The way that he looks at her, without moving or breathing or... anything, it's a little unsettling. It's hard to find a tell on someone who can shut off completely when they decide that it's their turn to listen, but it's something that she can work past. She's going to have to, especially if they're going to be stuck together in this tiny house.
She's actually surprised at how cold his shoulder is when she places her hand on it, as if he's radiating cold instead of simply lacking heat, and her mind immediately goes to inappropriate places about how that must be unpleasant in certain situations which is remarkably unlike her. She chalks it up to the fact that she's stuck in the woods with nothing but a pretty, dead boy and a pretty dead boy to look at, and once she pushes the thought out of her mind she turns to ask him if he wants tea before... he's gone. He did warn her ahead of time, she supposes, so she makes him some anyway, uncertain as to how long it'll take for him to get it whatever chased him off out of his system.
Barely ten minutes passes before she can see him coming closer through the window, and her hands freeze over her tea as her eyes narrow. Is that - is he carrying a tree? "Really?" She isn't asking anybody in particular but she sighs as she moves to the front door, leaving the house so she can see him outside with two mugs in her hands, both filled with tea.
As he approaches she approaches him as well, meeting him half way and staring at the giant tree on his shoulder. Alright. "Fine." She says aloud, eyes narrowing a little as a smile ghosts her lips. It's slight, almost flirtatious in a way where she just naturally is. "I'm almost impressed, Jasper Whitlock. Almost." she hands him the mug in his free hand since he only needs one to carry the tree, and when she continues her voice starts to match the smile she wears. "Except you still have to break it down so it'll fit into the fireplace." Her eyes move to the tree once more, searching it for a moment, and when she looks back at him it's with a playful grin that's almost mischievous. "And, that's an Aspen." She taps his nose with the tip of her finger. "Not a Birch."
Natasha finds herself biting on her bottom lip to try and reel back her smile, and she takes two steps back with her mug in both hands before she turns to head back inside. "You should break that down soon, we're going to want to bring it all inside before tonight." She calls out to him over her shoulder, amusement in her voice. "It's going to get cold, that matters to some of us."
When he takes the mug, he twists his hand carefully to keep from touching her skin. It makes him far too aware of her. It's dangerous, an unnecessary danger. The tea isn't as hot as it could be, she must have made it just after he'd disappeared on her. He's glad now that he'd mentioned sometimes needing to do that before he'd started doing it, because it had needed doing in that moment. She'd been so open to him, hardly a layer of anything separating him from her true emotions, and between that and the unexpected hand on his shoulder...
Well. He'd been planning on fetching back one of these trees anyway.
"Sorry to fall short, in that case," he begins, and then she taps his nose, and everything he'd been lining up in his head disappears.
It most certainly isn't an aspen, it's a paper birch, probably sprung up after a wildfire swept that riverbank clean a decade or so ago, but he doesn't correct her. He isn't certain he can trust himself.
After she's disappeared into the house, he lets the tree fall with a sudden ground-shaking thud and blurs to the porch to carefully set the mug down, then blurs back to the tree and sets on it like it's an enemy. There's a perfectly good axe hanging on the side of the house, above the sparse wood pile, but he doesn't even look at it. Even if it wasn't a soft wood, he'd prefer to do it this way. He isn't sure how long it takes, but the sun is visibly angled by the time he's stacking the torn-apart firewood-sized chunks of birch along the side of the porch.
She's going to keep touching him, and he doesn't know why he isn't warning her off from it.
He turns to go back to the woods, then hesitates. Almost unwillingly, his feet take him to the door and he opens it and leans inside. "How much time would you say you need for something a little bigger than rabbits?"
She waits, wondering if he'll take the bait, but he's a smart boy and he doesn't correct her, either because he knows that she's trying to get a rise out of him or because he still can't get too close to her. He's going to have to get used to it though, isn't he? A part of Natasha knows that he will, and she reminds herself how foolish that is; she doesn't know him. Yet, she's certain that she's safe. After this long, she has a sense in her gut that tells her when she's in danger. This isn't one of those times.
She's sitting on the couch, curled up with a smutty romance novel when he pokes his head in, and she glances up at him before she looks out the window to see the time. "...If we're talking a deer I might be able to get the thing properly skinned before sundown, but that's the biggest. Anything smaller will work."
She spends the day concentrating on their food and keeping the fire going, and by the time night comes Natasha practically collapses into bed. No matter how occupied she keeps herself, though, it doesn't feel right being here. She's kept her body somewhat busy but her mind has gone dull already, she's used to constantly moving, constantly thinking and constantly surviving. It isn't necessary to do that here, she's waiting for the rush of action or the fear of failing a mission and nothing comes. It's just him. Him, their little cabin, and that goddamn owl outside that's keeping her awake.
It's not really the owl's fault. She's restless, she's barely made it a week without being directed by someone else and five of those days were dedicated to making her way to the safe house in the first place. She doesn't like this, floating without a purpose, and it wasn't until her conversation with Jasper earlier that she realized how pointless everything she'd done for Shield really was. Had she ever taken an order based solely on helping people? Was there always an ulterior motive? Will that owl ever shut the hell up?
Not even ten more minutes pass before she's out of bed, and Natasha throws her door open before walking out into the house in her underwear and the thin t shirt that she sleeps in. She ignores Jasper, heading directly for the closet where she keeps her rifle, and the process of loading it and cocking it with a shake of one arm barely takes her a few seconds. "I'm going to kill that owl." She doesn't explain why but she says it with absolute certainty, and Natasha walks out of the house barefoot into the night.
She's back a few seconds later without the sound of a gunshot, and instead she unloads the gun and tosses the rifle back into the closet as the owl continues to hoot, happy to ruin her night. Killing the owl won't help. She can't sleep.
So instead she walks over to the couch and collapses down onto it with a look of frustration, glaring at the table before she finally looks up enough to see him. "What do you even do all night, if you can't sleep?"
The windowsill has already become his usual perch in the house, close enough to the couch to make for easy conversation, far enough away to prevent 'accidental' contact. There's little enough for him to do here, plenty of time to think. Too much time, sometimes, but he's had worse. The sounds of the forest at night are just as arresting as any busy city, fascinating in themselves, and enough of a distraction for now.
He's still sated from the small doe he'd brought down earlier, now skinned and hanging from a tree behind the house thanks to Natasha's handiwork, and for once he isn't tracking a herd or planning a hunt, he can just listen intently, eyes closed. The chittering of small animals, little silences of predators stalking, it all layers up. He's listening, and he's thinking about Alice, a cycle of worrying and reassuring himself that she'd said they'll meet again and he has to trust that, and worrying again that someone's decision might have changed and her vision might have changed and he wouldn't know it, he should find them, but he can't put them in danger again, it's too soon. He doesn't get tired, but it's exhausting, and now he's just putting it as far out of his mind as he can. Unfortunately not very far, but it'll have to do.
Lost as he is in the rhythms of the forest, he's still aware of her in the other room, tossing and turning, huffing a breath, and his eyes open as she stands up, before she even appears. He blinks in surprise but doesn't comment as she loads a gun and disappears outside. He can see her in the darkness, and she doesn't even take aim before turning right back around.
"I take it you're not much of an outdoorsy type," he says dryly, not moving from his comfortable spot at the window. "Back home, we did plenty. Read things, all sorts of things. Wrote, sometimes. Edward writes music. Carlisle writes about medical research. I wrote a paper or two on philosophy, a few years ago. Sometimes we travel, day trips." He shrugs easily. "Whatever you'd do with all the time in the world, that's what we do. ...out here, I've mostly been thinking. And listening."
"The last time I was forced outdoors it was in the frozen Tundra with five other girls and enough supplies for one of us, so no, you can say I'm not a fan." Her reply is more snappish than she means for it to be but she's tired, and she's unsettled. She isn't used to not having a goal or a purpose, the reasons that she has for opening up to Jasper so candidly are the same ones that are tearing her apart inside. She feels useless here. Pathetic. Pointless, as if she's simply wasting space. Despite all of that she still manages to give him an apologetic look, and instead of pushing on she moves to stand and disappear back into her room.
It's the mention of his family that reminds her of it, and when she comes back it's with a cuff that holds a strange crest on it, one that she personally isn't familiar with and that's saying something. "This is yours." She moves to him and holds it out, keeping a decent distance between the two of them because, not only is she stranded in the middle of nowhere, she's stranded with a man who can't stand being around her when she gets too close. These moments with Jasper are the most intimate that Natasha has ever had, just two people with no connection to the outside world. Yet she's certain she's never felt loneliness like this.
"I found it in the lab I got you out of, I forgot to give it to you, I'm sorry." She sets it down on his window sill before she returns to her couch, pulling her bare legs up and hugging her knees close to her chest. Natasha wets her lips, uncertain as to whether she should just leave him be and lie awake in her own room, but before she can think too deeply about it she speaks again. "It's your family, right? The crest?" She searches his face. "I can tell that you wore it a lot."
He makes that connection almost immediately. It isn't a difficult conclusion to make: six girls, supplies enough for one. She's still here. The tundra may have taken the other five, but he knows it didn't.
When she brings him the cuff, he notices how carefully she chooses her distance away from him, forcing him to lean forward with outstretched arm to take it from her, without brushing her fingers. "Thank you kindly," he says automatically, looking at it, rubbing a thumb along the twisting metal edge of the crest. He doesn't put it on again quite yet, isn't sure he ought to, but it's been a part of him for a long time. Even in his thirst, he'd noticed when they'd taken it from him.
He doesn't speak again until it's securely around his right wrist again. It's a promise, he tells himself, a promise to go back home. When it's safe, even if it takes him years, he'll go back to them.
"Carlisle's design," he says with a nod, thumb still tracing along the edge. "Every bit of it. He has quite a knowledge of heraldry. Quite a knowledge of most things, in fact." He smiles, remembering when he and Alice had first shown up at the house. Edward and Emmett had been hunting, it had been only Carlisle and Esme and Rosalie at home. "At first, I didn't know how to relate to him, but he was patient. He's always been patient. Now I consider him as much a father and Esme as much a mother as the others are my siblings."
The enamel is still smooth when he runs a finger over it and finally lets go. "We all have one, somewhere. Carlisle wanted us to be a family, not just a coven. I wore one every day until they took it." He looks over at her, curled up on the couch, still crystal clear to him in the dark. "Thank you, Natalia. It means a lot. To have this again."
She watches him carefully as he puts the cuff back on, and although she can't see in the dark as clearly as he can it's almost hard to notice. Her eyes move with his wrist, watching the way that he stares at the crest like it means something to him, and that stab of envy returns to her under a layer of disheartened despondency. What the hell is he doing here, with her? He has a family to get back to. Carlisle and Esme, Rosalie and Emmett. People that he mentions so easily in conversation that he probably doesn't even realize it. They're a part of him. He doesn't belong here with her.
"You should go back to them." She says it before she can stop herself, and it's only the that she realizes she hasn't wanted him to leave since she's arrived. She likes being around someone that isn't an agent... Natasha likes having a friend that isn't a teammate. She likes the way he says her name, and the way he speaks. She enjoys playing with that little fire in him, but that's no reason to keep him here. Not when he actually has something to go back to, what kind of person would trap someone in a cabin just so they aren't alone? Natasha doesn't want to be that.
"You shouldn't be here, you should just go back to your family." She says it with more purpose now, her throat moving with a hard swallow and her jaw flexing with tension. Her walls are halfway up but nowhere near as well constructed as usual, her dejection seeping through the cracks she leaves, probably because she's too tired. Her eyes move back up to him and her arms tighten around herself, chin resting on her knees.
"You're fast, you all are. They won't find you as long as they don't have me to track you down, and that's obviously not going to happen so. You should go to them."
Does she know, he wonders, how clear she's being with what she's feeling? They're not hitting him with the thunderbolt-suddenness of that first burst of envy that had almost sent him running, but they're right there, swimming through the room, almost visible in their twining intensity. Envy again, and a heavy something that weighs her down, drags down the walls she's half-heartedly reconstructing.
Her loneliness is a tide that catches him and sweeps him out to a sea of it. His fingers tighten dangerously on the wood of the window until it creaks audibly.
"I will," he says slowly, after several moments debating his words. He's watching her too closely again, he can see when she looks at him and he can meet her eyes even in this near-darkness. She hates being seen like this, but she doesn't hate that it's him seeing her like this, and isn't that curious? "But I think it's an inaccuracy to say I shouldn't be here. I can't risk leading anyone back in their direction, and I'll wait as long as I need, to keep that from happening." He lets go of the window and shifts to sit upright, staying where he is for now but more politely, as it were, for conversation.
"I know you're gonna argue," he continues quietly. "I know you think that bringing your organization down the way you have, there's minimal risk in my slipping off, going under the radar. You may well be right." He runs a thumb along the edge of the crest again and folds his fingers and looks up. "But the things I've seen in this...existence...of mine. Are not things I'll allow anywhere near Alice. I can wait."
She hears the creak of wood and her eyes move to his hand, but she can't see it well enough in the dark to tell whether or not he's responsible. Perhaps she's making him uncomfortable again, she can't tell that either when she can't see clearly enough to see his tells, and that's another layer of unsettling that she doesn't want to think about. Speaking to him in the dark like this forces her to have a conversation with Jasper and not with Jasper's reactions. Those are two very different things in Natasha Romanoff's mind.
"I won't argue," she corrects him, eyes moving away to instead stare out of a window on an opposite wall. "You would know better than I would, what the proper reaction is to find your family." It's simply not something she can relate to. The mention of Alice brings another pang of muted longing but it's not as strong this time. She can't really miss something that she never had, and that's what she tells herself. Maybe she's not missing out when it comes to having someone that important. Maybe it's overrated. "Alice." She says her name again aloud, settling into the corner of the couch to half lean/half lie against the arm of it.
"What is she like?" Her eyes move back to Jasper after a moment. "You mentioned her before."
However much of him she can see in the darkness, now there's a smile appearing on his face that's brighter and fonder than any other expression he's had since they'd met. "Alice is everything," he says simply. "My face was her first vision when she woke up after being turned."
He's silent for a few moments, wrestling the waves of his own desolation at being separated from her, at not knowing she's safe. "She's got no memory of being human, none at all. But we know a little." His voice goes flatter, more like that militaristic lecture. "She had visions as a human. Got put away for it. Insane asylum, sometime before she was turned in 1920." He glances up at her, tense anger in the lines of his shoulders. "They put her in there, and they put up a stone in the graveyard, with the same date."
He has to stop, or risk breaking something. Deep breathing doesn't work, it never has. He closes his eyes, brings her face to mind, her smile, the way her hair feathers across her forehead when they run, her golden eyes, the way she fits against him. His Alice. She's alive, she must be. She must be.
To her credit, Natasha doesn't move, she lets him reach the point he needs to reach, to calm down and start speaking again. "Alice saw me, and I kept her waiting almost thirty years before I finally showed up," he says at last, and now that little smile is back, and growing. "Meeting her that day, I felt hope for the first time in a century."
She watches him as he speaks of Alice, barely able to see him in the dark save for the silhouette of his frame as light barely peaks through the window from the blocked moon outside. He's informing her about Alice, yes, but the story is in the way that he speaks, passion and anger and everything in between weaving in and out of his words with a natural flow. She sees more of him, more of Jasper, within these few moments than she has since her arrival here, it's as if the simple mention of Alice lights a sort of life within him that he's void without. The envy is gone, because how can Natasha feel something like that when it obviously makes him so happy?
She's happy for him. She isn't sure if that's supposed to hurt with a constant ache of longing that even she doesn't understand to this day, but she's happy for him.
That's why this is so hard for her, she realizes. "She sounds amazing." Her voice is soft and encouraging, as if thankful that he shared Alice's story with her. It's hard because Natasha has given up on this sort of connection, she realized a long time ago that she'll never be loved or love someone the way that Jasper loves Alice. She can't, she's not a person she's a weapon, and weapons don't decide who they do and don't like. She never had the opportunity to be anything else and she told herself that it was okay, once she got into Shield. The sacrifice was worth it.
Now she's here, with him, with nothing to show for all the efforts she made, and she's realizing just now what she had to give up to make them. Everything. She gave up everything, she's lived a full life and she has nothing to show for it except for a cabin in the woods, one that exists only for her to hide herself away from other people. This is all she has to her name, and when she hears Jasper speak of Alice... that certainly feels like nothing.
"You'll get back to her," she assures him in the same soft, passive tone. "It doesn't sound like your story is over yet. You've been through too much for it to end now."
"She is that," Jasper agrees more softly, looking down at the crest once again. He doesn't wear a wedding band like some of the others, hasn't wanted to fret over damaging it, and Alice doesn't wear a ring herself, but they don't need them. They know.
The ache in Natasha is low and steady, settling in for the duration like a cracked bone that needs time to heal, and she's still curled up on the couch in the chilly front room instead of beneath the layers of blankets on the bed. That's simply not right. Slowly, making more noise than he needs to, Jasper slips off the windowsill and glides to the fireplace, carefully adding a log and poking kindling at the embers. If she isn't going to sleep, she may as well stay warm.
As the flames leap up again and Natasha shifts instinctively toward the little billow of warmth, and incidentally toward him, and he doesn't move away again, it all comes crashing back.
They hadn't had much time, but Alice had told him a lot of things before they'd been separated. She'd told him she'd only seen all of them caught when they all ran together. When he'd decided to stay behind, she'd told him, with tears in her eyes, what needed to be done to hold off the attackers and give them time to escape. They'd been a little oasis of stillness, clinging to each other as their siblings and parents flew past them, blurred with speed, when her eyes had unfocused again.
"You'll meet someone. When we're apart. Someone new. A, a woman, with red hair. Sharp. Angry, but...not always. I don't know who she is, but you love her," and she'd put a finger over his lips as he'd immediately gone to protest it, he'd never love anyone the way he loves her, "you'll love her, and you'll bring her back to us. To both of us." Her glorious eyes had narrowed in confusion and she'd given that little huff she always gets when she can't figure something properly. "I don't...she's still human, but she feeds you, somehow she feeds you and you keep her warm. ...that's all I know, except. I'll love her too." She'd lain both hands on his cheeks, clarity restored even as Jasper's own confusion kept building. "Bring her with you when you come back. I'll wait."
It hadn't been the most pressing issue at the time, and in the weeks of fury and agony that had followed, he'd all but forgotten it. Red hair. Sharp. Angry. She feeds you and his breakfast mug is still sitting on the drainboard from the morning's squirrel blood. You keep her warm and what reason would he have to build a fire but to keep her warm, what reason to drag downed trees across the forest for firewood but to keep her warm?
The force of it knocks him back to sit on the hearth, his back against the hearthstone, the poker falling from his hand as he stares at her red hair, coppery now in the firelight. He shouldn't have any business being around a human, alone, for this long without going for her. She's touched him so many times, and he's only had to run from her once. He's never been as strong as the others, by rights she should be dead already, but she's never feared him, not once, not this woman whose instinct for death is such that he can feel it.
Does she know? Does she know what she is to him? To both of them?
Natasha finds herself so deep in thought that she barely realizes Jasper is moving, her blank stare having returned to the window to stare out into the darkness. Something about hearing it hurts and yet she doesn't wish it to be hers. Hearing Jasper speak of Alice with such tenderness is beautiful to her, and Natasha has already accepted that she's not going to have something like that. She'll never be able to start a family or keep someone close, not when she's always putting her life at risk or on the run, and maybe that's why she wishes nothing but happiness for Jasper and Alice. Happiness, for something that she can't have herself.
It isn't until she starts feeling warmth that she registers what he's doing for her, and it's enough to pull her out of the darkness that her mind is spiraling into so she can instead offering him a tiny but grateful smile. The corners of her mouth barely curl up as she watches him, knowing that this is probably the first time he's started a fire strictly for warmth in much too long, and she's about to thank him when he seems to be struck again like he had been when she first arrived. He drops the poker and he stares at her, and Natasha would think that he's having some sort of issue being around her again if she didn't know that he wouldn't be in the house anymore if he did.
"...Jasper?" She says his name with thinly veiled concern because he's never looked like that before, and she hesitates before standing from her seat on the couch and approaching him, sitting on the hearthstone beside him to soak in the warmth that he's provided. Her green eyes are wide with worry as she studies his face now that she's closer, the light of the fire dancing against one side of her as she faces him.
"...What? What is it, did you hear something or... do you need me to go into the bedroom...?"
He notices her moving closer, of course he does, and the monster chained inside him writhes in impatience, but this isn't the moment to worry about the monster, and for the first time, he can possibly see how Carlisle can have the control he has: focusing so intently on something else that the proximity of a human and her blood just doesn't matter as much.
It's her, it must be. It must be her that Alice meant. There are plenty of women with red hair in the world, but how many of them have fed him in a way that kept them breathing and whole and moving? How many of them has he, with his icy skin and leashed-up monster inside, kept warm?
Which leads to the larger question of how he's ever going to pitch this. The certainty of it has sunk into him, tethered him to her, and he knows leaving her would make him ache in almost the way being apart from Alice makes him ache. But from what he knows of her, her life has been death. Her meaningful connections with people have been fleeting, or built on conditions that she herself sets. She's never known something like this, and worse, she never plans to, and she's made peace with that, of a kind. As much peace as she ever allows herself.
He could still be wrong. He's moving too slowly now, noticeably too slowly, as he reaches out and avoids touching her skin but hooks a lock of her red hair over a finger, and draws it gently along, and lets it fall again and pulls his hand back. "That morning pick-me-up you so kindly provided," and his voice is lower, a little hoarse with bewilderment now, "was that something you were planning on doing often?"
She doesn't know what Jasper is doing when he starts to reach out, but she doesn't move for his sake. She knows what kind of affect she has on him, she's used to having a certain hold over men but this is different, and Natasha isn't going to pretend as if she knows how to use something this dangerous to her advantage. So she stays still, despite her own discomfort with being touched on anybody's terms but her own, and she watches as he seems to play with her hair before letting it fall away. She looks at him oddly, because honestly... what the hell is he doing?
"...I was planning on it," she responds finally, her eyes flickering from the hand that had touched her hair before returning to his face. It really is absolutely absurd, how handsome he is. Natasha usually finds herself attracted to the larger ones, muscular men who look like they can handle themselves in a fight and Jasper is much leaner than anybody she's given a second glance. It's the way that the light hits him though, and hits his eyes, that holds her attention.
"It didn't seem like it had done much but you enjoyed it so I thought that it was just a little thing I could do for you in the mornings. Keep your hunger a little more at bay." Her tongue darts out quickly to wet her lips before she moves a hand to brush her hair behind her ear, her shiver subsiding now that she's this close to warmth. "It looks like it's working better than I thought though." She's referring to here, right now. How close he is to her.
Jasper takes a breath to speak, then lets it out again slowly, barely aware of the burn of thirst in his throat. How is he meant to address any of this? How can he explain it properly? Not for the first time, he wishes Alice were here to do the talking. She's better with words, and her cheerful, effortless confidence is so often contagious, people just find themselves smiling and taking her at her word, especially when it comes to what she's seen.
"I'd like that," he says at last, a little helplessly, letting his head fall back to rest against the stone behind him, eyes still on her. "I should tell you something. It's something I've only just recalled, and now that I've brought it to mind I can't imagine how it didn't occur earlier, but I suppose I have been...somewhat distracted."
He shakes his head, looking away, staring at the window, his usual perch, then dropping his eyes, watching the play of firelight and shadow on the stone hearth. It's more than he usually moves, it could almost be termed fidgeting, as he searches out the best way to prove that he isn't mocking her for the feelings he's picked up, he isn't playing games with her. "You're not going to believe it, I think. From what I know of you. Or you'd likely rather not. But I told you before that I'm no liar, and I know you believed that."
He's shifting around as if he's uncomfortable, and Natasha's eyes don't move from him as she falls completely still this time. She's studying him, because although he doesn't have a pulse, everybody has tells, even after hundreds of years. He doesn't look as if he's preparing himself to tell a story, so his warning that she's not going to believe him is taken with a little more faith than she would probably give.
"Well I can't believe you if you don't tell me," she points out with a raised eyebrow of suspicion. "And if you like feeding in the morning then I'll just keep doing that for you, I don't mind. But you look like you're about to tell me that you need a coffin to sleep in at night or something." She says it with a half-joke in her voice, but it's still obvious that she's unsettled by his behavior. She even moves, reaching out as if to touch his hand before quickly catching herself, and Natasha frowns a little before pulling her hand back to fold them in her lap instead.
"Sorry..." she frowns. "Yes. I believed that you aren't a liar, and you're making me nervous, Jasper. What's going on?"
"I apologize," he says immediately, looking up to meet her eyes, steady again as he can feel the truth in what she's saying, he has gone and concerned her by being so evasive with this. "I don't mean to make you nervous. It's nothing worth being nervous for. Alice saw...you. I'm sure of it. In a vision, before they all bolted, she had a vision of a woman with," his eyes shift to her hair again and his fingers flex as if he wants to reach out again, "red hair, a mortal who would keep me fed, and who I'd keep warm."
He looks at the fire, roaring now, burning through the birch logs he'd brought back and split earlier that day. It makes good firewood, a dry paper birch, he'd remembered that. There'd been a time, after all, when he'd needed a fire to stay warm.
"She didn't know anything more, couldn't see anything, but she said I—" He looks back at her and falters. No, he can't say it straight out, he can't quote her. It's too new, this slender thing forming, it's too brittle to risk her slamming herself behind her walls again and shattering it. "She said she saw me bringing this woman back with me." Now the corner of his mouth pulls up in a little smile. "I've been racking my brain, but you seem to fit that description awfully neatly."
Her eyes flicker to his hand when she sees his fingers move, and Natasha is already realizing that everything he does is purposeful. She can't help but wonder if he wants to touch her again, and for some reason that's strange to Natasha. Men want to touch her; men always want to touch her, but Jasper is different. He avoids her as if she's filled with a plague, and yet right now in this moment he stares at her as if he wants to get closer, and not from hunger. There's something in his eyes... but it's not hunger.
He falters and that's his mistake. Natasha picks up on it immediately, he's not lying but he's hiding something and she stares at him with suspicion that's evident enough on her face where he doesn't have to feel it coming off of her. "...You want me to come with you?" He's smiling, and that's rare too. "I can't." She says it before she really thinks about it, her eyes searching around the house now as if she's looking for the reason that prompted the immediate denial. Natasha doesn't run away with people, she's alone. That's how she's supposed to be.
Yet she has nothing to go back to. This time she has no agency to join and no partner to check on. She's reminded of her lack of purpose yet again and when she looks back at Jasper it's with a look that's almost unrecognizable to her. It doesn't seem to fit her face with how rare it is, and yet she looks hopeful; she feels it, and she hates that.
"How am I supposed to go back with you? I'm human, and - you're already struggling, won't your family have a hard time being around me? With what I am?"
"That's an issue. But Carlisle is unaffected now, he's a doctor in fact, and of anyone else in my family, I'm the one with the most," his face hardens a little, and she can probably see the sharp dissatisfaction in his expression and the taut line of his shoulders, "difficulty."
It's weakness, pure and simple. He'd lived his life through murder for eighty years. Even the fear and pain he'd felt from each victim hadn't stopped him from taking more, not until Alice had found him and taught him a different way. He'd never even considered it, and every day, it feels like it would be easier to just go back to what he'd known for so long. The scientist he'd ripped into, he could claim that as self defense if he felt like lying to himself. He couldn't claim it hadn't felt damned good. Even he can't lie that well to himself.
But that's an old argument, his frustration with his own thirst, and he forces his shoulders to relax, lets his head fall to one side when he looks at her again. "Alice's visions are subjective," he says quietly. "They change based on what people decide. It doesn't mean it's something that's going to happen, but...yes, I do want you to come with me. I...we," he corrects himself, because he wants to be as honest as he can without frightening her off, "we would like to see that future come about. That said, you would be walking into a house full of vampires."
"I would be walking into a house full of vampires." She repeats it back to him slowly, as if she needs to make sure he can hear aloud just how ridiculous that sounds. She's be putting her life at risk which, yes, she has little to lose now, but that simply sounds foolish. She would actively be walking into a dangerous situation just because someone who she realistically barely knows feels like it would be nice to have her around. Because his dead girlfriend had a dream. That's what Natasha is considering.
So why is she even considering it? He's acting oddly, touching her hair and staring at her as if she's suddenly grown a new face. He's asking her to leave everything behind and walk into what sounds like a death trap, there's a very realistic chance that she could die from this. Doesn't that just sound thrilling?
That familiar rush of adrenaline moves through her as if to finalize her decision.
"Alright." She nods once. "When are we going if you're too afraid to find them just yet? Are we going to wait around until you think it's safe?"
One eyebrow twitches upward. He wouldn't even need his abilities to hear the skepticism in that. "I had planned on caution, yes," he says, amused, then looks thoughtful as he starts to think more strategically. "But if your organization is as disorganized as you say, my moving now might mean a lower risk of exposure for them. Surely I'm not high on their list of priorities."
Whatever horrors they'd had in store for him, he'd had the distinct sense, from the feel of the people who had worked on him and the way they'd been talking, that he'd been just one of many curiosities the organization had tucked away. There's a little surge of anger at that, but it's not a time for that, and he puts it aside, as he continues, "But you might be a focus of theirs, and we won't be traveling as fast together." Unless he turned her, but that doesn't bear thinking about.
"Looking for them blindly wouldn't be wise. Carlisle's gotten good at disappearing over the years, and with Edward and Alice with him, he'll have a head start on bolting if need be, wherever they've settled. But I know where they've lived before, and I know Carlisle sometimes likes to revisit old haunts, put down roots and live a normal life. We can start there." By the time he's finished, he sounds calm and authoritative, more certain about the path they'll take. But then he tilts his head toward her, inquisitive. "Unless you have other suggestions?"
Natasha stays silent as she listens to him, turning her body to face him where he sits on the opposite edge of the hearthstone, and her eyes only shift away when he finishes so she can mull over his plan. "Finding them is going to be the real problem," she finally agrees aloud, and Natasha shifts to lean back on her hands so she can stretch her legs out on the hearthstone in front of the fire. "Hiding from whatever might be left of Shield, that's not going to be something that you need to worry about."
She stares at him from across the fireplace, searching his face again in a way of suspicion that says, she knows he isn't telling the whole truth. She's agreeing to this, but because she wants to. Not because she feels as if he's been completely honest. "I have what we'll need." She cocks her head to the in the direction of the bedroom. "I have twelve passports at this location, sixteen credit cards, around twenty seven identities, none of which are registered with Shield's databases. None of them have been used, so if it's me you're worried about, don't." She can't help but give him a sly smile. "Nobody finds me unless I want them to. That's kind of what I do."
She sighs, her head falling back so she can look up at the ceiling in thought. "We'd have to go back to the last home that you were located at so we could track them from there, that's roughly eight days of travel with a car, we can get one in the town closest to us if we buy it outright, we could us a credit card but I'd rather not use one of those until we have to so we can use the cash, I've got about twenty five thousand here that we can make work if we find them within the first couple of months of searching... longer since you don't eat." She looks back at him after she thinks it all aloud, and Natasha chews on the corner of her lip as she continues to run it all through her mind.
"It's up to you. I know I won't get caught. You have to be comfortable with that. I can wait until you are."
He pays attention as she talks, and her confidence doesn't flicker one bit. She knows she won't get caught, and when she finishes, he nods. "That is an impressive array. I've only ever used the one," he says with that little smile again, though most of him stays serious.
"I can make a call and have a fresh ID of my own in two days at the most. I have a source. He is reliable." A healthy combination of money and fear kept him that way, as well as Jasper's ability to tell if Jenks was ever lying. Twenty years and counting thus far, and not a peep out of him. "But in the meantime, I trust you. It shouldn't be so difficult to find a car that will get us there, inconspicuously. That, I am comfortable with."
As promised, it wasn't difficult at all to find a low-profile vehicle for a decent price, cash on the table, at one of the lower-end dealerships. Jasper had offered to drive, but he'd agreed with her logic that she ought to stay behind the wheel during the day, to avoid any unfortunate eye-catching sparkle on the sunny freeways. She drove during the day, with infrequent breaks, and listened to music constantly, and turned up the volume and sang along when she judged him to be insufficiently enjoying a song. It got a smile out of him more often than not, which, based on the warm satisfaction that rolled his way, had always been the ultimate goal. He drove at night, all night, stopping only to refuel with Natasha curled in the back, sound asleep, and they never stopped moving. Somehow, the increased proximity of her didn't make him anxious or push the limits of his control. Something of the opposite, in fact, which he chalked up to familiarity and their shared urgency. There just wasn't time to think about that.
Forks is a quiet place by nature, the little stirring of the Cullens' sudden departure already rippling out and fading into the pool of routine that Carlisle had judged so restful for all of them. They'd managed less than a year there before needing to bolt, but the house is still there, empty and locked up tight. It's just after dusk when they arrive, but Natasha is still driving, no point in swapping for such a short time. When she pulls into the driveway, Jasper gets calmly out of the car and enters a long number on the garage keypad, smiling in satisfaction when it grinds open.
The row of cars is still there, with just enough room on the end for theirs. It will look thoroughly out of place next to the Mercedes, the Volvo, Emmett's souped-up truck, but the sight of the vehicles makes him relax more than he'd expected. It's not home, they're just things, the family isn't here, but it's familiar. It's something he'd predicted that's come to pass, a consistency. The invaders hadn't taken everything from him after all.
"Plenty of room upstairs," he calls over to Natasha as he closes the garage door behind the car, locks them in. "I doubt anyone would mind whichever room you picked. There are beds in most of them. Esme and Carlisle were sticklers for detail."
Natasha isn't one to spend an extended period of time with a single person. She enjoys her privacy, it's something that she's grown into, but spending days in a car with Jasper seems to annoy her less than she had originally expected. It's annoying to have to stop at truck stops to shower, and to sleep in the backseat of the car so they can make the best time, but being around him specifically is much less irritating than she was preparing for. Natasha tells herself that it's because they have a goal in mind, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he can hold a real conversation or his smile gives her a sense of satisfaction that she doesn't expect every single time.
When they finally reach Forks she follows his guidance until she's pulling into a garage with an array of cars that speak for themselves. Her eyes roam over all of them, and she can't help but smile to herself as she takes it all in. The M3, Tony. The Volvo, Bruce, the truck, Thor... she finds herself being reminded of them more and more lately. It's almost as if she misses them.
"Do you bother keeping food in the house?" Probably not. She wanders past him as they move into the house so she can explore the place. "Probably not, right?" She moves back to him after checking the immediate area, and she looks up at him before folding her arms across her chest. She's closer to him now, but after sitting in a car with him for days, proximity doesn't seem like it's as much of an issue. "Are you sure you want to stop here? We can keep working, see what we can track and keep moving. A bed sounds amazing but I don't mind foregoing one for a couple of more nights." She pauses. "I do need a shower though. And clothes, if you think there's anything here that will fit me."
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moodshifter) wrote2017-02-16 01:26 pm
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She's actually surprised at how cold his shoulder is when she places her hand on it, as if he's radiating cold instead of simply lacking heat, and her mind immediately goes to inappropriate places about how that must be unpleasant in certain situations which is remarkably unlike her. She chalks it up to the fact that she's stuck in the woods with nothing but a pretty, dead boy and a pretty dead boy to look at, and once she pushes the thought out of her mind she turns to ask him if he wants tea before... he's gone. He did warn her ahead of time, she supposes, so she makes him some anyway, uncertain as to how long it'll take for him to get it whatever chased him off out of his system.
Barely ten minutes passes before she can see him coming closer through the window, and her hands freeze over her tea as her eyes narrow. Is that - is he carrying a tree? "Really?" She isn't asking anybody in particular but she sighs as she moves to the front door, leaving the house so she can see him outside with two mugs in her hands, both filled with tea.
As he approaches she approaches him as well, meeting him half way and staring at the giant tree on his shoulder. Alright. "Fine." She says aloud, eyes narrowing a little as a smile ghosts her lips. It's slight, almost flirtatious in a way where she just naturally is. "I'm almost impressed, Jasper Whitlock. Almost." she hands him the mug in his free hand since he only needs one to carry the tree, and when she continues her voice starts to match the smile she wears. "Except you still have to break it down so it'll fit into the fireplace." Her eyes move to the tree once more, searching it for a moment, and when she looks back at him it's with a playful grin that's almost mischievous. "And, that's an Aspen." She taps his nose with the tip of her finger. "Not a Birch."
Natasha finds herself biting on her bottom lip to try and reel back her smile, and she takes two steps back with her mug in both hands before she turns to head back inside. "You should break that down soon, we're going to want to bring it all inside before tonight." She calls out to him over her shoulder, amusement in her voice. "It's going to get cold, that matters to some of us."
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Well. He'd been planning on fetching back one of these trees anyway.
"Sorry to fall short, in that case," he begins, and then she taps his nose, and everything he'd been lining up in his head disappears.
It most certainly isn't an aspen, it's a paper birch, probably sprung up after a wildfire swept that riverbank clean a decade or so ago, but he doesn't correct her. He isn't certain he can trust himself.
After she's disappeared into the house, he lets the tree fall with a sudden ground-shaking thud and blurs to the porch to carefully set the mug down, then blurs back to the tree and sets on it like it's an enemy. There's a perfectly good axe hanging on the side of the house, above the sparse wood pile, but he doesn't even look at it. Even if it wasn't a soft wood, he'd prefer to do it this way. He isn't sure how long it takes, but the sun is visibly angled by the time he's stacking the torn-apart firewood-sized chunks of birch along the side of the porch.
She's going to keep touching him, and he doesn't know why he isn't warning her off from it.
He turns to go back to the woods, then hesitates. Almost unwillingly, his feet take him to the door and he opens it and leans inside. "How much time would you say you need for something a little bigger than rabbits?"
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She's sitting on the couch, curled up with a smutty romance novel when he pokes his head in, and she glances up at him before she looks out the window to see the time. "...If we're talking a deer I might be able to get the thing properly skinned before sundown, but that's the biggest. Anything smaller will work."
She spends the day concentrating on their food and keeping the fire going, and by the time night comes Natasha practically collapses into bed. No matter how occupied she keeps herself, though, it doesn't feel right being here. She's kept her body somewhat busy but her mind has gone dull already, she's used to constantly moving, constantly thinking and constantly surviving. It isn't necessary to do that here, she's waiting for the rush of action or the fear of failing a mission and nothing comes. It's just him. Him, their little cabin, and that goddamn owl outside that's keeping her awake.
It's not really the owl's fault. She's restless, she's barely made it a week without being directed by someone else and five of those days were dedicated to making her way to the safe house in the first place. She doesn't like this, floating without a purpose, and it wasn't until her conversation with Jasper earlier that she realized how pointless everything she'd done for Shield really was. Had she ever taken an order based solely on helping people? Was there always an ulterior motive? Will that owl ever shut the hell up?
Not even ten more minutes pass before she's out of bed, and Natasha throws her door open before walking out into the house in her underwear and the thin t shirt that she sleeps in. She ignores Jasper, heading directly for the closet where she keeps her rifle, and the process of loading it and cocking it with a shake of one arm barely takes her a few seconds. "I'm going to kill that owl." She doesn't explain why but she says it with absolute certainty, and Natasha walks out of the house barefoot into the night.
She's back a few seconds later without the sound of a gunshot, and instead she unloads the gun and tosses the rifle back into the closet as the owl continues to hoot, happy to ruin her night. Killing the owl won't help. She can't sleep.
So instead she walks over to the couch and collapses down onto it with a look of frustration, glaring at the table before she finally looks up enough to see him. "What do you even do all night, if you can't sleep?"
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He's still sated from the small doe he'd brought down earlier, now skinned and hanging from a tree behind the house thanks to Natasha's handiwork, and for once he isn't tracking a herd or planning a hunt, he can just listen intently, eyes closed. The chittering of small animals, little silences of predators stalking, it all layers up. He's listening, and he's thinking about Alice, a cycle of worrying and reassuring himself that she'd said they'll meet again and he has to trust that, and worrying again that someone's decision might have changed and her vision might have changed and he wouldn't know it, he should find them, but he can't put them in danger again, it's too soon. He doesn't get tired, but it's exhausting, and now he's just putting it as far out of his mind as he can. Unfortunately not very far, but it'll have to do.
Lost as he is in the rhythms of the forest, he's still aware of her in the other room, tossing and turning, huffing a breath, and his eyes open as she stands up, before she even appears. He blinks in surprise but doesn't comment as she loads a gun and disappears outside. He can see her in the darkness, and she doesn't even take aim before turning right back around.
"I take it you're not much of an outdoorsy type," he says dryly, not moving from his comfortable spot at the window. "Back home, we did plenty. Read things, all sorts of things. Wrote, sometimes. Edward writes music. Carlisle writes about medical research. I wrote a paper or two on philosophy, a few years ago. Sometimes we travel, day trips." He shrugs easily. "Whatever you'd do with all the time in the world, that's what we do. ...out here, I've mostly been thinking. And listening."
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It's the mention of his family that reminds her of it, and when she comes back it's with a cuff that holds a strange crest on it, one that she personally isn't familiar with and that's saying something. "This is yours." She moves to him and holds it out, keeping a decent distance between the two of them because, not only is she stranded in the middle of nowhere, she's stranded with a man who can't stand being around her when she gets too close. These moments with Jasper are the most intimate that Natasha has ever had, just two people with no connection to the outside world. Yet she's certain she's never felt loneliness like this.
"I found it in the lab I got you out of, I forgot to give it to you, I'm sorry." She sets it down on his window sill before she returns to her couch, pulling her bare legs up and hugging her knees close to her chest. Natasha wets her lips, uncertain as to whether she should just leave him be and lie awake in her own room, but before she can think too deeply about it she speaks again. "It's your family, right? The crest?" She searches his face. "I can tell that you wore it a lot."
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When she brings him the cuff, he notices how carefully she chooses her distance away from him, forcing him to lean forward with outstretched arm to take it from her, without brushing her fingers. "Thank you kindly," he says automatically, looking at it, rubbing a thumb along the twisting metal edge of the crest. He doesn't put it on again quite yet, isn't sure he ought to, but it's been a part of him for a long time. Even in his thirst, he'd noticed when they'd taken it from him.
He doesn't speak again until it's securely around his right wrist again. It's a promise, he tells himself, a promise to go back home. When it's safe, even if it takes him years, he'll go back to them.
"Carlisle's design," he says with a nod, thumb still tracing along the edge. "Every bit of it. He has quite a knowledge of heraldry. Quite a knowledge of most things, in fact." He smiles, remembering when he and Alice had first shown up at the house. Edward and Emmett had been hunting, it had been only Carlisle and Esme and Rosalie at home. "At first, I didn't know how to relate to him, but he was patient. He's always been patient. Now I consider him as much a father and Esme as much a mother as the others are my siblings."
The enamel is still smooth when he runs a finger over it and finally lets go. "We all have one, somewhere. Carlisle wanted us to be a family, not just a coven. I wore one every day until they took it." He looks over at her, curled up on the couch, still crystal clear to him in the dark. "Thank you, Natalia. It means a lot. To have this again."
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"You should go back to them." She says it before she can stop herself, and it's only the that she realizes she hasn't wanted him to leave since she's arrived. She likes being around someone that isn't an agent... Natasha likes having a friend that isn't a teammate. She likes the way he says her name, and the way he speaks. She enjoys playing with that little fire in him, but that's no reason to keep him here. Not when he actually has something to go back to, what kind of person would trap someone in a cabin just so they aren't alone? Natasha doesn't want to be that.
"You shouldn't be here, you should just go back to your family." She says it with more purpose now, her throat moving with a hard swallow and her jaw flexing with tension. Her walls are halfway up but nowhere near as well constructed as usual, her dejection seeping through the cracks she leaves, probably because she's too tired. Her eyes move back up to him and her arms tighten around herself, chin resting on her knees.
"You're fast, you all are. They won't find you as long as they don't have me to track you down, and that's obviously not going to happen so. You should go to them."
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Her loneliness is a tide that catches him and sweeps him out to a sea of it. His fingers tighten dangerously on the wood of the window until it creaks audibly.
"I will," he says slowly, after several moments debating his words. He's watching her too closely again, he can see when she looks at him and he can meet her eyes even in this near-darkness. She hates being seen like this, but she doesn't hate that it's him seeing her like this, and isn't that curious? "But I think it's an inaccuracy to say I shouldn't be here. I can't risk leading anyone back in their direction, and I'll wait as long as I need, to keep that from happening." He lets go of the window and shifts to sit upright, staying where he is for now but more politely, as it were, for conversation.
"I know you're gonna argue," he continues quietly. "I know you think that bringing your organization down the way you have, there's minimal risk in my slipping off, going under the radar. You may well be right." He runs a thumb along the edge of the crest again and folds his fingers and looks up. "But the things I've seen in this...existence...of mine. Are not things I'll allow anywhere near Alice. I can wait."
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"I won't argue," she corrects him, eyes moving away to instead stare out of a window on an opposite wall. "You would know better than I would, what the proper reaction is to find your family." It's simply not something she can relate to. The mention of Alice brings another pang of muted longing but it's not as strong this time. She can't really miss something that she never had, and that's what she tells herself. Maybe she's not missing out when it comes to having someone that important. Maybe it's overrated. "Alice." She says her name again aloud, settling into the corner of the couch to half lean/half lie against the arm of it.
"What is she like?" Her eyes move back to Jasper after a moment. "You mentioned her before."
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He's silent for a few moments, wrestling the waves of his own desolation at being separated from her, at not knowing she's safe. "She's got no memory of being human, none at all. But we know a little." His voice goes flatter, more like that militaristic lecture. "She had visions as a human. Got put away for it. Insane asylum, sometime before she was turned in 1920." He glances up at her, tense anger in the lines of his shoulders. "They put her in there, and they put up a stone in the graveyard, with the same date."
He has to stop, or risk breaking something. Deep breathing doesn't work, it never has. He closes his eyes, brings her face to mind, her smile, the way her hair feathers across her forehead when they run, her golden eyes, the way she fits against him. His Alice. She's alive, she must be. She must be.
To her credit, Natasha doesn't move, she lets him reach the point he needs to reach, to calm down and start speaking again. "Alice saw me, and I kept her waiting almost thirty years before I finally showed up," he says at last, and now that little smile is back, and growing. "Meeting her that day, I felt hope for the first time in a century."
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She's happy for him. She isn't sure if that's supposed to hurt with a constant ache of longing that even she doesn't understand to this day, but she's happy for him.
That's why this is so hard for her, she realizes. "She sounds amazing." Her voice is soft and encouraging, as if thankful that he shared Alice's story with her. It's hard because Natasha has given up on this sort of connection, she realized a long time ago that she'll never be loved or love someone the way that Jasper loves Alice. She can't, she's not a person she's a weapon, and weapons don't decide who they do and don't like. She never had the opportunity to be anything else and she told herself that it was okay, once she got into Shield. The sacrifice was worth it.
Now she's here, with him, with nothing to show for all the efforts she made, and she's realizing just now what she had to give up to make them. Everything. She gave up everything, she's lived a full life and she has nothing to show for it except for a cabin in the woods, one that exists only for her to hide herself away from other people. This is all she has to her name, and when she hears Jasper speak of Alice... that certainly feels like nothing.
"You'll get back to her," she assures him in the same soft, passive tone. "It doesn't sound like your story is over yet. You've been through too much for it to end now."
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The ache in Natasha is low and steady, settling in for the duration like a cracked bone that needs time to heal, and she's still curled up on the couch in the chilly front room instead of beneath the layers of blankets on the bed. That's simply not right. Slowly, making more noise than he needs to, Jasper slips off the windowsill and glides to the fireplace, carefully adding a log and poking kindling at the embers. If she isn't going to sleep, she may as well stay warm.
As the flames leap up again and Natasha shifts instinctively toward the little billow of warmth, and incidentally toward him, and he doesn't move away again, it all comes crashing back.
They hadn't had much time, but Alice had told him a lot of things before they'd been separated. She'd told him she'd only seen all of them caught when they all ran together. When he'd decided to stay behind, she'd told him, with tears in her eyes, what needed to be done to hold off the attackers and give them time to escape. They'd been a little oasis of stillness, clinging to each other as their siblings and parents flew past them, blurred with speed, when her eyes had unfocused again.
"You'll meet someone. When we're apart. Someone new. A, a woman, with red hair. Sharp. Angry, but...not always. I don't know who she is, but you love her," and she'd put a finger over his lips as he'd immediately gone to protest it, he'd never love anyone the way he loves her, "you'll love her, and you'll bring her back to us. To both of us." Her glorious eyes had narrowed in confusion and she'd given that little huff she always gets when she can't figure something properly. "I don't...she's still human, but she feeds you, somehow she feeds you and you keep her warm. ...that's all I know, except. I'll love her too." She'd lain both hands on his cheeks, clarity restored even as Jasper's own confusion kept building. "Bring her with you when you come back. I'll wait."
It hadn't been the most pressing issue at the time, and in the weeks of fury and agony that had followed, he'd all but forgotten it. Red hair. Sharp. Angry. She feeds you and his breakfast mug is still sitting on the drainboard from the morning's squirrel blood. You keep her warm and what reason would he have to build a fire but to keep her warm, what reason to drag downed trees across the forest for firewood but to keep her warm?
The force of it knocks him back to sit on the hearth, his back against the hearthstone, the poker falling from his hand as he stares at her red hair, coppery now in the firelight. He shouldn't have any business being around a human, alone, for this long without going for her. She's touched him so many times, and he's only had to run from her once. He's never been as strong as the others, by rights she should be dead already, but she's never feared him, not once, not this woman whose instinct for death is such that he can feel it.
Does she know? Does she know what she is to him? To both of them?
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It isn't until she starts feeling warmth that she registers what he's doing for her, and it's enough to pull her out of the darkness that her mind is spiraling into so she can instead offering him a tiny but grateful smile. The corners of her mouth barely curl up as she watches him, knowing that this is probably the first time he's started a fire strictly for warmth in much too long, and she's about to thank him when he seems to be struck again like he had been when she first arrived. He drops the poker and he stares at her, and Natasha would think that he's having some sort of issue being around her again if she didn't know that he wouldn't be in the house anymore if he did.
"...Jasper?" She says his name with thinly veiled concern because he's never looked like that before, and she hesitates before standing from her seat on the couch and approaching him, sitting on the hearthstone beside him to soak in the warmth that he's provided. Her green eyes are wide with worry as she studies his face now that she's closer, the light of the fire dancing against one side of her as she faces him.
"...What? What is it, did you hear something or... do you need me to go into the bedroom...?"
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It's her, it must be. It must be her that Alice meant. There are plenty of women with red hair in the world, but how many of them have fed him in a way that kept them breathing and whole and moving? How many of them has he, with his icy skin and leashed-up monster inside, kept warm?
Which leads to the larger question of how he's ever going to pitch this. The certainty of it has sunk into him, tethered him to her, and he knows leaving her would make him ache in almost the way being apart from Alice makes him ache. But from what he knows of her, her life has been death. Her meaningful connections with people have been fleeting, or built on conditions that she herself sets. She's never known something like this, and worse, she never plans to, and she's made peace with that, of a kind. As much peace as she ever allows herself.
He could still be wrong. He's moving too slowly now, noticeably too slowly, as he reaches out and avoids touching her skin but hooks a lock of her red hair over a finger, and draws it gently along, and lets it fall again and pulls his hand back. "That morning pick-me-up you so kindly provided," and his voice is lower, a little hoarse with bewilderment now, "was that something you were planning on doing often?"
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"...I was planning on it," she responds finally, her eyes flickering from the hand that had touched her hair before returning to his face. It really is absolutely absurd, how handsome he is. Natasha usually finds herself attracted to the larger ones, muscular men who look like they can handle themselves in a fight and Jasper is much leaner than anybody she's given a second glance. It's the way that the light hits him though, and hits his eyes, that holds her attention.
"It didn't seem like it had done much but you enjoyed it so I thought that it was just a little thing I could do for you in the mornings. Keep your hunger a little more at bay." Her tongue darts out quickly to wet her lips before she moves a hand to brush her hair behind her ear, her shiver subsiding now that she's this close to warmth. "It looks like it's working better than I thought though." She's referring to here, right now. How close he is to her.
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"I'd like that," he says at last, a little helplessly, letting his head fall back to rest against the stone behind him, eyes still on her. "I should tell you something. It's something I've only just recalled, and now that I've brought it to mind I can't imagine how it didn't occur earlier, but I suppose I have been...somewhat distracted."
He shakes his head, looking away, staring at the window, his usual perch, then dropping his eyes, watching the play of firelight and shadow on the stone hearth. It's more than he usually moves, it could almost be termed fidgeting, as he searches out the best way to prove that he isn't mocking her for the feelings he's picked up, he isn't playing games with her. "You're not going to believe it, I think. From what I know of you. Or you'd likely rather not. But I told you before that I'm no liar, and I know you believed that."
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"Well I can't believe you if you don't tell me," she points out with a raised eyebrow of suspicion. "And if you like feeding in the morning then I'll just keep doing that for you, I don't mind. But you look like you're about to tell me that you need a coffin to sleep in at night or something." She says it with a half-joke in her voice, but it's still obvious that she's unsettled by his behavior. She even moves, reaching out as if to touch his hand before quickly catching herself, and Natasha frowns a little before pulling her hand back to fold them in her lap instead.
"Sorry..." she frowns. "Yes. I believed that you aren't a liar, and you're making me nervous, Jasper. What's going on?"
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He looks at the fire, roaring now, burning through the birch logs he'd brought back and split earlier that day. It makes good firewood, a dry paper birch, he'd remembered that. There'd been a time, after all, when he'd needed a fire to stay warm.
"She didn't know anything more, couldn't see anything, but she said I—" He looks back at her and falters. No, he can't say it straight out, he can't quote her. It's too new, this slender thing forming, it's too brittle to risk her slamming herself behind her walls again and shattering it. "She said she saw me bringing this woman back with me." Now the corner of his mouth pulls up in a little smile. "I've been racking my brain, but you seem to fit that description awfully neatly."
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He falters and that's his mistake. Natasha picks up on it immediately, he's not lying but he's hiding something and she stares at him with suspicion that's evident enough on her face where he doesn't have to feel it coming off of her. "...You want me to come with you?" He's smiling, and that's rare too. "I can't." She says it before she really thinks about it, her eyes searching around the house now as if she's looking for the reason that prompted the immediate denial. Natasha doesn't run away with people, she's alone. That's how she's supposed to be.
Yet she has nothing to go back to. This time she has no agency to join and no partner to check on. She's reminded of her lack of purpose yet again and when she looks back at Jasper it's with a look that's almost unrecognizable to her. It doesn't seem to fit her face with how rare it is, and yet she looks hopeful; she feels it, and she hates that.
"How am I supposed to go back with you? I'm human, and - you're already struggling, won't your family have a hard time being around me? With what I am?"
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It's weakness, pure and simple. He'd lived his life through murder for eighty years. Even the fear and pain he'd felt from each victim hadn't stopped him from taking more, not until Alice had found him and taught him a different way. He'd never even considered it, and every day, it feels like it would be easier to just go back to what he'd known for so long. The scientist he'd ripped into, he could claim that as self defense if he felt like lying to himself. He couldn't claim it hadn't felt damned good. Even he can't lie that well to himself.
But that's an old argument, his frustration with his own thirst, and he forces his shoulders to relax, lets his head fall to one side when he looks at her again. "Alice's visions are subjective," he says quietly. "They change based on what people decide. It doesn't mean it's something that's going to happen, but...yes, I do want you to come with me. I...we," he corrects himself, because he wants to be as honest as he can without frightening her off, "we would like to see that future come about. That said, you would be walking into a house full of vampires."
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So why is she even considering it? He's acting oddly, touching her hair and staring at her as if she's suddenly grown a new face. He's asking her to leave everything behind and walk into what sounds like a death trap, there's a very realistic chance that she could die from this. Doesn't that just sound thrilling?
That familiar rush of adrenaline moves through her as if to finalize her decision.
"Alright." She nods once. "When are we going if you're too afraid to find them just yet? Are we going to wait around until you think it's safe?"
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Whatever horrors they'd had in store for him, he'd had the distinct sense, from the feel of the people who had worked on him and the way they'd been talking, that he'd been just one of many curiosities the organization had tucked away. There's a little surge of anger at that, but it's not a time for that, and he puts it aside, as he continues, "But you might be a focus of theirs, and we won't be traveling as fast together." Unless he turned her, but that doesn't bear thinking about.
"Looking for them blindly wouldn't be wise. Carlisle's gotten good at disappearing over the years, and with Edward and Alice with him, he'll have a head start on bolting if need be, wherever they've settled. But I know where they've lived before, and I know Carlisle sometimes likes to revisit old haunts, put down roots and live a normal life. We can start there." By the time he's finished, he sounds calm and authoritative, more certain about the path they'll take. But then he tilts his head toward her, inquisitive. "Unless you have other suggestions?"
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She stares at him from across the fireplace, searching his face again in a way of suspicion that says, she knows he isn't telling the whole truth. She's agreeing to this, but because she wants to. Not because she feels as if he's been completely honest. "I have what we'll need." She cocks her head to the in the direction of the bedroom. "I have twelve passports at this location, sixteen credit cards, around twenty seven identities, none of which are registered with Shield's databases. None of them have been used, so if it's me you're worried about, don't." She can't help but give him a sly smile. "Nobody finds me unless I want them to. That's kind of what I do."
She sighs, her head falling back so she can look up at the ceiling in thought. "We'd have to go back to the last home that you were located at so we could track them from there, that's roughly eight days of travel with a car, we can get one in the town closest to us if we buy it outright, we could us a credit card but I'd rather not use one of those until we have to so we can use the cash, I've got about twenty five thousand here that we can make work if we find them within the first couple of months of searching... longer since you don't eat." She looks back at him after she thinks it all aloud, and Natasha chews on the corner of her lip as she continues to run it all through her mind.
"It's up to you. I know I won't get caught. You have to be comfortable with that. I can wait until you are."
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"I can make a call and have a fresh ID of my own in two days at the most. I have a source. He is reliable." A healthy combination of money and fear kept him that way, as well as Jasper's ability to tell if Jenks was ever lying. Twenty years and counting thus far, and not a peep out of him. "But in the meantime, I trust you. It shouldn't be so difficult to find a car that will get us there, inconspicuously. That, I am comfortable with."
As promised, it wasn't difficult at all to find a low-profile vehicle for a decent price, cash on the table, at one of the lower-end dealerships. Jasper had offered to drive, but he'd agreed with her logic that she ought to stay behind the wheel during the day, to avoid any unfortunate eye-catching sparkle on the sunny freeways. She drove during the day, with infrequent breaks, and listened to music constantly, and turned up the volume and sang along when she judged him to be insufficiently enjoying a song. It got a smile out of him more often than not, which, based on the warm satisfaction that rolled his way, had always been the ultimate goal. He drove at night, all night, stopping only to refuel with Natasha curled in the back, sound asleep, and they never stopped moving. Somehow, the increased proximity of her didn't make him anxious or push the limits of his control. Something of the opposite, in fact, which he chalked up to familiarity and their shared urgency. There just wasn't time to think about that.
Forks is a quiet place by nature, the little stirring of the Cullens' sudden departure already rippling out and fading into the pool of routine that Carlisle had judged so restful for all of them. They'd managed less than a year there before needing to bolt, but the house is still there, empty and locked up tight. It's just after dusk when they arrive, but Natasha is still driving, no point in swapping for such a short time. When she pulls into the driveway, Jasper gets calmly out of the car and enters a long number on the garage keypad, smiling in satisfaction when it grinds open.
The row of cars is still there, with just enough room on the end for theirs. It will look thoroughly out of place next to the Mercedes, the Volvo, Emmett's souped-up truck, but the sight of the vehicles makes him relax more than he'd expected. It's not home, they're just things, the family isn't here, but it's familiar. It's something he'd predicted that's come to pass, a consistency. The invaders hadn't taken everything from him after all.
"Plenty of room upstairs," he calls over to Natasha as he closes the garage door behind the car, locks them in. "I doubt anyone would mind whichever room you picked. There are beds in most of them. Esme and Carlisle were sticklers for detail."
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When they finally reach Forks she follows his guidance until she's pulling into a garage with an array of cars that speak for themselves. Her eyes roam over all of them, and she can't help but smile to herself as she takes it all in. The M3, Tony. The Volvo, Bruce, the truck, Thor... she finds herself being reminded of them more and more lately. It's almost as if she misses them.
"Do you bother keeping food in the house?" Probably not. She wanders past him as they move into the house so she can explore the place. "Probably not, right?" She moves back to him after checking the immediate area, and she looks up at him before folding her arms across her chest. She's closer to him now, but after sitting in a car with him for days, proximity doesn't seem like it's as much of an issue. "Are you sure you want to stop here? We can keep working, see what we can track and keep moving. A bed sounds amazing but I don't mind foregoing one for a couple of more nights." She pauses. "I do need a shower though. And clothes, if you think there's anything here that will fit me."
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