Disclaimer: Not mine.
Pairing: Alice and Jasper
Setting: Breaking Dawn
A/N: Just a little one shot that was bothering me…it's a bit unresolved (don't say I didn't warn you). Regardless, I hope you enjoy it. Tell me what you think.
A Conundrum
JPOV
By: Katie Todd
"Here's another one," I muttered softly as I tossed the now copied book page at Emmett.
He nodded and added it to the ever growing pile of 'information' on this monster that now lived inside Edward's Bella. The stories we were getting this information from, the legends, were all saying the same thing. That this thing ripped itself out of its mother's belly.
"uhh" I heard the pained grunt and my eyes flashed to Alice.
Her head lay in my lap, this seemed to be her position of late, whenever one of the werewolves wasn't around to heal her headache. Her outfit was a tribute to how awful she felt. One of my long sleeve shirts and sweat pants; grey wrestlers sweat pants that she had accidently ordered out of a catalog two days ago.
Her headaches seemed to be getting worse with each day. They were so bad they were messing with her actual vision. She had run into a wall on her way downstairs yesterday and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing I could do to make her feel better. She moaned again quietly and I focused on massaging the back of her head.
It seemed to be a bit of a conundrum. Every time the fetus moved Bella got hurt, every time Bella moved Bella got hurt (not that that was much of a change), and every time Bella or the fetus moved Alice got hurt. She kept assuring me that it wasn't that bad but I knew better. I had found her sobbing or our non-tear equivalent to it in my study yesterday. She had looked so feeble with her arms wrapped around her head.
That's similar to what she looked like now. Her thin arms were wrapped in front of her head, around her temples. She laid across two cushioned chairs in front of the table we had taken to working at. She shook her head and her face chaffed against my pant legs.
"Alice, darling," I cooed gently, "is there anything I can do that'll help?" I asked for what seemed like the thousandth time today.
She shook her head 'no' in too much pain to raise her head. The pain she felt was leaping at me in waves. I traced her spine gently as I worked, after an hour she shifted slightly wincing as she did so, to sit in my lap and bury her head against my neck. I dimmed the lights when she squinted at them and added another stack of papers to the growing information stack.
"Maybe-" I started but Alice cut me off with a whispered 'there's nothing you can do' against my neck.
I could tell by her stiffness and the guilt that hit me that she regretted the way she had said them.
"Maybe," she started gently and I noticed her sing song voice was more flat than usual, "there is something you can do?"
"Yes?" I questioned thinking she was humoring me.
"Distract me?" she asked and I captured her lips in the same second.
I pulled my mouth away from hers eventually and she looked at me with topaz eyes.
"Thank you" she muttered and I knew we had prolonged the pain, put it off, but not rid her of it.
"Anything I can do to be of service Ma'am." I assured and had the pleasure of seeing her smile for the first time in a week. A long week.
She snuggled against my shoulder, wincing again, and I knew it was going to be a very long next couple of weeks.
A/N: What did you think?