A/N: These are all leading to the oneshot for Fandom Gives Back purchased by adorablecullens and algonquinrt.

Zündhölzer

Something was happening. Things were shifting; I could feel it. There was overlap, somehow, between Alice's thoughts and that Voice that never stopped calling my name. When they'd been together, I'd felt it drag me down as if I'd been weighted and thrown into the ocean. And now, it felt as though there were times those two voices spoke to me at the same time, from the same, impossible, faraway place.

For one thing I was excessively grateful in death: that I finally could hear Alice's voice. I'd always understood her more than anyone else, and we'd had our own secret symbols and gestures. But to hear her thoughts … it made me want to swoop her up in my arms and spin her around while she silently screamed with glee. Her voice in my thoughts was lovely, lovelier than I ever could have imagined.

I wished the whole world could hear how sweet her voice was. But then again, having it exist only in my mind made it rather a sacred thing, another secret between Alice and me.

You're too precious for this world, I thought, missing her.

But the other one—the Voice—I found myself seeking her in the air around me. It wasn't too hard, because I was almost always in her thoughts. She cried out with as much sorrow as a mother, or a lover, and yet with such purity and earnestness that she was something Other. I wished I could learn more about her. On earth, I could never hear Alice's voice, and in death, I could never see this person's face.

Why was I still here? Was this what everyone's afterlife was like? All this solitude and breathing in the bereavement of those who'd loved you? It didn't seem right to me, somehow. Something was holding me back, tying me here. Was it the grief? Were too many people missing me, their tears chaining me to the soil where my body would be buried?

Once, for just a second, I felt my particles being siphoned into something small, pressed through a narrow passageway. I could almost see, it felt like … there were light and shadowy forms. Heaven, I thought. I'm finally going to cross. But then everything reversed; my particles scattered again, and I was back in my solitude, both everywhere and nowhere all at once.

What day was that? Was any of this real?

As the time went by (hours? years? generations?), the world began to fade away bit by bit, both the voices and the memories. Part of me was glad for it—maybe it meant my loved ones were moving on. Hazily I could feel my brother's thoughts of me, cloudy and confused, and, strangely, much the same from my love, my earthly love. Their thoughts wove in similar waves, in synch. Find each other, I thought. It seemed to me that my absence had eroded both of them in corresponding ways, that together they seemed to make one whole person. And that was okay. It was more than okay; it was right. It was the way things should go, and I was happy for this, that my brother and my earthly love should find each other. They didn't know it yet, but I knew. It was like that: some things I just knew now. They would be happy. And maybe that was the purpose of my death, if my death had any purpose at all.

And I needed so badly to believe it did.

There needed to be a reason for this, for my life cut so short. There had to be a reason, or it seemed all so wrong, so unfair. I'd never see Alice grow up. I'd never have children. I'd never write another song. All the things I'd never get to see or do again, never again smell my mother's perfume when I kissed her on the cheek whenever I'd come home. I'd never see that shining light in my dad's eyes when he'd make a special trip to see me perform. I'd never trade insults with my brother until we were both on the floor, gasping in pain from laughter. Never feel my earthly love's silky hair on my neck.

But she would continue to live. They all would. They would go on; the days would turn into nights, the nights into new days and new sunrises, and one day I would be but a dull ache, a fading bruise.

But the Voice, she … did not seem like she would be okay. I worried for her. I prayed, although I knew not to whom: Give her happiness. Just one day, one moment, anything. The Voice was jagged, filled with pain and longing and loss. She was simply lost; I could feel her pulled in so many directions at once, as if her heart were in pieces scattered throughout the universe. She never felt whole, and it was different from the pieces missing from my brother and my love.

She was unfixable.

I hoped, that when I could feel her and Alice pulling me down in that same, faraway place, that they could comfort each other. I couldn't tell.

How strange it was to observe the world but not be part of it. "Observe" was maybe too strong a word, since I couldn't actually see anything. It was more as if I could feel the terrain of someone's emotional landscape, taste their sorrow. Sometimes I could feel the fragments of a person's soul that I knew would fit with someone else's. It was a strange and wondrous thing to be so aware.

And every day, I still searched for my lost baby sister Emmy. Are you there? Are you looking for me too? I thought it odd that if I did find her, even though she had been so tiny when she had been taken away from us, that she would know so much more, having been on the other side that much longer than I.

I was searching for Emmy when I felt it again, two voices of sorrow singing melody and descant to the other, though neither voice knew it. They were close, the Voice and my best friend. They didn't even know how close. This way, I tried to coax, trying to guide the Voice to the heart of my friend.

I felt something in me like a magnesium flare, a loud pop, a blinding light, and the sensation of being drawn down was almost unbearable. There was music, my friend, and the Voice, all together. It was so much that I felt almost dizzy. Jasper and I had been so connected—I remembered reading once that musicians often displayed what could be described as psychic knowing, because of how attuned we were to the cues of others, their breathing, their phrasing—when you played in an ensemble, you all became part of one body. And maybe this was why, when I felt Jasper in the same place as the Voice, I got flickers of images, a match struck against sandpaper, a flare of a light, a glimpse of a face. Brown hair. Long brown hair. It was beautiful. I wanted to see more, but I could not. A song floated back to me, and had I had vocal cords, I would have hummed it. Had I had fingers, I would have formed the chords and picked out the melody. Instead, I poured myself into Jasper's head and tried to see what he saw. Again, only flashes, a match struck on sandpaper, the smell of phosphorous, a glimpse in the spaces between the shutting of eyes.

The moment was slipping away, the two worlds shifting their orbitals, and I cried out with everything I could: Don't leave her. Don't leave me. Don't leave us. They shifted again, once again on the same path. Did I make that happen?

For ages they traveled together, tracing the same path on the surface of the earth. And it was like the matches, desperately struck against the surface time and time again, trying to catch her face in a split second of light. I saw an eyelash, a tear rolling down a pale cheek, and I felt warmth, like that strange feeling when you pass your finger through the flame of a candle. The flame licks your finger, but it doesn't burn. That's what it was like, as if my whole being were passing through a lit candle so quickly that all I felt was a quick flash of warmth, so quick I wasn't sure if it had happened at all. An illusion.

And all the while, in my head I was lighting matches, trying to see, trying to hear, trying to understand.

Their orbitals had shifted again, parting ways, and I heard just two words:

Bella Swan.

I knew that name; somewhere in the back of my head I remembered something. Not enough, not the whole picture, but something.

Thank you, Jasper, for carrying me here, I thought as the last match died out, leaving me once again in darkness.