A/N: After reading New Moon, I wanted a better explanation for why Jasper doesn't help Alice figure out her past, and then disapproves so strongly of her going after Bella. Our narrator was a wee bit self centred, and could have been missing a lot of interesting drama behind the scenes!

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight… I'm just a fanfic newbie whose day is brightened by each and every comment she receives :-p

This is my first FanFic of any kind. I had a wonderful time writing it over the holidays, and was recently inspired to go back and make it better.

I'm working on a new story now, and I'd love to hear y'all's input on what worked and didn't work this first time.

"Just go, Edward."

Pain shot through Bella's gasp into Edward's stone chest, echoing there as he tried to back away. The pain quickened like a dull surrogate heartbeat until it crumbled in the furnace of his anger. A trivial memory was tugging stray thoughts away from Bella's clear agony, and for once, Edward cursed his inhuman distractibility. Each fluttery tug at the edges of his mind seemed to scream that his soul was monstrously insensitive, that her simple, pure humanity would choke on his toxicity.

The persistence of the memory tugs told Edward that he was a monster, but their content perversely reminded him that he'd once been something else. A human child fighting with his dog over a piece of ginger cake. That child could have looked forward to anything…he'd been as pure and good as Bella, he'd deserved heaven in her arms, on Earth and thereafter, and yet he'd wanted nothing but that bit of stale dessert. His mother had returned to find him prostrate, inconsolable, his unrepentant dog consuming the reason for his existence. The cake's delicious smell had overpowered him with blind desire, and once he'd lost an inch to the beast it was all over. The smell of the cake was nutty, just a little fruity, its spiciness had burned his throat like crazy… Christ, that's why the memory wouldn't let go!

"Edward, you may as well find Jasper before he gets too far. I'm sure he's upset with himself, and I doubt he'll listen to anyone but you right now." Carlisle's voice interrupted the sparring of lover and killer, and it was the lover who let loose a savage hiss. Edward was certainly not interested in talking with Jasper. Carlisle was too busy to notice Edward's bellicose expression, but his intentions tore a strangled sob from the only other mind within earshot.

"You might as well do something useful," Alice offered without looking at him. Though her voice was nonchalant, her mind called out with all the frantic immortal energy that Edward's flashback had stirred within his own thoughts. Please Edward…I can't lose him. I don't think I can bear it if he runs away again. You understand about love now… will you try to forgive him? For me?

Alice had nearly lost her other half, mere months before Edward had found his. Edward shivered as the images bubbled through their minds… Jasper's blood-red stare… the lifeless rag of a girl … a body dumped like a marionette in the dust of a speeding car. Neither Jasper nor Alice had come back after that hunting trip, and Edward had driven in circles, trying to find them for days. When he finally found her body, he knew he had yet to find her presence.

She'd been perched on a rock with her chin tucked between her knees, black eyes vacant and thoughts twisted firmly into her absent lover's future. The stare had persisted as he struck her again and again, and he'd only coaxed her back to the present by daubing her lips with fresh mountain lion blood. Her eyes had flickered in utter bewilderment, still unresponsive to sound or threats or pain, and then he'd kissed her moistened lips with a question in his wide eyes. He'd been asking, as if she shared his gift, what monstrous kind of bond could make her give up sunlight for the flickers of someone else's future. Did she forsake the now because there were no kisses, no caresses, no gazes of a certain kind? Alice might have answered him on some level, because her mind had darted away from Jasper's future, lingering for a while on her first prophetic glimpse of him.

It had started as a prophecy of rain in Philadelphia. Alice had noticed him walking and decided he was interesting. It was enough to make new futures blossom riotously, kindling the passion that haunted her eyes as she'd slipped back into her trance. Her eyes would stay as cold as spent fire pits until Jasper's stare could revive them. Three weeks had been enough to make his eyes burn as black as hers, as if his passion had been enough to char the flame of human blood. The pair had knelt by the window seat for hours as Jasper cradled her thawing emotions, tenderly helping her re-inhabit each of the days she'd abandoned to be with him. It was not the intimacy of the moment that had made Edward blush colorlessly, but rather the sense that his brother and sister had never looked less human.

Edward still had trouble accepting the inhumanity of love, and he refused to look at Alice as he fled the burning kitchen. His agitation propelled him over the threshold in the same instant that he overtook his other siblings. Rosalie and Emmett stood a few yards from the river as if ready to spring at Jasper, who sat with his shoulders hunched against a tree trunk. One scarred hand covered his eyes, and the other clutched a now-warped metal object. His wordless thoughts flickered like storm clouds that only stilled when Edward spoke.

"It was only a matter of time. I've let this go on much too long."

Emmett and Rosalie stiffened, their minds indignantly racing through possibly implied threats. Jasper's mind only darkened with pain as he decided he couldn't defend himself, even for Alice's sake. No one anticipated Edward's next words, least of all Edward himself.

"Would you have come back to us if Alice were as fragile as the girl you killed last year?"

Neither Rosalie nor Emmett knew about the victim's uncanny resemblance to Alice. Jasper had torn her neck to shreds with one hand twisted in her spiky hair and the other hand twisted through both of hers, forcing the delicate wrist bones into contact with her jutting shoulder blades. It was the same posture in which he and Alice had made love the night before. She'd been in a teasing mood, tickling and tickling him, then darting out of his clutches like a water nymph. One second he'd been growling and clutching at the empty air, and the next she'd been squealing in ecstasy, arching luxuriantly against her pinions as Jasper sighed into the perfection of her throat. Those sighs now mingled with the human girl's screams in the perfect echo chamber of Jasper's memory, his horror blinding him to the embarrassing fact of Edward's presence.

"I… I don't know what I would have done."

Inwardly, Jasper doubted that anything could have convinced him to stay away from Alice longer than he had done already. His thoughts darted to the time, just before they'd met, when the desire to destroy himself had grown stronger every day. But then Alice alighted at his side, and the balm of her voice cleared his mind of borrowed horrors.

"The house smells safe now."

Her warm, solicitous tone filled the clearing with peace, but her thoughts bristled angrily at Edward's clear reluctance to forgive her love for his indiscretion. A few of the barbs reached the surface as she grabbed Jasper's hand, then shot Edward a hard look over her shoulder.

"I think Bella would like it if you drove her home."