“I was in Philadelphia. There was a storm, and I was out during the day — something I was not completely comfortable with yet. I knew standing in the rain would attract attention, so I ducked into a little half-empty diner. My eyes were dark enough that no one would notice them, though this meant I was thirsty, and that worried me a little. She was there — expecting me, naturally. She hopped down from the high stool at the counter as soon as I walked in and came directly toward me. It shocked me. I was not sure if she meant to attack. That’s the only interpretation of her behavior my past had to offer. But she was smiling. And the emotions that were emanating from her were like nothing I’d ever felt before.”
I wanted an imagine Jasper x reader x Alice where the reader was Victoria's sister and when they meet at the baseball game Alice and Jasper feel the connection with her so when James tries to attack Bella and everyone gets defensive the reader apologizes for them Before going, let's say that the reader recently moved to Forks to "finish high school" and the three of them would have gone to visit there before that happened, but as they didn't get along, the reader decides to leave there, but Alice and Jasper Don't they leave it because they are destined? please
So I (S) wrote this because K is a horrible human and has been procrastinating like a champ.
Either way, I am not entirely sure if I fully understood what you wanted to happen, so I just kind of pulled a bunch of ideas out of my ass in hopes it would come somewhat close.
Tldr: procrastionation makes for author changes, promt was kind of confusing
~S
Word count: 1049
Y/n has never really been able to make decisions on her own. When she was little her parents would rule over her. And when she was older and worked she had her employer that would tell her what to do, be it with words or abuse. When she and her sisters fled she had them tell her what to do.
And that never really changed. Now, so many years later, she still had one of her sisters, Victoria, tell her what to do. And to a degree she was glad. Making decisions on her own scared her a little, or a lot if she was honest.
Life changed since Victoria turned her when she was just a mere 17 years old. They weren’t alone anymore. Victoria found love in James, a vampire that y/n could only describe as somewhat nice on a good day and downright psychopathic on a not so good day. They also found company in Laurent. She liked Laurent more than James, although she wouldn’t admit it out loud to anyone.
They constantly were on the move, sometimes more nomadic, sometimes a little more settled. Right now it was the latter and they resided in a shabby little hut on the outskirts of a little town called Forks. And with settling down they had to come up with stories that would fit their looks and would grant them some time to stay. Victoria and James were a married couple and both were freelance artists looking for inspiration. Y/n was the little sister in her final year of high school that had to tag along because their parents weren’t really that great. And Laurent? He was some kind of uncle that stayed with them.
They didn’t meet other vampires all that often. Most were hiding from everything and everyone. Some were truly hiding. Some were only hiding in plain sight and would share glances telling them to hurry out of their territory. So it was a surprise when she went to school for the first time and immediately came face to face with several other vampires.
She had told Victoria about the encounter later in the day.
“If they try hurting you, show them hell,” Victoria had told her. “You are a force of nature, remember? You are fast, faster than any of them, I promise you. You have teeth that could tear them apart and you are strong.” Sometimes it was jarring how brutal Victoria could be when she was so caring and soft as a human.
Victoria caressed y/ns cheek softly and smiled gently. “I know you are gentle and hate hurting people. But please promise me that you won’t let them hurt you. I can’t lose another sister. I can’t lose you,” she whispered.
So she went to school and kept her distance. Sure, she could feel their stares and could almost feel how judging they were and how much they wanted her gone, but they left her alone. The uneasiness made her almost go whining to Victoria, begging her to move somewhere else, or become nomadic again.
But it wasn’t until they all went out to scour the area for prey that everything would hit a high in terms of tension. They found the vampires that were also in town on a field as they were playing baseball. And they had a human with them. Y/n found it a little funny how their situations were so different but to someone from the outside it would look like they were mirroring each other. The human being hid behind the vampires, y/n being shielded from the other vampires by Victoria, James and Laurent.
James and Victoria tried to lure information out of the others, make them let them play with them to find their weaknesses. But then they smelled the human. Victoria and Laurent hid it better than James. He decided on that spot that he wanted no one but that human. And y/n couldn’t blame him. The human smelled incredible and it also almost made her leap at her to devour her.
Y/n tried to silently slip away and just as she thought it worked she heard two of the vampires follow her. She ran. She ran like she had never before as fear began to fill her.
“Leave me alone!” She screamed. They just began running faster and y/n picked up more in pace. “I said leave me alone! I have done nothing!” She screamed again.
She then did the worst mistake of her life. She turned her head to see how close they were. The movement slowed her down enough for the tiny vampire to slam into her and knock her to the ground. Her, what y/n presumed to be, mate quickly caught up to them as well and watched the both of them.
“Get off of me! I will rip you to shreds! I will kill you!” Y/n screeched and flailed around.
“You wouldn’t do that,” said the small one with a big smile on her face.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about my sister and our companions. I don’t know why they did that, please let me go,” Y/n begged, “I can’t die yet. I have to be there for my sister, please, she needs me.”
“We could never kill you.” The older one grabbed the smaller ones shoulder to make her ease off a little.
“I am Alice and this is Jasper,” the smaller one said, “we could never hurt you, y/n. And you could never hurt us.”
“How do you know my name?” Y/n was certain that this is what dying felt like, this uncertainty and confusion.
“I can tell the future. And Jasper is exceptionally empathetic. We figured something out that you haven’t yet, sweetie. We are meant to be. You being here, us being here, this whole mess with your clan, it’s destiny. All of it needed to happen for us to meet. We needed this to find the last puzzle piece. You are our key to eternal happiness, and we are yours, if you let us be.” Alice looked deeply into y/ns eyes and y/n could just tell that she was telling nothing but the truth. And it scared her.
JaliceWeek21: Day 8 - Powerswap: Variable Stars 1/3
This is the LAST PROMPT. And such a good one, and I was just... stuck. And it’s only half done, but I thought I’d start posting it now to motivate me.
This started out as a joke and grew feelings and logic and ugh.
I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll do a round-up of everything I wrote once it’s finished <3
variable stars.
mary alice brandon.
What did you think would happen?
The panic is an animal scrambling to get out, pushing against her chest and her throat. She tries not to cry, but she’s shaking and she’s heard the screams that comes out of the room at the end of the hall.
Her face aches, where the orderly hit her to get her to move faster. She’s ice cold - it might be winter, she’s lost track of time - but other than the ugly brown sweater she’s been given, the one that hangs to her knees because nothing fits her right.
“Please,” she asks in a thin voice. When she was little, she had had a lisp. Her mother had called it ‘darling’, but her father wanted her to speak properly. And when she couldn’t, it was better she stayed quiet. She out-grew it eventually, but sometimes, when she’s tired or frightened, she can hear the ghost of it - another part of her old self that haunts her.
(She remembers her mama wasting away, lying on the chaise in the sitting room, looking like she was fading away. She’d sing and cuddle the new baby, but Mary Alice got a kiss on the forehead and an apology, “I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so, so sorry.” She used to think that the apology was for dying and leaving Alice alone without a mother. She knows better now.)
They march her into the room, badly lit and tiny. She is stripped of her sweater and helped roughly onto the bed, with the tight sheet and the rubber rest for her head. The doctor looks at her like a dead thing, and her breathing speeds up. She tries to twist the hem of her clothing in her hands but they are quickly pinned and strapped to the bed, her ankles too (the straps are loose, she’s too small for this bed).
A hunk of greasy rubber is shoved into her mouth so far she nearly chokes; the taste of it is rancid and nausea swirls as she feels the indentations of other teeth, other mouths. She feels like she’s going to faint, everything is so blurry. But there’s a slap to her face and something is fitted around her head and no one has spoken to her, acknowledged her or explained.
She’s never been so frightened in her life. She’s shaking and the nurse stares down at her with a bored expression on her face, and there’s three blood drops on the woman’s uniform.
One, two, three.
And Mary-Alice Brandon screams.
—
(She was thirteen years old. A ward of the state. A hopeless case. The perfect little guinea pig for the experimental new treatment. Much more efficient than chasing a screaming child around, to force the Metrazol down her throat.)
(They should have waited until she was older, of course. But the doctor’s ego and arrogance were too much, made him too impatient to wait. It wasn’t so much that the future changed - it did, of course - but that the girl who was little Mary-Alice was altered, irreversibly and forever. And that made all the difference.)
—
Three. Three becomes her number.
It took three men to drag her from home in the dead of night (one broke her arm. How pleased her father must have been that they were in such a large house where there were no close neighbours to hear her screams.)
She was thirteen - one-three - when they first push electricity into her poor brain. (Unlucky Mary-Alice.)
She gets three shots, morning and night, bruises blooming like ink in water. (They made her head swim and the world soft. They make her stomach twist and her bones ache. They make her words slow and run together. They steal all of her away.)
She has three different orderlies - the one that twitches and is cold as ice (he doesn’t hit her); the one that calls her names and threatens her (he hits and slaps and pushes her); and the one that comes in to her cell at night (he touches her too much, and is always the one that takes her to the bath.)
Three times a week, she’s marched to the door at the end of the hall and they hook her into the machine and they look at her like she’s something wrong and foul. (She screams and cries and vomits and wets herself. She breaks an ankle because the loops are too loose and she thrashes. They were never fitted to hold a child down.)
She starts looking for threes. She’s broken two bones, she needs to break another. She sees two doctors who shake their heads and write down notes, and she wonders when they’ll bring in a third. She counts the bites of her food to keep them down, curdled and sour in her belly. She counts her steps everywhere she goes, counts the slaps and pinches and shoves they give her.
Three, three, three.
—
The fizz and pop of the machine steals things. It takes her awhile to realise that. At first, it was just time; hours vanish like smoke. Then it was words - she stammers and mumbles and slurs. Then it was memories, what happened before the room.
Then it’s her family, her mother’s face vanishing and her sister’s laughter fading.
(Someone said sorry to her a long time ago. It doesn’t soothe the hurt.)
Then it’s her full name. Mary-Alice Brandon. Mary-Alice.
Mary.
Alice.
(She doesn’t answer to Alice, only to Mary.)
Then it’s her vision. It goes blurry and dark around the edges, and even when she wakes up in her cot, it doesn’t go away. When she tells someone, they huff and shrug and dismiss it - it stops the pictures in her brain so it is worth giving up her sight.
They call her schizophrenic, a word that sounds like static, and a lot of other things. She hasn’t mentioned the visions in a long time; what good are they when she is locked up in cell? When she is convulsing in pain and forgetting everything she ever loved, and shivering in the dark?
(She learns to live without her sight. She relies on her visions sometimes, but mostly, herself. Fingers tracing walls, feet gingerly testing out uneven floor. They let her stumble, and mutter about her blank, cloudy stare. A doctor does examine her eyes, but there is nothing to be done. Perhaps they can prevent this happening to another patient, but for Mary-Alice Brandon, it’s just unfortunate.)
It steals everything except fear. It feeds the fear well, and she knows she’s going to die in this place, hollowed out so that the fear can fill her up. She can see the graves from the window of the laundry, where other patients have died. She has no illusions; those are the dead from the other wards. People who might have gotten to go home again, people who get to eat in a dining room, and take pills instead of shots, who knit for the soldiers and write letters to their loved ones.
People from the basement ward go on to their next life via the boiler room. She knows the stench of that intimately.
(Three people come to the hospital one day - a man, a woman, and a child; the day between her sessions. They are very important because she gets an extra bath and clean clothes, and the orderly brings her in a wheelchair. She cannot see them properly, just shadows and shapes in her gaze. The doctor makes them sit behind her as she answers questions and gives her puzzles to solve. She doesn’t know much, and she can’t get her hands to move properly or stop shaking. The man behind her keeps telling the doctor how ‘good’ it is, and she has a grim feeling her failure pleases him.)
(She’s going to die here, and end up being swept away with a broom.)
—
Three years.
It takes three years for them to break her, to curdle the fear in her heart to rage. To let hate swell in her heart. She fights back sometimes, learns to bite and scratch.
(They break her other arm, and there’s the third broken bone. That’s just fine with her, the heavy plaster cast makes a lovely noise against the face of the orderly who won’t stop touching her.)
She spits and swears and tells everyone the truth. A husband will die, a wife will run away. A child will drown. Debt, loss, prison, she spits her fortunes out with relish, and there are more shots and more slaps, but she doesn’t care.
(She fights like a feral cat when they take her to the room now, fights away from the pain of the device lighting up her brain. It can do nothing more for her, she knows that, than it already has and now they are just using it to cook her brain a little more, until she is soft and pliable like their other victims. She won’t go down like that, won’t let them make her into those people. She gets a few good hits in, and she’s sure they make the machine hurt her worse.)
The cold orderly is the only one who can manage her these days, and she is grateful when she becomes his problem. No more touching, no more hitting. He talks to her in a low, calm voice - “I cannot stop them or any of this yet, little one. But I can try to stop the worst of it.”
She lets him help. She is quiet and docile when he escorts her places. She takes her medications and does as she’s bid and it works, a little. She cannot escape the room at the end of the hallway, cannot stop all the slaps, but some of her bruises get to heal.
(When the cold sets in, he brings her clothes warm from the laundry; he smuggles her mugs of weak tea in tin cups, and swaps rancid porridge for an extra bit of stale bread on her tray. He lies to the doctors that she was ill, and unfit for her ice bath. He makes things a little better for her. In her dreams, she thinks about him falling in love with her, taking her away and marrying her. She doesn’t love him, but she sees her freedom in his kindness, and there are far worse ways to live than quietly married to such a man. If she ever had dreams for her life, the machine has eaten them all away and that’s comforting, because she would hate to realise how far she’s fallen.)
The shock therapy still demands its pound of flesh, and her memory gets worse. He writes her name in big black letters on the wall next to her pillow, but she certainly cannot see it to read it. So he carefully chips it into the wall, where her fingers can feel out the letters.
Mary-Alice. Mary-Alice. She is Mary-Alice.
(Sometimes he reads her things from her file. She’s sixteen years old. She’s from Biloxi, Mississippi. She is a ward of the state with no family - her surname is redacted in the earliest papers, and she is referred to as Miss Smith in all the later ones. She became blind when she was fourteen and a half. She is in the hospital for a laundry list of conditions that are, according to her doctors, incurable.
She has been here since she was twelve.)
The rage finds a good home inside of her. It wraps around the grief and fear, and it is comforting in a new way. It lays roots to remake her into something else, something she might be, could be. Nothing better nor worse.
Just different.
—
It all goes wrong on a Wednesday. She knows it is a Wednesday because it is a treatment day. It is also bath day, and the day the priest comes round to pray at their doors, too cowardly to venture closer to the insane, the stricken as if they are contagious or tainted, somehow.
(There are few in the basement that are truly terrible. They struggle and fight because of their fear of the pain, of the suffering, not for any other reason. Most of the patients are soft and dull, drugged and crippled into quiet obedience. There is no reason to fear them, truly. They’re all half-dead, anyway.)
It’s also a dreadful day because her orderly is not here, and they’ve been forced to deal with her alone. Her head rings from the hits she took, her shoulder aching. Her throat is sore and her stomach is churning and she is sick of hearing how God will forgive her and welcome her into His house. She has done nothing that requires forgiveness, her orderly assured her of that.
(She cannot remember his name, no matter how many times he tells her. He tells her it is okay. She will remember one day.)
“Shut up!” she finally screams at the priest, who is hidden in the hallway with his Bible and his sermon. “There is no God!” She means to say ‘here’, in this place, where an orderly held her under the water of her bath this morning to punish her, as she thrashed and struggled. Her chest still aches and she wishes she had drowned. She screams it over and over again, hot tears on her cheeks as her brain and mouth stutter and struggle to get the words out as she means them.
“God is dead (here)!”
“G-God is dead!”
“God dead!”
She can’t get it right, can’t untangle her words and thoughts to make sense and the frustration and weakness makes her cry harder, makes the words harder.
It’s the wrong thing to say anyhow, because then another orderly comes, and the priest is yelling at her, condemning her and then there are two nurses and a doctor and she gets to go to her standing appointment early because she’s behaving so badly, her arms bent behind her so she has to hunch over. The priest makes the sign of the cross over her and she spits and screams when one of the nurses slaps her.
(God is dead and so is logic. She never understood why they bathed her before they shocked her; she almost always wets herself, bites through her lip, or gets a nose bleed. She is always a reeking mess afterwards, and they act like they haven’t set her up for failure.)
She’s hurled on the bed, and held down, and the doctor holds her jaw so tight she knows there will be finger prints on her cheeks.
“We may have to increase your treatments, Mary, if you do not remember your manners,” he says, a cool and arrogant voice washing over her - he is just a wobbly shadow in her corrupted gaze.
She manages to spit on him, sort of, and he slaps her too, and jams the rubber mouth guard into her mouth, holding it there and forcing her to choke. She writhes and kicks and no one has tied her down yet.
They manage to restrain her, and she can feel the doctor’s pleasure as he pulls the lever and the pain…
… it is a wild thing, roaring through her like a fire. It burns like a fire too, and sinks into her brain, her bones, her mind and soul. It cripples her and changes her. It rattles around in her and all she can think is that one day she will hurt this doctor, hurt these people just as bad. She will burn the doctor to blistered flesh, to ragged charcoal, to see how fair and fine such treatment is. She has survived so long with this experimental treatment, with having different voltages, different wires and placements and techniques, without any gratitude or assurance.
Just the never-ending rolling pain and fear.
(And she opens her arms and her heart to that anger, that righteous fury, the power, and the creeping fear. It nestles deep and close, finally and indelibly rewrites Mary-Alice and what she will become.)
—
Her speech is nearly gone after. She slurs and mumbles and doesn’t get up off of her cot. It’s over for her, the last flicker of herself realises. They move her around like a marionette; she is just a bunch of loose limbs and dead eyes. They stick her with needles and smile at her, satisfied that she’s finally broken and docile.
(One step closer to the boiler in the basement.)
They watch her body arch in pain at the shock of an ice bath, watch her twitch and shake with another seizure, ones that have made her their home over the last few years. But these are getting worse, and sometimes there are only minutes before the next one wracks through her.
(They hurt her, make her body ache worse and her mouth taste like blood.)
Her cold orderly has returned, and he is still kind. He keeps her clean and warm, patiently feeds her dainty bites of inedible food. He talks to her and comforts her. When he thinks she is asleep, he tells her how unforgivable the state in which she lives is; that this was cruel and pointless, and she deserves so much better, so much more. He tells her of gardens and oceans, castles and beaches. He brings a flower, a leaf, some slightly greasy sheep’s wool that he guides her hands over so that she can remember good things.
(She dreams of a boy offering her a flower; it’s white.)
It’s only after she dreams of the man with the red eyes that she tries to talk again. She sees the man with ruby eyes, his mouth smeared scarlet. She hears screaming, desperate screaming and babbling, and then nothing. She sees her own body, her throat torn to meat, laid out in the surgical room in front of frowning doctors. They mutter and murmur and try to translate the mess of her throat, her broken legs, her cracked and torn nails, the three broken vertebrae.
Her nudity upon her discovery.
(Of course, it’s easy to say that the girl was insane, escaping and discarding her clothing getting attacked by wild animals - perhaps she fell, broke her legs and her back and that’s when the animals arrived on the hunt. Anyhow, it truly doesn’t matter. The girl is really a woman, and has been a ward of the state so long that only the very oldest workers recall her full name. She is wrapped up and sent to the basement, nothing more than a footnote in the day’s happenings.)
She wakes up panicking, and the nurses do not like her noise, and so they have extra shots for her, a straitjacket and a stern lecture. She gasps and croaks and tries to explain.
The cold orderly is there, trying to protect her from the rough treatment but disguised as trying to wrangle her. She tries to tell him, tries to explain there’s a hunter in their midst, a hunter coming for her to start with and maybe others but her head and tongue are muddled, so it just comes out as croaks of, “Red man, red man, red man.”
The shots pierce her flesh and she wails like a child because she doesn’t want to die like that.
Doesn’t want to die.
(She just wants to live. Just once. Just for a little while.)
—
The orderly is no fool.
But neither is the hunter.
The future ripples and changes once more.
—
Down south, amongst the dust and blood of the Wars, a soldier goes rogue, a Major deserts, and the Lady of Monterrey rages.
Up north, a family packs their things, ready to move on. Again.
And in the mud and mire of Mississippi, the girl who was supposed to be Alice Cullen stares dead-eyed into the stars as the venom creeps through her, changing her fate once and forever.
Man, I cannot believe we’re up to #10 (I’m kind of ready for Christmas - and summer - to be over, honestly).
To the fic!
(Another Alice AU! Human Alice AU! When human Alice is sent to a psychiatric hospital, she gets a vision of Jasper and heads off to find him, and then convince him to find the Cullens.)
//
The snow was up to his knees as he moved steadily through the forest. He kept his gaze straight ahead, though his stance looked awkward to anyone who might have seen him. He wasn’t moving at full speed, but faster than a human should have been capable of in such snow.
Eventually, he saw what he was looking for, finally.
The trees finally parted to reveal a large white house with a cheery red roof. The garden spilt right into the forest. Other than being a nice house, there was essentially nothing special about it.
He huffed, ducking through the last of the trees. They had made it. Hopefully in time.
“Almost there, darlin’,” he murmured.
As he crossed into the open land, five figures emerged from the house, suspicion radiating off them.
He keeps moving forward to them, picking up his pace slightly.
“I need help,” he said brusquely as he came closer, deciding to ignore the risk of their suspicion. If they chose to attack, it would be disastrous, but he didn’t have the time or power to take the cautious route. “Please.”
“How can we help you?” the eldest male asked politely, but cautiously. The stranger was scarred, and his clothing was a mismatched collection of not-quite worn, worn, and completely worn out. He stood oddly, his stance positively awkward, one that none of the residents could figure out.
The man heaved a sigh, and turned slightly. It took the family a moment to realize precisely what they were seeing.
His arms were looped around oddly, and the sneaker-clad foot was almost hidden by his arm. The eldest woman understood the quickest, gasping as they took the seen in. A girl was huddled against his back, her face waxy and pale, lips tinged blue, and layers upon layers of clothing wrapped around her. Her eyes were closed, and even from a distance, her breathing was a disjointed struggle. Her tiny arms were wrapped loosely around his neck.
She was human.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. “Please, please help us.”
//
The flashlight flickered over my face and I tried to relax my face. I only had a tiny window of opportunity and if the nurses found out that I was awake, they’d medicate me and it would be all over. No second chances.
After a few moments, the flashlight moved away from my face, and after a moment – the nurse checking on my roommate, who was thankfully drugged to the gills – and left, the door closing quietly.
And then I could hear the chime – shift change.
I slipped out of my bed, quickly folding the bedding so it looked like maybe I had burrito-ed myself in the blanket. I crept over to the wardrobe and grabbed my backpack and shoes.
I took a deep breath and slipped out of the room. Definitely no going back now.
The hallway was empty – everyone would be at handover, debriefing on who was having a good night, who was having a bad night and who was just being a pain in the ass. Only Jeffery, the security guard, and the admin monkey would be around. It was after midnight.
I crept down the hallway, towards the stairwell. There was only one way out without a security pass – the unbolted window in the storeroom on the first level. I scurried down the stairs, stopping only to pull a hoodie on over my pajamas and jam my feet into my sneakers.
The first floor was totally empty – it was where all the doctor’s offices were. The storeroom was the only one that had a proper key-lock instead of a pass-scanner, since it was just printer paper, paper towels and stuff like that.
But I didn’t have a key. This was where things would get complicated. I knew that the lock and handle was old, but the door was quite heavy. The only thing I had was a metal nail file I had stolen from a nurse to pry the handle off enough to push the door open.
Shouldering my bag, I pulled the file out of my pocket and jammed it between the wood and the metal and threw all my weight against it.
“Come on, come on,” I whispered, trying it again. There was a groan and the handle was clearly coming away. I threw every thing I had and there was a loud clunk as the handle dropped away, and the file snapped, slashing the palms of my hands. I kicked the door and threw myself against it, it finally swinging open, and I tumbled through, falling over a box of Styrofoam cups.
“Is someone down here?” Oh god, Jeffery. Where Jeffery was, the creepy orderly wouldn’t be far behind. I dragged myself to my feet. The window was right there, and I scrambled up the bookcase, unlatching the window and shoving it open, the screen banging loudly. And I scrambled through, tumbling out and into the dumpster below. Eww.
“Who’s there?” Jeffery was in the storeroom now, and I was rapidly running out of time. In so many ways.
I clumsily clambered out of the dumpster, dazed and bruised and began to run. The staff car park had no fencing, but storm water drains that everyone called ‘the canals’. They would be mostly dry tonight, just mud and sludge. I scrambled down and pressed myself against the concrete for a moment. The sides were almost six feet tall, with a couple of old pipes as my only hand and foot holds. I had seen it, I knew I could do it, but dreaming it was very, very different to living it. I had maybe a minute before the safety lights were turned on.
Only one chance. I had to go now.
I hurled myself up, scrapping my hands raw and trying not to cry. I was gasping for air by the time I made it to the other side. The flood lights came on with an echo, and I could hear people calling. Damnit. Too slow, Alice.
I picked myself up and started to run towards the hiking trails. They wouldn’t catch me, not now.
I was finally free.
//
The Hill Park was abandoned after dark, thankfully.
I had woken up late afternoon, feeling much better rested. I was dirty, and covered in spiders-web, but I was still free.
Clambering out, I pulled a granola bar and my water from my bag, inhaling my meagre meal. Whatever happened, I’d need to find more food, soon. I may have been small, but I needed more than a few stolen snacks.
And then I went and perched on a swing, to wait.
He didn’t arrive til after midnight.
He was so much different in real life. Not better or bigger, just more. He towered above me, with deep crimson eyes and a mop of blonde hair. Angry black circles underscored both his eyes. His clothes were stained and shredded.
Major Jasper Whitlock – either my saviour or my murderer. My fate was in his hands – and I had put it there, quite willingly.
“You’ve kept me waiting,” I said, standing up to face him, pulling my hood down. He stared at me.
“I’m sorry, miss,” he said in a low voice. Right now, he was interested. Curious. And hungry. But I was still young – too young to be hunted, if he could possibly help it. He wasn’t going to stay.
“Do you want the long version?” I asked, reaching out and grabbing his sleeve. He jerked away from me, his eyes wide. “I have dreams of the future. And I needed to find you. This can go two ways – you can kill me, or you can let me come with you. If you turn me away, well, I’m dead anyway. Please.”
//
The two vampires looked startled. One was male with brown hair, not quite as tall as Jasper, and rather lean. The other was female and reminded me of a porcelain doll – strawberry blonde curls, round eyes, and a perfect cupid’s-bow mouth. They both wore old and impractical clothing and had bare feet.
And scarlet eyes.
“Who is this?” the woman asked, her eyes wide, darting between Jasper and I.
The male had the strangest look on his face, one I couldn’t decipher. One I didn’t want to decipher.
“This is Alice. Alice, this is Peter and Charlotte,” Jasper said simply.
“Hello,” I said shyly.
“Hello Alice,” Peter said, staring at me.
Jasper looked up at the sky. “We need to set up camp.”
“Of course,” Charlotte said faintly, shooting an alarmed look at the male.
Jasper kept his arm around me as we moved closer to the river, finding a moderate clearing.
We had camping down to a fine art. We didn’t carry to much with us – Jasper would gather wood and stone so I could build the fire; my bedding was just his parka as a mattress, and mine as a blanket; in the new few weeks, I’d have to find a sleeping bag, before it turned cold.
I used the river to wash, and fill my water bottles.
The vampire couple watched us curiously, and both visibly flinched when I got my campfire going.
By the time night fell, I was sitting in front of the fire, eating. It wasn’t much – an orange, a package of crackers, a can of tuna. Jasper already had plans to go into the next town to get more supplies in the next day or two. Jasper was sitting beside me, the couple sitting towards his right, their gazes darting to the fire every few seconds. I never really thought about how uncomfortable Jasper must be when I made a fire. He never said anything.
“So,” Peter said finally. “Where did you and Alice meet?”
“California,” Jasper said, watching as I began peeling my orange, throwing the peel into the fire. I was tired, I’d need to sleep soon.
“How old are you, Alice?” Charlotte asked me; she still wore an expression of curiosity on her face, like I was a puzzle should couldn’t figure out.
“Nearly fifteen,” I said, looking up at her. My hair was twisted up into a messy bun, and I was wearing an oversized sweater and sweatpants to sleep in; I looked homeless compared to her, and she look like she hadn’t bathed in the last year.
“And where are you headed?” Peter seemed uncomfortable as I crammed fruit into my mouth.
“North,” Jasper said with certainty. “Somewhere safe. Nevada was too dangerous.”
“As bad as New Orleans,” Peter agreed.
I reached out and grabbed my water bottle. “I’m going to get some sleep,” I said, looking down at Jasper, who smiled up at me.
“Sleep well, darlin’,” he murmured.
I walked over to my little bed, behind the fire, wrapping the coats around me, and falling asleep easily, to the sound of the fire crackling, and of the forest settling for the night.
“You turn a girl that young, and the Volturi will never stop watchin’ you!”
I was neither awake nor asleep, but aware of the agitated conversation behind me.
“I’m not gonna change her!”
“Then what the hell is goin’ on here? We don’t hear from you in a decade, and then we find you playin’ house with a little human girl in the middle of the forest!”
“Peter, calm yourself. Jasper, you understand that we’re confused. This isn’t what we expected to find.”
“She’s… she needed help, she was in danger. She’s… Alice has dreams of the future, and they told her to find me, to keep her safe from someone. And I… I don’t know what I was thinking, but now... she helps. Me. She makes everything… less difficult.” He sounded strained.
“Oh, Jasper,” Charlotte sighed. “What are you going to do? You can’t just walk the length and breadth of the country with her, she’s human. And you can’t change her until she’s older.”
“She… she had dreams about a coven, one who doesn’t hunt humans and would accept both of us amongst their ranks. That they would help us and keep us safe.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I just want to find somewhere she can live that is safe, and that place isn’t a coven.”
But before I could hear the end of the conversation, sleep swallowed me again.
Um. Wow. I wasn’t expecting such a response to Hybrid! So I guess I should get working on posting more of that fic officially? :D
I’m going away overnight, and I’m not taking my laptop, so I’m queuing up tomorrow’s post now - hopefully, it will work, but you might end up with Day 9 ridiculously early!
Here we go...
(The beginning of another ‘Alice isn’t human’ fic; I was aiming for some kind of witch or revenant with this fic. It actually evolved into something huge and then devolved into something that is kind of more along the lines of Shadow to Light in length and detail. It just worked better. This is also like the closest I will ever come to writing a sex scene, so... yeah. -- indicate scene change, // indicates that I haven’t finished the chapter/scene/there’s stuff missing.)
She arrives at Forks High suddenly, a tempest in a teacup.
The whispers find them in the carpark, of the ‘weird’ new girl. No one is racing to befriend her, not like with Bella. Jasper can’t decide if Bella is pleased that the attention has finally been diverted from her, or disappointed she is no longer being fawned over. Curiosity at her replacement overwhelm her other feelings.
None of his other siblings really care. Why should they? He only really takes note of the news because of the curiosity, judgement, disdain, superiority, and slight jealousy that roll off the population at large. Whomever the girl is, she probably won’t be wriggling away from potential friends, like Bella did.
He doesn’t think about her again that morning.
--
The whispers are like smoke, gathering and smothering the crowds. There are the younger girls, spitting cruelty; there are the boys egging each other on, to ask her out. Murmurs about her clothes, and hair, and make-up; about why she moved and who her family are. If she was smart or pretty or friendly.
But he doesn’t see her; just the same faces, the same complaints, the same stew of emotions. The new girl is like a pebble tossed on the surface of a still pond. The only relief is the knowledge is that eventually, the water will settle again.
--
She is like a supernova, simply appearing in the halls before lunch period, and his mouth goes dry. He doesn’t know what other people see when they look at her, but he is entranced. She is not the meek-looking pariah he expected, the nervous teenage girl navigating unfriendly seas.
She is a goddamn revelation.
She walks down the hallways like she owns them. Her mouth is lush and scarlet; obscenely shiny and enticing. She seems indecent, almost – the sickly white of her skin, the black of her hair and her clothing, and then the red of her lips.
The emotion streams off her so strongly, he can almost see them – black mist streaming behind her, undulating with her movements. She is terrible and glorious, and in over one hundred years, he’s never reacted to someone like this. He wants to be close enough to smell her hair, to see if it’s the sweet-sour scent of moss and rotting flowers that he imagines. He wants to peel the black cloth and lace from her body, and trace his path with his tongue. He wants to rip out her throat, and see if she tastes as rich and luscious as she looks.
She is a disaster.
He leans against the lockers, staring at her as she passes him. Her eyes are violet, and she meets his gaze evenly, the corners of her lips quirking upwards. But she doesn’t stop.
It’s a good thing that he doesn’t share his morning classes with Edward, because if he could hear Jasper’s thoughts right now, he’d kill him on the spot.
//
The forest behind the school is silent; just her breathing, and the slight wind. No birds or wildlife, none of the hum of the traffic or of the school.
They don’t undress more than necessary, her skirt slid to her hips, and he takes her roughly against a tree, flakes of bark falling into the dirt. She is hot and slick, and silent as he fucks her, his fingers digging into her hips, a growl rising in his chest. She is every bit his fantasy; the smell of damp flowers, the sweetness of her flesh, her willing supplication. His fingers tear through the lace of her tights as he grips her thighs, and the heels of her shoes must be bending, she’s digging them into the backs of his legs so hard.
//
He knows she isn’t a vampire, but he doesn’t really acknowledge it until the day he catches her sitting in the empty hallways of school during lunch period, wolfing down candy from the vending machine, her little tongue darting out to lick the wrapper. There is something almost disturbing about the way she eats, as if it is the last time she will see food and drink. There is a can of soda, and several wrappers scattered around her.
//
It is no different from their other encounters, except in little ways. She looks tired, more brittle. Her dress is short and black, but hangs from her body, the lace of the hem brushing a bare strip of thigh that he wants to lick. The circles under her eyes are coal-black, making her eyes seem abnormally large; her lips pale and almost blue. But he never questions the way she paints her face, the way she dresses herself.
She accepts his kiss with a sigh, her lips quirking into something that is almost a smile against his, as he slides her dress over her hips. He groans when he finds her bare underneath, nothing but the wool of her dress and the lace of her tights, and she is fucking delicious.
He is on her instantly, and her sighs and moans fill the silence. Is this how he is supposed to feel when he finds his mate? Her lips trace his throat, and he cannot imagine wanting someone more than this. He wants to possess her, wants her in every way she can give.
That realisation makes him feel like the bottom has dropped out of the world, and he snaps.
It is a moment of pure, exquisite instinct, and he sinks his teeth into her smooth, white throat. Her flesh parts without resistance, her blood rushing to the surface, as he drinks deeply. It rolls down his chin, down her neck, her blood is everywhere. It is the darkest red, and he is in ecstasy. Sex and blood, the two things he has abstained from for so long surrounds him, and he gorges himself.
And then he realises the terrible thing he has done.
The blood is everywhere, all over the leather of the car, splattered on the windows, seeping in her hair and her discarded clothes.
Her eyes are still open, staring at nothing, her skirt still hitched up around her hips. Her lips are slightly parted, as if she had something left to say.
The dark, bloody gash from his feeding taking up more than half of her slim throat, the chain of her necklace falling into the viscera of her ruined neck.
Panic isn’t an emotion he is used to, and this is rapidly spiralling away from panic to sheer, unbridled terror.
Carlisle. Carlisle can fix this.
The idea strikes him suddenly, and he oh-so-gently redresses her. No one will find the car, not tonight; this is very technically still Cullen property and a back route no one outside the family should access. He gathers her up carefully in his arms, cradling her close.
And he runs.
//
Carlisle can fix this. Carlisle can save her.
He never thought of himself as an optimist.
By the time the house comes into view, he has accepted it. Her body is cooling, her heart is still, her scent is more sour and rotten.
Nothing can fix this. He has slaughtered the first person or thing he can ever remember loving. Ripped into her skin and drained her dry.
He emerges from the forest, no longer running. He already knows what will happen. Carlisle will declare Alice dead, dead, perfectly fucking dead, and he will bury her with his own bare hands before he leaves. There’s chemicals in the garage that will encourage the flames to catch, and then the fire will pull the venom from his flesh and he will finally die, hopefully in extraordinary pain. He’d dream of being reunited with her, but if there is such a thing as an afterlife for vampires, it will not be wherever her sweet self has ended up.
Esme is the first one to see him, her lovely smile vanishing as she absorbs what she is seeing. Jasper wonders if Esme will plant flowers on Alice’s grave for him.
“Oh my god,” Esme is there, gently cupping Alice’s cheek. “Oh Jasper.”
She escorts him inside, her eyes so sad. Rosalie is on the stairs, and her rage is extinguished after she glimpses whatever she sees on his face. Emmett swears and jumps up from the couch, reaching for Alice, but Jasper just clings to her tighter.
“I’ll fetch Carlisle,” Esme murmurs, but it is little more than a hum in his ears.
By the time Carlisle arrives, looking worried, he meets a scene he could not have predicted. Esme waits for him at the door, and her alarm is evident.
Emmett and Rose are in the sitting room with Jasper, who is perched on the couch with Alice. He cradles her tiny body, almost rocking it. Her eyes have been closed – Rosalie’s surprisingly compassionate gesture. He is still covered with her blood.
He has never seen Jasper so broken.
He has never seen Jasper look so young.
“Jasper,” Carlisle crouches in front of him, before he realises that he has no words of comfort, of resolution.
Yeah, I lied XD Christmas Eve bonus round! And because everyone seemed really enthusiastic about this fic, I picked two chunks of Hybrid for you all. (And if I were to consider Fic-Mas: NYE Edition, I’d definitely like to know what you would all like more of - your choices are more Hybrid, any of the Unexpected Second Life fics, All These Broken Things, or seeing if I can dig up something from Memento Mori.)
Onwards!
(This happens before Jasper bites Alice, after Alice’s first day at Forks High.)
Dinner that night was quiet – Dad and Simon seemed worried about my first day of school when I hadn’t reported making loads of friends, and loving everything about Forks High; I had chosen to omit my interactions with Edward Cullen and Rosalie Hale when they asked.
Cynthia did most of the talking during the meal, and was slowly painting me a picture of her life – she was a good student, very popular, and loved any sort of club or co-curricular. Definitely a joiner. And absolutely bursting with excitement to start ninth grade next year, and finally be in high school.
“So, who did you hang out with today?” Cynthia finally turned to me. Her dinner plate was barely touched – she’d been talking too much to eat – whilst I was on my second helping.
“I didn’t,” I said, stabbing a piece of carrot.
“Really?” Cynthia frowned. “Who did you sit with at lunch?”
I wanted to smile at her middle-school view of the world. As if there was nothing more horrifying than sitting alone at lunch. And then I wanted to punch something because in a town this small, Cynthia probably had more friends at Forks High than I would ever have, and she was only fourteen.
“I went to the library. I need to catch up in a few subjects,” I shrugged. “And the cafeteria food was really bad.”
“It’s nice to know that things don’t change,” Simon chuckled. “Forks High always made the worst mac and cheese known to man. That stuff was a hate crime.”
“You said you weren’t behind in your classes,” Dad said to me, frowning. I guess as a teacher himself, the idea of his own daughter failing her classes was a pretty bad one, though I was a little curious why Cynthia and I attended a local public school when Dad taught at a fancy private school.
“Just a chapter or two in Algebra, and I think a little in Biology,” I said. “Nothing that I can’t get caught up in.”
“Okay, but if you find yourself overwhelmed or really behind, we can get you a tutor over the summer,” Dad said. “I looked over your transcripts, there are some gaps in your schoolwork we’ll have to address at some point.”
That was a polite way of putting it. There weren’t gaps in my schoolwork, there were great gaping holes. Even from before Mom died. But afterwards, there was foster care, time on the streets, my time at the hospital – I don’t think I ever technically attended sixth or eighth grade.
“You have your doctor’s appointment in the morning, Alice,” Simon jumped in. “I had an in with the best doctor in town, and he agreed to see you tomorrow first thing. Just so we can get your medications sorted.”
“Great,” I said unenthusiastically. Another doctor, paging through my endless file claiming I was completely bat-shit nuts. I knew I’d been living on borrowed time as far as medical intervention went. There was an entire pharmacy of psychiatric meds locked up in Dad and Simon’s room that the hospital had sent with me.
Simon had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of them, and the three pages of contradictory instructions, that he’d decided not to drug me until we spoke to a doctor in Forks. Which was definitely a good thing, since the medications the hospital had me on left me drooling into my pillow most of the time.
Or screaming for help.
“Carlisle is a really good doctor,” Simon said kindly, obviously seeing the look on my face. “Actually, an amazing doctor. Way better than we should be able to get out in the sticks. And he’s a good person – he won’t do anything that doesn’t sound right to him, and you’re comfortable with. I promise.”
“Everyone says that,” I said, suddenly full and wishing I hadn’t eaten quite so much. “They say, ‘We just want what’s best for you, Mary-Alice’. Then they find out I stabbed a doctor and they can’t sedate me fast enough.”
Rice fell out of Cynthia’s mouth when I said that. “You stabbed someone?” she said, her eyes wide.
“Cynthia,” Dad warned, but all eyes were on me.
Cynthia ignored him. “Why?” she asked, leaning forward. And I felt it, like something physical that wrapped itself around me. The memories; the fear and complete hopelessness. It was like I was being smothered. As if my ghosts weren’t already carved into my skin permanently, where everybody could see.
“Cynthia, enough,” Simon said sternly.
“No one ever cares about the why,” I said softly, looking at the placemats, a swirling pattern of orange and red. I remembered doing it, grabbing the little plastic scalpel, slashing from his ear to his chin, and being dragged away. Being drugged, strapped down and ignored, like some kind of animal; nobody ever asked me why I’d done such a thing, just assuming that it was my fault. “Can I be excused?”
“Certainly,” Dad said, looking worried. “Do you want us to bring you up some dessert?”
“Key-lime pie,” Simon offered. “My mom made it, so not quite as good as mine, but still worthy.”
I shook my head. “No thanks.”
I slipped out of the dining room and upstairs, pausing on the stairwell to hear Dad and Simon lecturing Cynthia about pushing too hard and asking too many questions. That I had had a very hard life, whilst hers had been comfortable and happy.
Sometimes, everything that had happened hit me like a truck, and I just… I kind of just went through the motions. Locked every emotion down so that I didn’t have to deal with any of it. The pain, the terror, the complete misery. It was easier just to feel nothing.
I showered and climbed into bed, the scent of flowers wrapping around me. I thought about asking Simon for one of my sleeping pills, but that required energy and interaction, neither were things that I was up for.
Instead, I just curled into a ball and pretended to sleep when Dad and Simon checked on me, separately, later. I didn’t manage to fall asleep until much later, after everyone else had gone to bed, slipping into soupy dreams of white rooms and not being able to move.
And then the dreamscape changed, clicking into place.
A vision.
There was no specific way I could tell the difference between a dream and a vision of the future, but I always knew the difference. I had no control over them – some nights, it would be an unending string of visions to wade through, and then nothing for weeks at a time. Mom had tried everything, but there was no way to instigate them, or to choose who or what I would see. Whatever my gift was, it did what it wanted.
I was in a living room with fancy art on the walls, and a piano in the entry way.
The vampires were gathered there – Rosalie Hale and curly haired bear-man were seated on the couch, though she looked agitated enough to jump up and pace at any second. A slightly older woman with light brown hair was seated at a small writing desk, tapping away at a laptop absently, with her attention on the group; Edward Cullen was standing with a light-haired man in front of an actual marble fireplace. And the blonde-boy was sitting in the window, staring out into the night.
“Does she know?” the man asked the red-headed boy with a gentle, patient manner that I wanted to like immediately.
“I don’t know,” Edward said, looking frustrated. “Her thoughts jumped around a lot. She never thought ‘vampire’. But she was alarmed by us.”
“What did you hear?” the woman asked, closing the laptop.
“At lunch, she hated the food, wasn’t particularly impressed with Forks in general, happier to be with her father and his family that she’d admit to herself. Then it was alarm bells, her trying to work out an escape plan. She was very, very concerned about Bella and her safety.”
“She warned Bella, verbally,” Rosalie pointed out. “To be careful.”
“Hm. And you had a class with her? Was she well then?” the man asked Edward.
“Distressed. She had scars that were seen by others when she was changing. Bella said that they were ‘bad’, over her back and her thighs. The other girls were focusing on a particularly nasty one on the back of her leg, so I don’t know the extent. I heard something about a hospital, and when I mentioned hospitals in passing, she became agitated.”
“I spoke with her step-father, and he expressed concern over her psychological state. Apparently, she’s had a history of mental illness and abuse, and he wanted someone he trusted to see her and work out how to help,” the man said. “From her records, she’s quite disturbed, though he repeatedly assured me that her behavior has been absolutely normal since she arrived.” The man looked over at the boy in the window. “Jasper, did you notice anything?”
He looked over. “Curiosity, agitation, worry, depression – the usual teenage maelstrom,” he said slowly, disinterestedly.
“If she’s mentally unbalanced, it wouldn’t be hard to stage an ‘accident’,” Rosalie said archly. “We wouldn’t even have to move; it could just be one of those things. She wouldn’t be much of a loss.”
“Would be pretty rough on her family,” the big guy murmured, holding his hands up when Rosalie shot him a look. “Just sayin’, Rose. She only just got here.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about her that much, just yet,” the man said finally. “It’s always a possibility, but Edward, you didn’t hear her identify us; some humans are just more in-tune to their instincts. And there’s a possibility that her medical status can be used to our advantage if she becomes a problem.”
“What about Bella?” Edward asked immediately.
“If Bella could befriend her, that would allow you more access to what she’s thinking. That would be enough for the time being,” he concluded. “At a rough guess, I doubt Mary-Alice Brandon is going to pose much of a problem.”
Edward spun around to Jasper, a glare on his face. “Really?” he snapped.
“What?” the woman stood up, looking worried. I wondered if that was her default state of being.
“He thinks she smelt delicious,” Edward spat.
“Another singer?” the man stepped forward, looking downright alarmed.
Jasper heaved a sigh and shook his head. “No, nothing like that,” he said, in that slow, dull manner. “Just a stray thought. Nothing will happen, I promise.”
“Maybe Bella should stay away for a few days,” Edward said grouchily, still giving Jasper a filthy look.
“Leave him alone, Edward,” Rosalie snapped.
“Please, like you wouldn’t break him into little pieces if he slipped up again,” Edward snapped back, and Jasper rolled his eyes and stood up to leave.
“Are we done?” he asked, and when the man nodded, he left the room, leaving the others to bicker in peace; everyone slowly faded away as my vision turned back into my dreams.
//
(This scene is far in the future - like Ch 13. This thing is The Slowest Burn.)
My pitching was clearly stronger than they anticipated; at least, the surprise on Emmett’s face as the ball smacked into the palm of his hand implied so. It obviously wasn’t as impressive as the pitches thrown by Rosalie or Jasper, but still better than they expected.
Of course, once all the Cullens acquiesced to my participation in the baseball game, Edward vocally encouraged Bella to join in as well.
“If Alice is playing, Bella can play,” was his argument, whilst Bella stood at his side, looking uncomfortable. Hell, she always looked uncomfortable. I wondered if anyone had ever introduced her to the concept of sweatpants and ice cream.
“Alice is less likely to drop dead if she takes a fastball to the face,” Rosalie scowled. I eyeballed the blonde; that statement felt very much like Rosalie was trying to work out how to dispose of me.
“Fractured skull at best,” I agreed serenely.
“Bella is still rehabbing her leg, Edward,” Carlisle said gently.
--
It happened in a second; the ball sailed from Edward’s hands, and Bella swung. She swung too early, and the ball flew past and cracked her across the face. I heard her gasp of pain, of the blood that seeped from her nose instantly, the sound of the bat hitting the soft ground.
And I looked around to see five hungry vampires staring at the blood that was pouring from her nose, Bella’s hands cupped over her face.
Esme and Rosalie were backing away; Esme’s face was concerned but strained, whilst Rosalie’s was blank – her attention was on Emmett, who had taken two steps forward before retreating, his eyes completely black.
Edward and Carlisle were focused on Bella – a broken nose was one of the few injuries I hadn’t sustained over the years, but I could tell from Bella’s reaction that it was excruciatingly painful. The smell of blood was beginning to affect me, I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be for…
For Jasper.
I looked over and he was still standing there, completely still.
If I had thought that he had looked feral the night that he attacked me, I was mistaken. He had still looked human then – sinister, terrifying and dangerous but still essentially human.
Now I was glimpsing the monster behind the man.
His eyes were, somehow, blacker than Emmett’s, and dull. His face was completely devoid of any kind of emotion, his gaze focused on Bella. I could picture his muscles tensing for the attack, and with a sick feeling, realized that Bella probably wouldn’t be the only one hurt today. No one else had picked up on Jasper’s intentions yet, and I was incredibly aware that I couldn’t stop him.
But I could certainly slow him down.
I darted across the field, my hair whipping across my face, and flung myself at Jasper, my arms wrapping around his waist. It didn’t escape my notice that this was the closest we had gotten physically, and I was trying to stop him committing murder.
“Please don’t, please don’t,” I chanted to myself. “Jasper! Stop it!” I finally cried out as he began to move forward, dragging me with him, and Edward finally looked up at the sound of my voice.
Jasper shook me off fairly easily, without looking down, and I knew I had to go into full fight-mode; it didn’t matter who or what Jasper was to me, I had to pull him back from killing Bella.
My leg shot out, and whilst Jasper stumbled for a second, but righted himself. I could hear Emmett and Rosalie yelling in the background, and when I looked around, Jasper’s fist came out of nowhere and caught me in the side of the head. For a second, I was seeing stars, and then I was back – Jasper had managed to get Emmett and Edward tangled in each other, Rosalie and Esme were hovering between where Carlisle stood with Bella.
