-1Wow, the review response was pretty rapid. Thanks guys. Heh. Ok, so now I get to put in the usual don't sue thing, also if you haven't finished Breaking Dawn, then I wouldn't suggest you read further, since there may be some spoiler age further on.

II: Scorched Earth

As I lie on the ground I was released from my prison house of despair. The enw numbness, the lack of emotional feedback is ultimately what snapped me out of myself.

"Jasper?" a voice, a quiet voice, Esme's voice.

My eyelids fluttered open as focused up at her. "I'm here, Esme, I'm here. What of Alice? Where is she?"

I found myself gather into her arms like a child, it was a disconcerting feeling. I tried to extend my powers, to soothe and calm her, but found myself… unable. "Esme? What's wrong? Why can't I feel anything? Where is Alice?"

"She, she didn't make it Jasper," Esme murmured, so low that even my heightened sense of hearing almost missed the words. "It was three of their guards."

I pulled myself away, knowing that I should be shocked, but somehow unable to truly feel so. "How? I mean, wouldn't she have sensed them, seen them coming?"

"I'm not sure yet, none of us are," she sighed. "We were all so busy… and didn't notice because…," another bitter sigh. I think, had she been physically able, that she would have wept then.

I got myself to my feet and tried to dust myself off, extending a hand to her. "What else is there, Esme? What ever it is, I want to face it on my feet."

It's curious how calm I was. Perhaps my newborn lack of emotional sensitivity number me to the pain. It may even have been possible that I was suffering simple shock; no being, no matter how wise or old, can truly be prepared to learn that the pillar of their existence has been tumbled down. All of this is retrospective, of course; at the time I was just waiting for the other show to drop.

My mother, as it were, took my hand righted herself. Grime and, viscera, covered her clothes and splashed her face. She looked tired, a pretty mean feat for a being without a biological need for sleep. She took a moment to try and compose herself, I took the pause to look around.

I felt blind, having no emotional aura to read. Everything seemed so blatant, so stark, almost primitive. My eyes, half crippled as they were, slid over the wreckage: the wolf packs harvesting their fallen, the vampires putting the remains of both friends and enemies to the torch. A knot of people, my family vampiric and lupine, gathered in a group around two smoldering piles.

"Two piles," I noted aloud, my voice sounding flat in my own ears.

"Yes," Esme agreed, a hand on my shoulder, "Alice and Renesmee."