A/N: Yeah, well, I'm still alive. Spread the bad news.
Chapter 2-5: Potential Truth
"Ow. Shit."
Even though I'd mostly healed up the hole in my chest while I slept, it still sent a spike of pain through me as I got up off the floor. There was still a small hole in my jacket, but the bullet didn't seem to burn cloth, only my flesh.
We were standing in a room that had quite possibly been a staff room or used for occupational therapy before the place was closed. The wallpaper was peeling and the single chair in the room was broken - an entirely unwanted moment of irony for three people who had need for neither comfort nor rest. One wall was splintered and littered with stab marks from someone viciously tearing at it with some kind of bladed weapon.
Alice was sitting on the desk in the middle of the room, looking uncharacteristically down-to-earth in plain black clothes and no makeup. Jenna was leaning up against the wall, rooting through her coat pockets, hoping, I guessed, to find stuff the dead man had left in there.
"So. Let's find out just what happened here." Alice's voice rang out through the room, made flat and hard by the oppressive acoustics. "First of all, I want to know who you are." Jenna twitched a bit and went back to rooting around in her pockets. "I told ya. I'm Jenna. Happy?" I didn't intervene, leaving Alice to question her. Neither of them seemed to like the other - Jenna thought Alice too prying and invasive, while Alice plain distrusted the temperamental and secretive Jenna, who was beginning to show a bit of an obstinate side.
"I know your name. You've told me twice already. What I want to know is your real name, what you're doing here, and why you don't want to talk." Alice fixed Jenna with a steely glare that seemed out of place on someone I knew as being capricious and flighty. "I don't want to throw my weight around, but I don't need to look at you twice to know I could ash you in five seconds. Let me ask again; who the fuck are you?" I'd never really heard Alice swear like that before. Sure, cuss a little, but this really seemed too light a matter for her to get that in-your-face. Jenna began talking while I was deliberating how to break up the tension.
"Fine. I don't want that mind-rape of yours again. Jennifer Richards, though if I hear ya call me that even once, I'll make ya fucking swallow your own guts. No criminal record as of yet, twenty-two years old, born in Des Moines and spent the last three years trying to get the hell outta that place. Happy now, fairyland reject?" Alice, visibly ticked off, exhaled and deliberated her words for a while. "You forgot to tell me why you ditched town. If I can trust you, I won't need to be so brash. I don't like this, you know."
Jenna crossed her arms behind her back and stared down at the floor, like a huffy child. "My mother died at the hospital after a mugging. After that, I was his wife, all the time. I never went to school again after that. My father was afraid that I'd go the same way. Before ya feel flattered, I've told people this a billion times. They tried to cure me, but I'm not the problem. He was, and they were all too weak to solve him instead." She inhaled and looked up towards the ceiling for a while before resuming. "And 'cuz ya can ash me, I'll give you the juicy details, bitch. Ya better be thankful."
She shuddered a bit, as if shaking some invisible stain off herself. "I've no problems facing what happened after that. It got all over the news when I outed him, but the son of a bitch had to have a trial. They moved him to a new place to keep him away from my mom's stuff, and I found him there and made sure he was dead. The shrink said I did it 57 times. Like I'd ever care. He had to die. The people in charge ditched the case 'cuz they didn't want the bad PR on their hands protecting the memory of a rapist and child abuser, and I got a nice bit of money and a life. Happy now? I've went through so much more shit than you have."
Jenna clenched her fists and made a reflexive sobbing motion before continuing. "I saw your little trip down memory lane there. I can guess you're batfuck insane, and you're overloading it out here. Not that hard to guess, seeing as your little trick's mind rape. But you're insane without an excuse, and I'm still sane, even though I have an excuse. Think about that next time you want to feel superior, bitch." She bit her lip and stared at the ceiling in the silence that followed.
I'd never thought that someone like Jenna, that cheery girl, would have a past like that. Nevertheless, I wasn't exactly overwhelmed by sympathy. The way she was acting had certainly outweighed any good karma she'd managed to rack up. But what caught my attention was what she was saying about Alice. She'd spent time at an asylum, but her memory block had saved her from the insanity she'd suffered. Did that mean...
"Yeah. If you wanna put it that way, I'm insane. Not the way I was, though. I can still recognize what's real and what's not, but it's wearing away at me. And don't think any of you will be safe. What I feared most was ...those days coming back to me. That's why I blocked it out. That's why they came back, too." Feared? What I feared most was my humanity slipping away. So that meant Aro was playing on our fears?
"Edward's having it wear on him, too. He always thought he didn't have a soul. Now, everything is pointing towards it. Jasper's fear was much like yours, Bella. He was afraid of being unnatural, of being rejected. Now even I can feel he's not human. If you thought this was just a half-assed move by Aro, forget it. He knows what he's doing, and he's trying to finish us off without a fight."
After a bit of silence, I spoke. The emotions I'd felt so strongly just a few days ago towards Edward and Renesmee were faded and only slowly returning.
"Edward... How are Edward and Nessie? And the others?" Alice closed her eyes and groaned. "Edward's going down the slippery slope. Jasper and Emmett are taking out aggression further down south in the city, and they're calling once in a while. Emmett put his bodycount at 134, thirty of them cops. Only a matter of time before they'll have to release their instincts in a new place. We left Rose with the Quileutes to make up the differences. She's human now, mostly. Aro's draught really did work. I still don't want to do what he wants, though. Carlisle's gone, together with Esme. Seems Edward's known there were some holes in his backstory all along, and he chose to call him out on it. Nessie... we don't know where she is, but we do know that she's alive. She was affected too, as were her friends. Lily was killed by a vampire hunter, and we're not sure we can keep Nessie from killing somebody in her state."
Nessie... Edward... I guessed I had to help them. I felt too drunk on my new power to care, even after all this, but this was something I had to do.
With a loud cough, Jenna broke in. "Nice that you two are having your family reunion there and gossiping about the other vamps, but I have no goddamn idea what you're saying. First off, just who the fuck is Aro?"
Alice twitched and looked in the direction of the hallway. "Nice that you're worrying, Jennifer" - she said the name with a sneer - "but we'll have to fight first. Hunters aren't much of a threat alone, but we have twenty people here. Probably armed with blessed ammunition and someone with a strong enough belief to keep us at bay with a cross. This is gonna be one hell of a fight, and not in the good way."
