Blood Moon [a Twilight Saga FanFiction]

Male Bonding - Igor's POV

THE SUN WAS RISING ON A NEW WEEK, a new month, and Mary Alice's first day of school in Canada.
     "Mary Alice!" Elizabeth yelled as we got back into the house. We had given Mary and Jasper privacy during the days and nights, but now Mary had an act to play.
     I admired her bravery. There weren't many vampires I knew who'd willingly get between newly coupled vampires.
     I heard a groan from there room, of annoyance or pleasure? Either way, I was attempting and probably failing, to suppress a smirk as I readied for my day. I was on call and not needed in any facility I had signed up to work in, so I'd be home all day, with Jasper.
     "Oh, no you don't! You start school today and I am not pulling you out for another year or three so you can have sex!"
     Someone flipped someone over in their room. Miss Elizabeth approached their door.
     "Don't make me come in there, Mary, you know I will!"
     "Alright! Alight!" Mary yelled. "Stay out! I'm getting ready!"
     Jasper was chuckling from inside their room.
     My Miss Elizabeth, the ultimate terrifying mother no one could mess with. By the Lord she was perfect.
     "I want you downstairs in two minutes, Mary, or so help me I'm dragging you to the car and to school naked."
     I buried my face in a book to hide my grin. Did she realise how attractive she was when she did that?
     I peered over the pages when she walked down the stairs, coat over her shoulder as she did her hair up in a messy top bun.
     "Not a top bun, love," I told her and she looked at me with a questionable face. "Much too attractive."
     After a brief pause, she finished doing her bun, then rushed over to kiss me.
     I forgot all about my book and slid my hands around her waist. The kiss instantly heating me up.
     "Ah ah ah," Miss Elizabeth chuckled and pulled my hands off her. "I have work. Tonight."
     "Tonight," I promised her.
     Mary came rushing down the stairs, carrying her bag, dressed in only the best and most fashionable clothing for the era, and carrying two umbrellas.
     "You'll need it today, Liz," she said and threw one of the two to Elizabeth who caught it without turning her head.
     "Noted."
     "Bye, Jasper! See you tonight!" Mary blew a kiss up the stairs and Miss Elizabeth winked at me before they both ran to the car and drove off.
     Jasper slowly walked down the stairs.
     "School," he said with a visible, and audible, shudder. "That'll be strange."
     "You'll get used to it." I returned to my book.
     "Are you not going out also?" 
     "I'm on call, so I'm here unless a facility needs me," I stated. "Why? Thinking of having a little hunt?"
     "No," he answered a little too quickly.
     I looked over my book to him as he rushed down the stairs to look at the bookshelf.
     "You know, I've been in the position you're facing now," I said, remembering the days after the asylum burnt down. When I decided to fully convert to Elizabeth's diet and stay with her. "The choice, to convert to her diet and make her happy, or try and make it work without changing your ways. Though, for you, it might be easier. Converting to our diet means you will no longer have to feel the emotions of your victims."
     "I..." Jasper began to respond. "Animals also feel emotions."
     "I doubt you'll be able to feel theirs," I guessed. He had never mentioned or behaved as such in the other timeline. "As for the actual longevity of the conversion..."
     I put my book down when Jasper turned to face me from the bookshelf.
     "I won't lie to you, Major, it is difficult. Even after all these years and I've been with this diet now for two centuries in this timeline. I still sometimes, find it difficult. Because I can remember as easy as if it were this morning and it will be the same for you. You will remember what they taste like, how each individual scent translates to taste..." I had to stop myself. I could feel the flow of the venom seeping into my mouth, just remembering that man in England 1658... my last human kill in this timeline. "It will be difficult, but if you chose to stick with it, for Mary, I promise you it will be worth it."
     "Mary said that you were a doctor?" Jasper asked.
     "Not the medical kind of doctor," I chuckled. "No. I could never be the kind of doctor Miss Elizabeth and her brother, Carlisle, are. Too much blood at such close proximity. Too close to how I used to live."
     "How did you used to live? If I may know."
     "Once upon a time," I chuckled to myself. "I used to solo run an asylum. It was a small and horrible place. Dark and dank, Miss Elizabeth called it. No humans ever visited and families threw their unwanted to me knowing they'd never come out alive. My meals were offered to me in an easy, silver, padded platter and it was how I lived for a very long time. Until it burnt down, nearly taking me with it, then as I had lost everything I decided to change my ways. Miss Elizabeth had brought light into my dark, dank asylum, and I liked the change. So I kept it."
     Jasper had smiled when I started talking about Miss Elizabeth.
     "How do you control the thoughts?" Jasper asked. He had stopped and was staring at a particular book on the shelf. Nothing interesting, just another war story published by a veteran probably pushed by their psychologist to help them to cope through narrative methods.
     I laughed. Something in his stance and posture told me he wasn't talking about the bloodlust anymore.
     "You don't," I answered. "The thoughts are always there, as are the visuals and the desires. You just learn how to manage them, work around or with them, or distract yourself from them. We all find the distractions that work best for us. For Elizabeth, it is her art and her work, for me, my books and work."
     He moved from the books and began looking at the few artworks that Elizabeth had hanging in this room. So I returned to my book.
     I had nearly reached the end when Jasper made his way back upstairs and walked into her studio, probably to look at more bits of art, he stopped in front of one I knew well. It followed us in every house. Elizabeth's painting of the final battle between vampire kind of the Volturi. I had never looked deeply at that painting myself, as every time I thought of it I remembered the feeling of the fire on my skin. Elizabeth's face as I died.
     That image planted firmly behind my lids now, I closed my book and joined Jasper in her studio to feel closer to her. I looked at the piece she had started when Jasper joined us, she hadn't been able to finish it before we had left so they could have some privacy.
     "You died first," Jasper said, still looking at the same picture. 
     Should have known this conversation would happen. "Yes," I answered.
     "Do you remember what it felt like?"
     "Yes."
     He finally turned away from the picture to face me. I felt a wave of comfort and warmth wash over me, it gave me the confidence to know that everything was okay now. I felt cool, washing away the lingering feeling of the murdering flames.
     I had to laugh at Jasper's efforts.
     "Major, I have been dealing with the memory of the burn since 1658," I said. "Though you are very talented and I thank you for your efforts, there is no need. There was much greater pain than the flames witnessed while I died."
     Jasper turned back to the painting, still not easing his talents on me. I still felt calm, at ease. Yes, I could remember Elizabeth but the memory did not make me burn as much as it normally did.
     "A greater pain than being burnt?" Jasper asked.
     "She witnessed it," I explained. "My death. Her face was the last thing I saw as I burnt, and it was so painted with fear and a sadness that she had never worn before. The pain of knowing I caused her that pain? The fire and death was nothing compared to that."
     "And then you woke in the past?" Jasper asked. I could hear a smile in his voice.
     I chuckled at the new memory. "One moment I'm watching Miss Elizabeth react to my death, the next I'm leaning over a man in 1658, after draining his blood. To say it was strange would be an understatement. But I was suddenly very glad I had been in England at the time. There have only been two times that made me as happy as I was when I saw her as a human and alive. When she agreed to be mine and being called 'Dad'."
     "You're a father?"
     "Impossibly so," I said and had to laugh again. "You're going to experience a lot when it comes to half-breeds. Half-human and half-vampire."
     "That's impossible." He turned back to me, a look of scepticism across his brow.
     "You'll learn," I said and pulled out one of the eldest sketchbooks Miss Elizabeth had from her immortal life. The one that I knew Miss Elizabeth started when she was a newborn to help her remember her new human life, well, for the first we pages. After that, it was all Verity.
     I handed the sketchbook to Jasper and he immediately began to go through it.
     "Her name is Verity. She's the first of her kind though there are and will be others. Children born from human mothers, and a vampire father. There have been only two out of the eight half children, who's mothers didn't die. Well, in this timeline only one, so far."
     "Verity... Mary told me about her. She's with Carlisle right now, isn't she?" Jasper asked.
     "Her uncle," I nodded. "Did Mary tell you about Miss Elizabeth and Carlisle?"
     He shook his head slowly.
     "You'll maybe understand better once the final event has passed. Miss Elizabeth and Carlisle found each other in the last timeline, reunited as humans once we were all sent back. Carlisle... took care of her," as best he could, "and made sure she got at least part of the human life she deserved to have. They've been close since then. They were lucky they were bitten on the same evening."
     When Jasper didn't continue his questioning, I went back to my books. Jasper looked around the house, both at the house itself, art, or more books. And I let his thoughts rest with him.