing up on our doorstep.”
Jasper’s answering smile was tight, impatient, and he shifted. The genuine calm, the assuredness the doctor felt disturbed him deeply. “Stranger things, yes. More dangerous things?”
Calm shifted to curiosity, and that was better. A little better. “Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. We live in daily awareness that discovery is the most dangerous thing that could happen to us. Discovery leads to discipline, discipline to death, such as it is. I find that more worrisome than the defendable and dubious danger you seem to think you present.” It was not a hypothetical now, but a challenge of sorts, the direct address of his own thoughts and fears.
“That is exactly the danger I know I present,” Jasper said in a low tone, leaning forward. Urgent now. This was between the two of them, and it was important. “You see her, you think you know her. You’re right to think she’s good, to think she fits here. She knows she fits here, this is her destiny.” It was more than he usually said at a time, and each word hurt, a tiny burning slash like the countless tiny healed slashes that covered him.
“And you do not think the same for yourself?” No trace of surprise, not even really a question. It was uncomfortable how much this man saw. Not as much as she did in any capacity, but still seeing all the same. Seeing and not judging. Seeing and accepting.
“I know-” It was too hard, too shameful to echo the words he’d said about her in the negative for himself. I know I do not fit here. I know this is not my destiny. I know I cannot do this. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves, the movements slow to his eyes, deliberate. The dim light of the desk lamp would have revealed little to a human’s eyes, but to a student of anatomy, to someone who knew the body and its hints as well as he knew his own name, Jasper knew it exposed enough.
The scars were legion, overlapping one another, crowding one another, forming a complex pattern of pain and risk, of a thousand, a hundred thousand times he would have been turned had he been human. A hundred thousand wounds that would have bled once upon a time, reflecting the light and telling a story.
Now the curiosity was stronger, scientific and personal, but something else fluttered through those emotions, something that made Jasper want to recoil. “I don’t want your pity,” he said before he knew he would say it out loud. “These are from vampires I fought and killed, or those I created, or those I trained to fight and kill their own kind.” He wanted to stand, to move, but did not give himself that respite. “It was not enough to disrespect what I had been enough that I feed from it, but I disrespected this sort of life enough to create it expendably. Kill and change so they could kill and be killed.” His voice was quiet now. “Do you understand?”
Still pity. Angering, stupid, stubborn pity. “I understand that your path has been a difficult and unfortunate one. It does not have to be that way anymore.”
“Be angry!” Jasper said, not the shout he had intended, but a plea. “Be worried, be upset! I am incapable of the sacrifice you demand, now tell me I’m not welcome here!” He pushed, though he knew it was wrong-here was the selfishness, here was the manipulation, here were the reasons he had no business here or with her-and pushed again, not the calming influence he usually used, but the motivator. The one he had used more than once to create a killing frenzy in his soldiers, in himself.
It was risky, it was stupid. It was invasive, and he welcomed the reaction. He wanted the struggle.
Finally, anger instead of pity, frustration instead of sympathy. The doctor leaned across the desk and gripped Jasper’s wrist. “I will not be your judge,” he bit out. “I will be neither judge nor jury, and if that is what you want, you are in the wrong place.” He shoved away Jasper’s hand, and there was confusion in there, as well-confusion and regret that he had lost his temper, though through no fault of his own. “I apologize.”
“Don’t.”
Silence passed in unknown increments of time, and Carlisle finally sat back, his expression mournful. “You would leave her?”
Another slash, this one deeper, and Jasper shifted. “You must ask me to leave.”
It was a small difference, and she would know the whole of it, deception and all, but if he had a reason to leave, if he were made to leave, she would come with him, likely ignoring the deception.
More greed. But he could not live without her, and he would not put her existence here at risk. One night and scores of visions were hopefully not too much to take her away from just yet, just now. But he couldn’t do it himself.
“’Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.’” The words held holy fell quietly from Carlisle Cullen’s lips, and he reached across the desk again, his grasp gentle this time, infinitely more painful than the rough motions of before. “I cannot ask you to go any more than I can demand that you stay. I do not ask them to sacrifice any more than I ask them to partake. God gave us free will. Far be it from me to take that away from anyone.”
Jasper’s shoulders slumped, his head dropped, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the touch to recede, the gentleness to pass. When Carlisle finally released him, he rolled his sleeves back down, eyes still closed. He did not want to see those scars right now. He had all eternity to look at them. “I understand.” Hated, but understood. Grieved, but knew before coming that this was what would pass.
Because she had seen them here, he knew he would fail at this.
Because she needed to be here, he knew he would be unable to leave.
“Take heart,” Carlisle said, and Jasper wondered why the doctor hurt for him, this vampire-this man?-who did not know them. “‘Thy people shall be my people.’ Together, you and she, I feel you can overcome anything. And we will always help, for as long as you want it.”
Silence again, longer or shorter, seconds or days, and Jasper finally rose, moving through the house unfamiliar to him in body but familiar to him in mind-she had described it to him more than once, and while Carlisle Cullen had his own holy words, her words were always what Jasper would keep as deepest truth-to return to her.
She did not move as he entered the room, but remained sitting, gazing out the window with her arms around her knees; she did not have to move, he knew she was waiting for him. He did not speak as he crossed to her, but remained silent, his heart heavy but dedicated to her and her cause; he did not have to speak, she knew he would stay with her. She had a way of looking at him that forgave all, and he had a way of loving her that sacrificed all.
He sat behind her, wrapping his arms around the deceptively petite form of her body, resting his chin on her shoulder, and spoke the words he knew she had seen him speak as she waited here for him to fail and return.
“‘Whither thou goest, I will go.’”