A/n I just saw a contest, I'm in a new relationship, I was feeling romantic anyway...oh, it was just meant to be.
Concerning the plot, well, I just imagine immortality would be a bit lonely after a while, even if you have an entire family with you.
This
When you smile, you smile
oh, and then the spell was cast
and here we are in heaven
for you are mine
at last
-Etta James, At Last
"Alice."
She turned at the sound of her name. A book lay unceremoniously in front of her on the glass coffee table beside her reading lamp, though she had only been half-heartily skimming the small text with slight impatience. At nearly a hundred, she had long run out of things to keep herself occupied for more then a few moments. She spent too many of her days flipping through Edward's fat, weathered volumes, completely losing faith in whatever nonsense modern authors churned out.
He stood at the doorway, leaning against the door frame with a rather whimsical smirk etched across his face. There was something sad about it, too, Alice noticed. Something forced.
"Hello," she said absently, pulling on her best smile and pretending that there was anything--anything--to smile about, "I thought you were hunting."
He shrugged, glancing around the room and freely falling down onto the sleek white sofa propped against the window. Emmett's eyes were a fevered yellow, as though he had only barely sustained himself. "Left early."
Alice frowned and sat up from the the love seat, noticing the slight glitter sparkling on Emmett's skin as the sparse Fall sunlight fell against his cheek.
"Why? Is it hunting season?" She remembered one year when they were sent barreling from a Canadian province after a deer hunter caught Jasper ravaging into a moose.
He shook his head, his expression uncharacteristically blank. "No, no," he said quietly. "Nothing like that."
Alice cleared her throat and got to her feet, walking to the door and back again. She didn't know why. Just the need to do something.
"Oh," she said, her voice only a whisper. Over the years, she had stopped bothering with speaking above a hiss when alone with her family, sometimes not speaking for days when it was only her and Edward. It just seemed useless.
There was a long silence, as Alice continuously stalked about the room restlessly, rifling through her nearly new desk and flipping pages in her biology textbook. The forumulas and names all came to Alice at a brief glance, stuck to her lips like a repetitive song. She had lost count at how many times she had sat through biology. Albeit, it had gotten rather interesting once scientist discovered the varicose vein, but still. Always the same.
A picture of a heart, brilliantly illistrated in reds and pinks, was placed in the middle of a paragraph, the text gliding around it. She didn't have to look at it to identify the veins and the sections and the uses and the sources. She knew how much it beat a second, a minute, an hour. She knew how many seconds it could go without blood before going into cardiac arrest, and she knew how long a person could go if it stopped beating.
From what she gathered, she was breaking every rule ever thought of. By about ninety years.
A sadness filled her still chest as she slammed the book shut and fell back on the love seat.
She had never even really been human to begin with. Not really.
Her living years had been spent in a blur of madness, with needles and dark rooms and doctors looking slightly horrified every time they looked at her. She didn't even remember taking a breath, didn't remember the burning as her heart slowed, didn't remember that one last thump, didn't remember anything other then this horrible vividness.
She didn't remember feeling alive.
All she knew was the waiting, the waiting for what? what? what was she waiting for? and the long days and long nights, when everyone slept and dreamed while she stared at her walls, wondering what it might feel like for an organ to pound against her chest. All she knew was the same faces passing in white and gold and black blurs as they all shuffled from place to place, no aim in mind, a silent tension none would admit to.
But now, she thought, I'm rambling. To myself.
"--Alice?"
She looked up to see Emmett still staring at her.
Alice blinked unnecessarily and smiled. "Sorry, what?"
He leaned foreword, only slightly, but with a small stiffness. As though he were afraid of what would happen if he moved to fast. "You okay?"
She imagined she looked as he did right now--sad, wistful, listless.
"Yeah," Alice said, turning to the window. "Just thinking. You know, Bella's turning eighteen soon."
Emmett nodded, following Alice's gaze. "What were you thinking about, really?"
The softness in his tone felt like velvet, having more effect on her then Jasper's forced serenity ever could.
The sound of Esme's car pulling out from the long driveway reminded Alice of how terribly alone they were.
"Just..." she started, letting her head fall to the crook of her neck as she leaned her elbows against her knees. "I'm just tired, that's all." She didn't realize how true the words were until they had already left her lips. "I'm tired of watching all these people come and go. And I'm tired of moving, and hunting, and...I'm just tired, Emmett."
Her eyes felt exceptionally dry just then.
She remembered the first time she had met Emmett.
Walking for the first time into Carlisle Cullen's home, marveling at the beauty of the staircases and furniture and bookcases, and there he sat.
In front of the television, he looked like all the vampires that had come and go in her life--sinfully beautiful, with a smile that might have hurt anyone else at how big it was, laughing a raucous chuckle that seemed the whole foundation of the home.
For an instant, just a second in a long, continuos lifetime, Jasper was forgotten, and she felt momentarily giddy.
Then the other girl, the blond one with the face of an angel and the accusing scowl of a protective lioness, leaned over and whispered in his ear, like staking a claim in something that was rightfully hers.
Emmett probably was--Rosalie's, that is. They've made that very clear. All damn night.
He should be blissfully happy, that Emmett. He should.
But that frown, that frown that spread up to his lovely eyes like a disease, said otherwise.
But, God, what could she do?
"Me too," was all he had to say.
Alice rubbed her forehead, smoothing a sharp strand of black hair in between her thumb and forefinger. "Where's Rosalie?"
He smiled slightly, his lips twitching at the corners, and he sighed a laugh. "Mall."
Alice shared in the joke, though she didn't know why. "Without me?" she said. "The nerve."
She realized he was leaning foreword, within touching distance, and his head bowed like his neck couldn't support the weight of his head.
"How's Jasper?" she whispered, just for something to say. He had been gone for a few days, not expected back for a few days more. It was a reasonable enough question.
Emmett smiled, so slightly and so gently you'd never believe he could crush a car in between his pinky and forefinger. "He misses you."
Alice couldn't tear her eyes from his, even as he seemed to gravitate closer and closer, though neither of them were moving. She forced herself to smile, forced her eyes to squint, forced her muscles to make her face something pleasant to look at.
He squinted back at her, his eyes more serious then she had ever seen them. "You don't miss him, though," he said, "do you?"
She frowned.
"Of course I miss him," Alice said. "Why wouldn't I?"
And she didn't know why she didn't, either.
Just like she didn't know how she had gotten here, in her room in the middle of the day with no one but them in the world. And she didn't know how they had managed to get within an inch of each other without the other knowing.
She just didn't know.
Emmett shrugged, like it was the most unimportant question in the world, not even worth a response. "Maybe," he said, and she felt his cold breath on her skin, "you don't like being around him. Who knows, though. I just don't think you don't really miss him."
She should be angry at the accusation. Angry that he was doing this, trying to destroy this peaceful existence they had lived over the years, trying to tear apart the closest thing to family either of them had. She should be angry, furious, that he was doing this to her.
Furious.
"Why did you come here, Emmett?" Because he could have gone anywhere, bought himself tickets to a sports game, met Rosalie at a hotel, stayed with Jasper and Edward at the mountains, arguing over who gets what and how much of it. He could have done anything.
But he didn't do anything. He came here, to Alice, with no intention to speak of other then this.
Whatever this was.
"You know," Emmett said with a touch of wary humor in his voice, "just dropping in."
He leaned closer, now, and Alice didn't stop him.
"Emmett..." she whispered, just as his lips brushed hers. "Rosalie...Jasper..."
"Are not here," he muttered, gently kissing her as though he were afraid she would break.
Is this how he kissed Rosalie? Is this how Edward kissed Bella?
But this was wrong, Emmett kissing her, Emmett brushing his hands up and down her arms, leaning her back against the sofa. This was wrong, and they'd have forever to regret it.
Suddenly, though, Alice felt like she wasn't just an eternal being floating through a world that didn't acknowledge her, or a thing without a heart, without blood, without life. She felt like something real.
Alive.
Perhaps the closest either of them would ever get to heaven.
And they could worry about forever later.
---end---
Author's Note: Well, that was neither dark nor tragic. One might actually call it romantic. Keep in mind, dear readers, that I am fourteen and not exactly what you would call romantic. In fact, I tend to look away during teh smex scenes during movies and books and such. So, this is completly out of my imagination and in no way inspired by anything other then what I imagine Alice and Emmett hooking up would be like.
Forbidden love? Not sure that's very reflective here, but maybe.
This is for AliceAtHeart's Twilight birthday contest, and I suggest everyone submit an entry for it. Just write an Emmett/Alice fic of a genre of your choice, with the theme of Forbidden Love, and PM her saying your entering. Final submissions are due September 20th. Details under the fic name TWILIGHT CONTEST (by AliceAtHeart).
So. Go. Enjoy your life. I will be attempting to shake of this momentary romantic mindset.