Chapter Ten

"All of your flaws and all of my flaws are laid out one by one,

Look at the wonderful mess that we made"

-"Flaws," Bastille

Something happened. Something wasn't right. I turned away from the book I'd been reading, breaking into a run for the stairs leading to Alec's room. It took longer to get there than I'd ever experienced before, and I stumbled, hit my foot on something, and smacked into several objects along the way. When I finally did reach his door, he was already waiting with wide eyes.

"Alec!" I huffed. "What—something—something's wrong, I can feel it."

He nodded once, swallowing. He looked guilty, like he had something to hide.

"What? What is it, Alec? What?" I pressed.

He opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking, making sure to close the door before. Like that would help anything.

"Crystal," he started, "Amber is…"

"What? What happened to Amber? Tell me, Alec!" I grabbed the front of his coat, wishing I was still strong enough to throw people across rooms.

"Amber is dead, Crystal." He choked out, forcefully and quick, like pulling off a Band-Aid.

I couldn't breathe. I mean…I literally could not breathe. My throat closed up, and I had to awkwardly huff several times before I could properly enunciate anything that didn't sound like blubbering. I needed air now. Reaching for my neck, tears sprung to my eyes at the new, foreign feeling; the sudden need to breathe and cry at the same time like a normal person constricted my movement and made my head swim. Alec placed his hand on my shoulder, but I threw him off and hit him in the chest, though it didn't do much, and he recoiled.

"Who?" I choked, feeling like I would vomit.

Alec hung his head in shame, and I knew right then. "Wh-Why didn't you stop them!" I screamed with asperity. "What did you do? What did you fucking do, Alec!" Turning sharply, still muttering obscenities, I set off to find Peaches. I heard Alec right behind me.

"I want to say I hate you and that I want you dead but I can't because it's not true but I am right there in that neighborhood of hating you!" I huffed out all in one breath.

"Crystal, I couldn't do any—"

"You could've done plenty of things! You could've stepped in front of her! They wouldn't kill one of their most valued guards! Or talked to Aro! Or-or-or killed them yourself—"

"Crystal, do you hear yourself?"

"No! I can't hear anything over the sound of a lying, angry, cowardly, pathetic bastard trailing behind me!" I hear Alec stop, and I spin around to face him. The hurt is evident on his face, and he looks abused. Good.

"If you loved me like you fucking claim to, if we're really mates—and for a while there I believed it—you should've known. You should've. It. You." I try to pull at my hair to regain my sanity but end up smacking my forehead instead, and I let myself stay in that face-palmed position for a second. "She means so much to me…" I inhale, taking shaky breaths. I can tell my face is cherry-red.

Footsteps echo from the direction I was heading. Alec violently grabs me bridal-style, and he zips us back to his room, where he starts opening the window.

"What are you doing? I have to find Peaches!" I whisper.

He turns to me, wide-eyed and terrified, something I've never seen in his face before.

"They're not happy, Crystal. They're coming. They'll want you next."

"Aro was supposed to fix me! Carlisle promised! Can't he fix this?" All rationality drains from my body, and for the first time in a long, long time, I feel completely human. Helpless. Alec hears it, too, and if he can hear it, I know the rest of the Volturi can. Dark entities cloud my mind, and I clutch myself, nails digging into my arms where blood is rushing and pulsing and goosebumps are forming and for the first time I am truly petrified.

"Your heart…"

"Alec?" I ask, genuinely frightened.

"Run."

The door opens, and Demetri saunters in. Alec has the window open, and before Demetri can grab me, we are out the window and falling safely to the ground below.

"There are tunnels that contain the living spaces, three stories below the town. Past them, there's an entrance into the castle—the Volterra sewers that connect to the castle's passageways. One of the passages leads to a drainage hole right on the edge of the city. With Demetri, they'll still track us, but that drainage hole is how we'll alert the Cullens that you're in danger."

He was speaking all too fast, and my mind couldn't keep up. I just let myself be carried by the boy that was now a hundred times stronger than I could ever be, my new heartbeat working overtime, pumping, pumping, pumping.

We raced through the tunnels.

The sun is bright when we emerge. Alec, in addition to being obviously panicky and estranged at the moment, has an arduous look on his face.

"What's wrong?" I ask. He shakes his head, his hair falling over his eyebrows.

"Let's go."

"You're really taking me back to the Cullens? What about Peaches?"

"That's what…that's what I don't get." Alec looks over his shoulder. "They let us go. Does that mean they're doing something to Peaches?"

My heart must've sped up dramatically because Alec looks extremely uncomfortable and keeps glancing at my neck. I wonder what I smell like to him now.

"No. No, no, no. I've lost Amber, I'm not losing Peaches, too." Alec restrains me as I try to run away, and I kick and struggle but I know it is now useless. I am useless. I am human. I'm still furious at Alec, and his prevention of my saving Peaches only ticks me off more.

"Crystal, you can't! The Volturi want to change you back, and it's absolutely doubtless that your body won't survive a second transformation. You. Can't. Go. Back. There."

"But—"

"I promised Amber, right before they killed her. I saw, I knew. She asked me, Crystal, and I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

Defeated, we waste no more time and Alec takes me to Forks.

There are certain scents and colors and sounds that never fail to associate themselves with a specific place. From the California beaches to London rain, some sights never truly leave you, no matter how long you're gone or how far you've been. The Cullens' home is one of those places, and I sigh nostalgically.

Tired, I make no objections as Alice leads me to a bed that is only for appearances, and I flop down on it. Like a human. The thought turns over and over in my head until Alec nudges the door open and stands awkwardly there. He has changed his clothes, so he looks a little more like a normal teenage boy in black slacks and a dark long-sleeved shirt, but the ominous and powerful feeling emitting from him is the same.

He sits at the end of the bed, and his brown hair falls in his face. His overall appearance is disheveled, unkempt, like he was up late preparing for school exams. He looks older, somehow.

"I don't think Carlisle is going to talk to them."

I turn my head from the pillow I'd been laying on. "Why not? He's the diplomatic one."

Alec shakes his head, staring at the wall adorned with photos of the Cullens that'll never age, books that are over-read, and music that'll never be popular again. "This is serious, Crystal. His most previous encounter with the Volturi, concerning the child of Edward and Bella, was an issue that had been outlawed. Immortal children. It happened, it was the past. This is different. This is dealing with genetically modified vampirism; the venom that coated your cells just…disappeared. And the only evidence we have is my love was strong enough to do that. Not very convincing."

"You sound more and more like Carlisle with each passing second."

Alec smirks at that, and gauchely lays down beside me, rigid and still in comparison to my angled body. Absentmindedly, he starts playing with my hair, and I accidentally tense up. He stops.

We lay like that for a while, with me turned away from him and his hand resting lightly on my shoulder, every so often rubbing small circles. I think we're both thinking of our next move. We can't run away, but I had to see Peaches again. We had to get her back, and I tried thinking of heroic escape plans, but every idea was squashed when I remembered the abilities that vampires had.

We thought in silence for about an hour, and I was beginning to drift to sleep when Alec shoots up, nearly knocking me off the bed. He's at the door instantly, and it freaks me out a little to see it. Is that how I looked when I could run like him?

Alec leaves while I get out of bed slowly, and then I hear glass shatter, and I rush downstairs. At first, I think it's Peaches, and my heart leaps with excitement. But the blonde hair and petite frame make my heart drop, and then I notice the Cullens are all standing at least five feet away from her.

It's Jane.

And Alec is hugging her like his life depends on it; I expect to hear her bones snap any moment.

I seem to be trying to make as much noise as possible as I come down the stairs, and Jane pulls back from Alec to look at me. There is something in her face I've never seen before: worry. Panic. She looks as untidy as Alec with a few loose strands of blonde hair covering her face and her clothes a little more out of place than usual. Small trickles of blood drip from gashes in her left arm that heal by the time I've made it to the ground floor.

"Where is my sister?" I splutter.

"Dead." The hostility in her voice is still there.

"The other one!" I almost mutter "bitch" under my breath, but decide against it. Who knows how powerful her gift is against humans compared to vampires.

Jane's eyes fall to the floor, and the defiant act is replaced by a slumped stature. "Peaches attacked Felix the last time I saw her. Ripped his head clean off. The kings were furious, and Caius tore her arm off. Aro wanted me to subdue her, but I…I couldn't." She says this ashamedly, like it was wrong of her to not hurt anyone.

"You and Alec had left by then, under the tunnels," Jane continued. "Aro was coming towards me, and I—I didn't know what to do. I had to find my brother. He sent Demetri after you two, but when I fled, I think he decided to wait. He's…planning something." Jane finished.

"This is very critical information. Thank you, Jane." Carlisle coaxes after several minutes of silence from the rest of their coven. No one looked happy to have the twins in their home.

"So what now?" Jasper asked. "Whatever Aro's planning, we have to hide Crystal. We have to protect her. Alice can warn us when he's ready, but until then, we're traveling on thin ice."

At that moment, my tummy growled loudly, and I flushed with embarrassment. I hadn't eaten in, well, years, but now it was different. I needed human food. At this thought, I realized just how calm all the Cullens were behaving, even Jasper, at a newly created human occupied their home. I was so grateful.

"Let's get her fed, then I think our next move should be retrieving Peaches." Carlisle said.

"Wait, you mean she's actually gonna eat?" Alec asked, alarmed.

Carlisle nodded. "We can figure out her new anatomy later, but if you keep feeding and her body still receives the nutrients from blood, she could die. Take her…" Carlisle hesitated, a funny look crossing his face, "to a McDonald's maybe?"

The Cullens all smirked and held in fits of laughter. Human food—the idea seemed so silly, especially since I knew they weren't that involved in Bella's eating habits before she was turned. They were only concerned with not eating her.

"This'll be interesting." Emmett grinned. Alec looked horrified. He was the one that had to take me.

The drive there is tense, uncertain. I needed to know if my sister was okay. My stomach growled and my head hurt and I forgot how to breathe several times during the drive. Alec looked stiff and stayed away from me the whole time. Too many things. Too much happening. Food. Coffee.

My human life.

Alec received several stares at McDonald's, and he constantly shifted and looked everywhere but the eyes of those gawking. It was kinda cute how uncomfortable he was. I got two cheeseburgers, fries, and a coke. We sat outside as I dug into my fries, and two kids on bikes stopped and stared at Alec.

"Where'd you get your clothes, mister?" One of them asked.

"Master Aro." Alec replied quietly, shrinking into himself.

"Master?" The other one inquired. "What are you, a prince?"

"Or a slave?" The first one asked, and the pair erupted into giggles with dirty thoughts running through their minds.

"Beat it, assholes." I hissed.

It looked like the first one was going to retaliate, but Alec straightened up then, pulling his shoulders back and growling lowly, and the two kids hurried off.

I smiled, ketchup caught on the side of my mouth, leaning into Alec. "My hero." I said behind a mouthful of fries.

Alec looked down at me, utter shock written on his face at the sentiment, before smiling widely and wrapping one arm around my shoulders, turning his head the other way. I suspect the sight of the red ketchup and my close proximity was giving him a hard time controlling his thirst. I leaned away apologetically.

"It was nothing." He mumbled, and if he was a human, I bet he would've blushed. He liked the attention; I could tell.

Too soon, however, his pride turned to despondence. "I wish I could've done more for Amber."

I finished my meal and sucked on the straw of my drink before answering as delicately as I could. "I wish she was still here; I wish Aro and those he has manipulated didn't have to do what they did." I rubbed my hands over my thighs uneasily.

Alec nodded, understanding my underlying point: I wish he had done more, too.

My tummy feels full, I feel full. I haven't felt that in a very long time, and I honestly feel like I might vomit at the feeling. We drive back to the Cullens, and walk hand-in-hand to the living room, where Alice is waiting with news of the Volturi.

A/N: In case you haven't noticed, I'm having major writer's block and updates are taking a lot longer than they should be. I'd honestly love to hear any ideas/suggestions anyone has for this story, either in reviews or PM me, but I also understand that I need to figure this out myself. Sorry for any future delays.