Twilight and its prequels and pov-quels belong to Stephenie Meyer. This is a metafic in that it is based on the Luminosity/Radiance version of events as written by Alicorn. If you haven't read those you might want to, because I intend to spoil major plot points. The initial point of view is Alec's. Content warning: domestic abuse.
The day Comtessa Alice suggested I go out to town, I didn't know what to believe. She said it with a playful glint in her eye, and I wasn't sure if it was an order, or if she was serious about it might being fun. I was not known to have fun.
Still, I went. Unsure what good it would do, I dragged myself to the city center in Athens, the Imperial family's place of residence that summer, to look for a club or something similarly festive. The streets were full of inebriated people, laughing and singing as they went, presumably having the fun the Comtessa had imagined for me. With her you never knew if she was going by her psychic hallucinations or just a whim.
Assuming the former, she still hadn't told me where to go, so I wandered somewhat aimlessly. I looked too young to get into any of these nightclubs. Back when I was human I suppose I looked about fifteen, but in this day and age I seemed little older than thirteen to most people. Jane would probably have convinced them to let us do anything we wanted, just for the hell of it, but Jane wasn't here anymore. I spent a few moments feeling the emptiness that was the lack of her, not missing her, but still feeling like she was my one and only connection to the world, when I turned onto a street with cheap hotels.
There was shouting from several of them, people having arguments, smashing of glass bottles, loud music, a girl sitting on the front steps of one reading a book. She rested the cover on her lap, but a quick glance revealed a bit of cover art which my mind completed as a pale, dark-haired man biting a young woman's neck. I rolled my eyes. Inside the open hotel I heard a man shouting in German and a woman crying. The girl sniffled as I walked by. It couldn't have been my eye-rolling, unless she was the sort of person who took everything really personally. I rolled my eyes again. I hated those kinds of people.
Then I heard the soft crunch of a skull being smashed into something hard, and the woman stopped crying.
The man also paused for a moment, which must have been why the girl stiffened. She couldn't have heard the crunch, or for that matter the crying. I stared at her for a moment and the rushed up the small staircase and into the room where the shouting had come from. Afterwards I told myself the Empress would approve, but that was not why I did it. Perhaps it was a sense of prophesy, that the Comtessa had wanted me to be here for this so I could help. Inside the room a woman was lying on the floor unconscious, and a drunken man was staring at her like he couldn't believe what had just happened, as though he had expected a completely different result when he threw her into a bedpost. But I could hear the woman's weak pulse from where I stood, so I decided to do something about it. I grabbed my phone and called the emergency number, which took its sweet time answering, and when the female voice answered after three rings the girl from outside came through the door.
She cried "Mama!" and fell to her knees beside the woman.
"She's alive," I told her in German. "Don't try to move her."
The voice on the phone mumbled something Greek about how illegal it was to prank call emergency numbers and hung up. I redialled and thankfully got a different voice, explained the situation and gave them the address. The man had staggered to the balcony by then, pretending to look at the stars. The girl sat motionless on the floor clutching her mother's hand between her own. I felt like my job was done.
We weren't supposed to be around bleeding humans anyway. I hadn't had human blood in years, and the thirst was as good as quenched, but that didn't mean there were any guarantees. The Empress felt that we could run into Singers at any moment, as both she and the Emperor had at the most inconvenient times.
I could smell all three of them, and none smelled more appealing than ordinary humans. I'd had my fill of animal blood before I went out tonight anyway. The girl smelled of salt water — tears, I realized. Awkwardly, I sat down on the floor on the other side of her mother. Bright, wet, green eyes stared at me blankly. Yellow hair fell to her shoulders. I guessed early teens. Still wasn't sure what to say to comfort her. Maybe something about the book she had been reading. No, that was silly.
"So that's you mother," I said in English.
Now she focused on me.
"She probably has a massive head injury," I tried in German.
Her eyes filled with tears.
"What I mean to say is, we should lay her on her side."
I could kick myself for forgetting about all the basic medical training we had been through, the whole staff, since the people we worked with were human when they came to us. Now that I remembered, I couldn't waste time expecting her to understand jargon in any language, but she understood. She helped me put her mother in a position where she wouldn't choke on her own vomit or get strangled by her own tongue. On the balcony there was a man singing "Mein Hahn ist Tot".
The ambulance arrived in time.