I own nothing of Twilight or its characters.

AHHH!I know, I'm so sorry. I started this story at 22…and now I'm a few years older, much more tired, and know more about law than I'm ever inclined to use. Please accept this chapter as a peace offering for the time being. It's short and not an end to the story, but it's something. I promise to update more frequently, much more frequently, so that I can put this to rest. This is copyrighted shtuff, so please don't steal/copy (not that you would, you're all awesome). And check out my other stories, they need some love apparently. Thank you so much for reading and for your lovely reviews!

This chapter does deal with some sensitive historical matter and should be regarded as such. I have no agenda, and all historical detail is solely used to progress the story.

"Mistah Jonas." Jasper's irritation hung heavily in his voice, rendered insubstantial and weak from his exhaustion. While he had avoided deferring to the whiskey bottle for the past few nights, his nightmares had compounded upon themselves in ugly, grotesque forms, stalking him into the gray break of the dawn. His only relief was in waking and even that was short-lived as the golden rays of the afternoon streaked into the estate house, through a north facing window that had been cracked open in hope of reviving the circulation of fresh air.

Whatever air had managed to flow through, though, rested stale and dry and Jasper lifted a hand to scratch through the itchy sweat on his scalp. The words before him blurred into jumbled heaps and his eyes almost crossed in the effort of excavating the meaning behind the notice. There was a separate contract attached and the pages rustled, goading his annoyance at their thick, indecipherable meaning.

"Mistah Jonas!"

"Do not yell, Young Jasper." An elderly, hunched black man chuckled shortly on the stairs before his laughter dissipated into wheezing. "An old man like me don't have the oiled limbs to move at the speed of you young squires."

Jasper's gaze automatically fixed on his thigh, which had taken to giving off light spasms during periods of inactivity, even while the pain had abated somewhat. He rubbed it reflexively as he bitterly mulled that while he did have youth, he had lost its benefits in more ways than one.

His leg and entrenched memories were testaments to that.

Mr. Jonas reached the final stair and the floorboards creaked like a series of heralds that announced his arrival.

He set himself in the open doorway of Jasper's study, one arm bent at his hip as the other steadied itself upon the frame as he gave Jasper a mockingly agitated glare.

"What are you hollering about, boy? It better have been something important for me to climb the stairs. My bones can't take much o' that anymore."

Jasper winced at the reprimand and was properly abashed over the fact that he had been insensitive to the condition of the man before him. Mr. Jonas had been born into slavery on the Whitlock Ranch, first under the ownership of Jasper's grandfather. He had undergone three generations of servitude, answering to a 'master', becoming a fixture amongst the stables and horses, tending to the longhorn cattle that had long since succumbed to disease or been traded into the market. By the time Jasper had grown, his father and grandfather had amassed a total of thirteen slaves, some being the progeny of previous generations. A cycle that never broke and never ceased.

Until the year Jasper returned from war. Jasper had watched in quiet contemplation, and one could even say relief, as the younger generation of former slaves pleaded gently with their parents and eventually convinced them to enter in a mass exodus the day after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Most had been initially frightened, assuming the federal government to be executing an insincere ploy of mass proportions, but left in hurried droves when they realized their movements and willingness to leave were not condemned.

This was not something Jasper had fought to preserve.

The institution of slavery had, at most, been something that gained nothing but his apathy, neither condoning nor preaching against the vileness of the practice.

But returning, haunted and utterly defeated, he had garnered some impossible compassion from those Jasper's family had forced into possession and labor, and they altered the landscape of his perspective.

Rose Sharon, the woman with smooth molasses skin who spun beautiful music into the meals she had prepared in his kitchen, had even set down her belongings to give him one long appraising stare. She had sympathetic eyes and he couldn't bear the shame that flooded through him

"I'll pray for you," she said, not one hint of insincerity and he knew she meant what she said.

That she would pray for the deadened soul within him that was mirrored through his blank, unseeing stare.

With the dusty road settling under the eager march of the rightfully redeemed, Jasper had wandered to the kitchen, seeking some form of solace within its domestic confines. He had not noted the absence of one individual in the departing crowd.

Mr. Jonas sat in blatant refusal in one the carved chairs flanking the wooden table; stony, stubborn, and resolute. Before Jasper could even drop open his mouth in question, Mr. Jonas interrupted. Jasper stood frozen and aghast, when Mr. Jonas gave an answer that had not been made apparent to him until he had been faced with a choice.

"I'm staying." He waved off Jasper's ardent plea that he was in no way obligated. "I know. I'm not a fool, Young Jasper." Jasper bowed his head, conceding his respectful silence upon the man whose blood had seemed more his own than that of his family. "I'm old, and I'm so tired. There is no reason for me to go searching out a new life." Jasper flinched, the weighty sadness of that statement not overtly emotional but bluntly stated. "I've been with your family since before your daddy entered this world, bawling and kicking at all hours of the night. I've only known this." He waved his arm carelessly above his head and his expression softened so that Jasper would be partially appeased. "I want to stay. I'm not sure what you think was gonna happen, but I'm not moving. Maybe if I was younger, there might be something out there for me, but… No sir, my belongings are gonna be right up in that guesthouse, and you're helping me unload them up those damn stairs."

Jasper could only chortle in agreement, the laughter a hollow echo in his chest. Who was he to argue with the one man who could stand to even bear with his company?

"My cane doesn't move well up the stairs, Mr. Jonas. But the wind may pick up and assist my legs."

"Your cane is an excuse. I don't ever want to hear excuses from you, Young Jasper. Now get cracking, those clouds are looking to settle right over this land and rain us back inside before we can even start."

And so they lived, both passing the time in the company of each other, neither resentful nor hopeful. Simply existing to an end.

Back in Jasper's study, Mr. Jonas' eyes sparkled with mirth as he assessed the harried man before him

"You've been in a foul state, Young Jasper." He observed shrewdly, noticing the tick in Jasper's left eye. Jasper's hand flew violently forward and the papers on his writing desk wafted towards the floor, lazy and unaffected by their owner's temper.

"I've had these papers for three days and I've yet to actually set eyes on some small shred of what they're asking of me." His head throbbed unnaturally and his fingers cupped loosely over his brow, pressing into his temples. Jonas picked up on the growing agitation that would inevitably lead to some form of Jasper drinking himself into a lowly stupor. He had been witness to the all too common and frequent scene of a sloshed, desperate man who would barely be able to even string two words together in the name of God.

"Mm, if his mama saw him now." And Jonas was almost secretly thankful that Mrs. Whitlock had succumbed to consumption almost five years before Jasper's anticlimactic return home.

Trying to ease over the turbulent waters that were Jasper's mercurial moods off late, Jonas shrugged. And nodded. And turned to leave to bide himself the time he needed to travel back down the stairs. His bones were aching more and more each day and he could feel the full weight of his years and Jasper's sorrow. The burden felt as if it could curve his spine.

Jasper had returned home from the ball that night a few weeks ago as a changed man, almost alight from within and exuding a daring confidence that had seemed to surprise not just Mr. Jonas, but even the few animals kept in the back of the estate. The scene was bizarre, Jasper disbelievingly laughing at some invisible thing on his parlor mantle, draining the contents of a whiskey bottle into the dead, ashy interior of the fireplace, while the animals' braying, bucking, and howling faded into the sweltering night. Jonas had shaken his head in disbelief and chalked it up to the full moon, an exceptionally good night, and another partial swing into insanity.

It did not last long, to Jonas' dismay.

Jasper's good cheer finally left him after a few days, as he had finally convinced himself that he had made so little of something into so much of nothing. His hopeful glances toward the window and persistent inquiries over insubstantial invitations or unassuming notes delivered through the mail were only met with blank stares and shrugs from Jonas. Jasper eventually faded into himself once again, enveloping himself and his surroundings in a rueful silence.

And then the packet of papers that Jasper had swept to the floor in his study had arrived from the solicitor's office, and well…Jasper's proclivity for drunkenly cursing the Lord and his creations had increased tenfold in the past few days.

The wind abruptly shifted as a cloud of dust blew in through the window and Jasper started, accidentally inhaling too deeply and hacking out an unbidden cough to expel the foreign elements. His hand rose up to the window's latch to close it against the unyielding dust in the interest of his respiratory state, but his eye caught something cautiously making its way up the plantation pathway. Apparently the wheels on the goddamn contraption were the instigating factor, kicking up billows of dust and small debris and leaving deep furrows in the hard packed dirt path in its wake.

It's rickety wheels rumbled closer and Jasper's annoyance abated, giving way to faint astonishment.

He could only stare.

It was well known in these parts that to arrive unannounced on someone else's establishment, say onto the property of a war veteran with fragmented sanity, was justifiable reason for the owner to greet you with a certain amount of trepidation and a well-oiled pistol. You could thank the war for that particular form of hospitality.

But Jasper could only stare.

The unadorned exterior of the carriage gave no indication of its current occupants and, as it made its way even close, Jasper's curiousity and puzzlement grew.

What's this now?

He never had visitors. No callers. No express invitations to the outside world.

His aloof nature had done enough for people to call his name in admiration, but not enough for them to cross the invisible boundary into fraternal familiarity.

He was just fine with the current state of his acquaintances.

And yet…

The hazy remembrances of a few weeks ago pushed through the denial he had walled over the strange encounter, and he almost allowed himself to believe something he wasn't quite sure he had any business in believing.

Jasper had not seen Leah again and she had not made herself known in any obvious way, through the chattering mouths of society or even a slip of a note sent through a mutual acquaintance. They had many, he was sure of it. She would not have been there that night, otherwise.

He had almost, on three separate occasions, convinced himself to ride smartly into town and ask for her whereabouts. Or her guardian's whereabouts. Or her stabled horses' whereabouts, for Christ's sake. He knew he would invariably end up in the Governor's mansion for some façade of a social call over sweetened lemonade and fussed over greetings, awkwardly engaging the governor to tease out a name of a location.

And the questions would start.

He could care less what any of them thought, they could all rightly march into hell with their inane gossip and insincere sense of prestige. But he was certain word of his desperate visit would reach her, and then what would she think?

Though he thought it unbecoming, Jasper still had some store of pride. He had no right to it, but it was there, souring his thoughts until he gave up any designs to go inquiring after her. He sat vigil in his enormous inheritance, still and silent as weathered rock, deepening into some new, darker depression that had unbelievably eluded him until then.

He simply did not know what to do, and now a carriage was noisily marking its path closer to his home. To him.

Electricity crackled through him, charging the hair on his neck and arms and he began to shake.

He realized his frozen form was highly visible through the open window and, not knowing if his silhouetted frame would be observed with welcome or alarm, he backed away. All the way. His back met the wall of his study with a solid thud and his breaths grew more shallow and tinged with uneasy rasps as he struggled to control the inundation of thoughts and speculation.

It couldn't be, could it?

He had no way of knowing.

Jonas, startled into returning by the sudden movement and the stuttered gasps floating to him through the doorway, observed the long suffering Jasper, his back flush against the wall.

It was as if the man had seen the finals days of his deliverance and he was struck dumb by the awesome scene he had witnessed.

"Young Jasper? Are you well?" Mr. Jonas called out, distressed and somewhat spooked by the countenance of the man directly before him. It was chilling, the transformation Jasper had achieved.

Jasper swallowed thickly once, twice, attempting to make some coherent response that wouldn't betray what he was feeling.

"Mr. Jonas," he managed to croak out, his voice barely cracking above a loud whisper. "I do believe some guests have arrived."

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