A/N: if you're interested: Displaced (Azure Ray) you-tube for music sesh

All copyrights and materials that regards to Twilight or any of the subsequent novels belong to SM. No copyright infringement intended...

Also I know I haven't updated Tenterhooks in long time. I will get back into the swing of things soon, and I hope no ones lost hope just yet! Leave a review on your way out. BTW I don't know if this will be a long story at all, I just needed to start writing again and I couldn't get his idea out of my head.

48 Hours Later— Alice Cullen's Bedroom

His lazy eyes roamed over to her. His whole body filled with a heavy languidness that prevented any real movement. But he had no motivation to move anyway. She stared out the window and her eyes a held sadness of their own. He wanted to choke on his breath, maybe feel tears bubble up under his eyelids, until they fell, a sob pouring out with them in a quick succession. She was in the room, but he missed her so much. She could only sit looking out that window, waiting. The mahogany window seal framed her perfectly, like she was always meant to be within it. But a guttural sense of wrongness hit the pits of his belly, aching softly, trying to climb up towards his mouth. This was tension, this is the stuff tension they were made of, he decided.

A quick 'humph' escaped his lips. Still laziness in his cheeks prevented him from more speech. So weird, he thought. He'd never really been very depressed, there was always too much going on for the vitriol to catch up to him. When was the last time he really sat down to think about life without something interrupting. Maybe he...maybe this was his mind catching up with his body since it happened. Nothing had ever rendered him impotent. He couldn't even move to talk. Maybe that's how she felt too.

Unexpectedly, because it felt like months since the last time she moved, her head turned slowly towards him and away from the window. She look straight at him. A breath escaped her suddenly, like she hadn't taken a one for ages. The staccato of it was weighty. She wanted to talk, he'd decided. He could tell as her lips pursed she was gritting her teeth in effort to let speech loose. He breathed in heavily too, his lips pursing in reciprocation. Metaphorical quicksand. That's what they were stuck in. She squeezed her eyes shut and popped them open quickly. Trying to get herself out of this— stagnation. When had she decided to leave this place? He wouldn't have known, she hadn't moved for so long, no indication of any kind. He remembered though, that when he was at his most tired, and he'd decided that he wanted to move, he really didn't move at all. Yes, he remembered his resolution was solid in it's stillness. That it took time.

She was looking into his eyes now, and he could feel that she was about to break. Finally. A sob escaped her, and she spat up a little. The rasp that escaped her throat was one of heartbreak.

"I miss her." Her tears bubble over. The way he wanted to let his. Her cheeks puffed up in agitation.

"She's gone." He spoke softly.

"Mmmm..." She cried. Like she had no words, only primal sounds of loss escaped those lips. Looking away from Jasper she wiped her tears with the back of her thumb. She curled in on herself.

His breath hitched. Nodding his head he said, "I know."

"Is she really dead? Did it really happen?"

He nodded emphatically, his own cheeks turning as though he had sucked on something particularly sour. The back of his jaw pinched with pain as his eyes welled with tears.

48 Hours Earlier— Right Outside of Forks

They were all walking towards the theater in the neighboring town. They didn't usually walk through the woods to get there but it was such a beautiful day and Alice insisted. She loved the wild flowers that grew at the bottom of the large willow trees that dressed the coast of the town. Twenty feet before the edge of the woods she picked them and walk over to Bella with a coy smile on her face, a flower twirling in her hands tucked away behind her back.

"My love!" She exclaimed in a mocked Shakespearean accent.

"Yes sweet, Mary Alice?" Bella responded kindly. They loved to play, Jasper thought, chuckling.

"Please, dear. Accept this flower as a token of my love for you..." She whispered romantically. Jasper remembered how serious Alice looked as she professed her childish love for her best friend, Bella Swan.

Only after Bella'd accepted the flower she turned with a smirk towards Jasper.

"I'd leave you for her in a second..."

Jasper smiled at this. Then Alice tucked the flower into Bella's mahogany curls, grabbed her hand and ran through the edge of the woods into the street that ran parallel to the theater, girlish giggles floating back to him.

He lagged behind them this time, chuckling to himself. When he'd moved to this town and met Alice, he'd sworn that her and Bella'd been sisters, constantly connected. Their friendship transcended any normal convention.

He'd hear the sound and didn't place it immediately. Although he should have, it didn't make any sense. A gunshot— here? He ran out of the woods faster to see if he was crazy. The girls must have heard it too. When he ran into the street he stopped short. Bella was twenty feet away, facing the woods, a look of shock plastered onto her face. Alice faced away, stock still. He saw the breath rise out of Bella as if a ball had choked its way out, making her body undulate with a gasp.

"Alice?" She screamed, as she moved to catch her best friend, whose body went limp suddenly. Jasper stood still, his own shock rooting his feet to the ground.

"Alice?" Bella lay her head on the ground gently, and with shaking hands, tried to cover her abdomen which a crimson color was blossoming from. Jasper ran faster then he ever had in his life, stopping only after his knees were torn apart by the gravel of the ground next to Alice's body.

"Bell?" She sputtered back, blood leaking from the corner of her mouth. "Belly?" She cried, trying to breath. "What—?" Alice tried to look down at her abdomen while reaching her shaking hand towards the gunshot wound, but she was too weak. She didn't understand what was happening.

"You're okay!" Bella gasped, her breath trying to escape her.

"Call 911! Jazz, call 911!" He shuffled for his phone as fast as he could.

Bella leaned her head down gently and hugged her best friend.

"You're okay, Ali. You'll be okay. Ali..." She kept her right hand pressed to Alice's wound trying to stop the bleeding the best she could. The tips of her fingers becoming stained with her blood. The wild flower from her curls escaped her and fell to the ground next to them, forgotten.

24 Hours Before Alice Cullen's Bedroom/ 24 Hours After Right Outside of Forks—

Forks Community Hospital

"Bella?"

She looked up from her post only to see her boyfriend and Alice's brother, Edward. She was sitting in the hospital. She had already gotten the news from Alice's parents, Esme and Carlisle just an hour earlier that Alice passed. When Jasper had called them from the ambulance, Carlisle was on duty, but when they got through the hospital doors, there were doctors and a nurse staff pushing him out of the way. He wasn't allowed to see her, to operate on her. Bella remembered what he'd said, what he'd tried to do.

"No! She's mine! She's my— mine. Let me! My baby! Pl— please! Let go of me!" He screamed at them holding his hands out towards his youngest child... Bella's heart dropped immediately at Carlisle's movements and speech. Stuttering. She looked down at Ali's blood on her fingers and then into Carlisle's eyes and bellowed her cries until someone grabbed her too.

"Yes, Edward?" She whispered.

His head was turned downwards. Denial thick in his movements and voice.

"Mom and Dad said you were welcome. They called your Dad hours ago. He is going to pick you and Jasper up so that you all can come over."

"Yeah...Where is Jasper's mom?"

"She's still out of town with her boyfriend, she's trying to get the next plane back." The side of his mouth lifted, mocking the crooked smile Bella had fallen in love with so long ago. He sat next to her, gently putting his hand on her knee.

"Baby, do you want to stay with me tonight? I mean— I'd really— I don't want to be alone." His voice cracked. He choked then creating a hiccup upon the first syllable of his next statement, "I— can't believe this is happening. Oh my God..." He cried, tears falling over his red cheeks. "My sister..."

Bella turned her head to face him, nuzzling into his neck, her tears welling at his collarbone.

"Do they know—?" She hiccuped.

"Your dad said they still don't know who— what happened."

"Where's Em?"

"At home with Rose—, where's Jazz?"

"Uh, I'm not sure..."

Edward just nodded his head.

24 Hours Before Alice Cullen's Bedroom/ 24 Hours After Right Outside of Forks—

Alice Cullen's Bedroom/The Loveseat

Jasper sat stock still. Bereavement didn't seem like a strong enough word. Something had been stolen or taken from him. It wasn't just Alice, but who she was. Her candid smiles. Her playfulness. Her love. Who ever had done this, Jasper would kill with his bare hands he'd decided. At this resolution, he kicked his legs up to lay back on the small couch and sat. Simply sat with no tears, no solid frown. Just blank. People were in and out, trying to talk to him, but he didn't answer; only shrugged them away with apathy. Esme and Carlisle walked in and out, Edward came in and tried to talk with Jasper, but he still only sat. The only person that did not try and talk to Jasper was Bella. She walked in, offering not even a glance at one of her closest friends, instead taking a seat at the three paneled window with the purple pillows that Alice had insisted upon. She was still with him.