Title: Disillusioned

Genre: romance / hurt / comfort

Pairings: alice/jasper, edward/bella, alice/demetri

Warning: i'm in crisis, but it's bc i ate a 20pc chicken nugget

It occurs to her then that she has only ever seen one other Tracker before Demetri.

James, the one who started it all.

The man with windblown hair and sleepless eyes. He had the same build she saw in her own father, the wide shoulders, strong thighs, and quick steps—all enhanced with vampiric grace. He looked like the sort of man who would not look amiss at a hunting lodge or dive bar. Maybe prettier, but not amiss.

And then, there's Demetri, beautiful and immaculate.

His high aristocratic air and a face that looked more suited in a Raphaelite painting. Despite his gift, he does not look rough or brutish like James. He is posed, like a slender blade going in for the kill. He is finely dressed and, in the wilderness, it is an oddly terrifying juxtaposition.

And she is terrified.

Especially when he spoke directly to her.

Although Demetri is—was—Alice's mate, and that association should comfort her, it does not. She sees him and she is reminded of stories of men who have families, and lives, and go to work, but one day slaughter several bystanders with nary a wink. Perfect, closed lip smiles and rotten teeth.

Demetri strolls towards them, movements purposeful and quick.

"It seems you left your coven at a disadvantage, Edward." Demetri says, moving still. "You have the greatest gift; it seems only natural that you should join the fight."

"I would not leave my mate behind." Edward says through his teeth.

"Ah, yes," Demetri's eyes flicker to her a moment in distaste. "I'll deal with you in a moment, piccolina." Edward tenses, the muscles under his sweater bunching in disagreement. Demetri finishes his half-rotation around them, from his entrance to his stopping point he has been picking off his fine leather gloves and now, he pockets them. Almost nonchalantly, he asks, "Well, who is going to stop me if you are preoccupied?"

Edward's expression turns blank for a moment and then, the sound of snapping branches.

Edward's gaze cuts to the left and Bella turns too, just in time to see a red-haired woman in a patchwork coat followed by a man who eclipsed her height.

Victoria.

In a moment that feels oddly reminiscent of her eighteenth birthday, Edward shoves her back as he lunges to meet Victoria and the newcomer.

She is tripping through the air, not enough momentum to send her flying, but just enough to send her careening towards the firepit. That is, until, Demetri snatches her arm, pulling her up before she could fall among the ashes and embers.

His nose wrinkles. "Honestly, I would assume you stole that coat had you seemed the type."

Bella doesn't have the words to answer.

A snarl breaks out over the rocks and the sound of something slamming into the trees and into the campsite. Bella turns her head in time to find Seth—Seth of all the wolves—pacing towards them, chin tipped, teeth bared, and a snarl rising up in his throat.

It clicks to her then—Demetri's red eyes, that he's holding her—and she scrambles up, using Demetri as leverage as she practically climbs on top of him. "Not him! Not him! He's good!"

Seth pauses only momentarily before his wolfish, confused expression turns back to something else—the vampire Victoria brought. The growl that echoes in him is low, pitched deeper than Seth's baby voice may allow. All the same, he lunges at the other vampire, draws snapping and—true to Jasper's direction—keeping out of the vampire's grasp.

She barely has time to hiss out a breath of relief before Demetri grabs her again, yanking her off of him, but still keeping a hand on her shoulder.

"You will explain." Demetri says and although his tone is authoritative and directed on her, his eyes are distant, watching the scrambled mess of fighting. Bella follows his gaze and nearly shrieks when she sees Edward go down hard, Victoria on top of him, claws sinking in, but Edward rolls—

"Now would be appropriate." Demetri says primly and, when she doesn't answer, his eyes cut to her, annoyance lacing his tone. "Oh please, you're not in shock, are you?"

How can she be in shock if the shock is happening right now?

"They're werewolves." She breathes and nearly screams again when the new vampire wiggles out of Seth's grasp, jumps over him and almost, almost catches him.

Demetri tusks. "Those are not werewolves, you dullard."

The insult is not as scathing as it sounds, but Bella still rises to the bait. "I am only telling you what I know!"

She tugs against his hold to—to what? To help? How can she possibly help? A vampire and a not-werewolf were much better suited to take down Victoria and the newcomer than she. Perhaps she just needed the security of being free, without Demetri holding onto her like she might dash over the side of the cliff.

Demetri stares at her a moment, eyes narrowing before his upper lip curls. "Then you are useless." He drops her arm and turns back to the thrall unfolding before them.

She thinks, for a moment, that he might join the fight, stepping forward before he collects himself in stillness, settling in to watch her ex-boyfriend and some fifteen-year-old not-werewolf duke it out in a losing death match.

Demetri's insult finally rings true.

She feels useless.

More than ever. More than the times before when the physical strength and agility might have helped her, but a deep emotional uselessness. A feeling so crippling, she is ashamed to say she knows it well.

It feels like having no dreams beyond the pipe-dream future she dreamed up with Edward. It feels like having to go along with any number of her mother's great schemes because she is too young to be on her own and loves her mother too much to leave her. It feels like watching her grandmother dying, unable to find any recollection in her pale blue eyes, unable to even hold her veiny pale hand in the end.

At a time, she may had been able to wrap herself in the physical strength of a vampire, with the beauty and grace of something cool and deadly, but inside she would always be the same—mentally and emotionally weak.

The feeling lobs a lump in her throat. The physical ache of it making her reach for her neck, hoping to alleviate it some, but her fingers tangle in the diamond chain of the cloak's pin.

Her fingers brush against the cold silver pin that loops the eyelet around her throat. It's decorative, but sharp. Alice had insisted to her to be careful.

The sound of rock breaking brings her attention back to the fight and she is horrified to find the newcomer had shaken Seth off.

She is reminded of the story that Jacob told her last night, the one she always liked to hear and would pester him until he did so. It was another story of the Cold Ones, a vampire seeking revenge for her mate's death, came to slaughter a tribe and finding only one wolf to protect his people. The odds weighed heavily against them.

But it is not a sad story, it is a story of courage, of power, of humanity—the story of the Third Wife.

Bella yanks hard and the delicate chain snaps free, her fingers curling tight and sweaty around the silver pin.

It's not a knife, but it would do.

It doesn't take much, but with the correct pressure against her palm, her skin splits and breaks. Then there is a moment where she is separate from herself and the pain she is inflicting, Bella pulls.

The smell of blood—to her sense—fills her nose. The smell of old pennies and tin, her mouth waters with the urge to vomit, but the fear—that cold, calculating fear—keeps her upright. Like a statue on the mountain, like the Third Wife in the battle, she stands, outstretched hand bleeding into the rocks by her feet.

She watches the scrambled fight before her slow into pictured stillness.

The newcomer has his hands around Edward's throat and Victoria has his arm. The smell of her blood perfuming the air is intoxicating to them, drawing them in, inviting them.

The stillness is then shattered when Seth launches at the newcomer, a tackle in the shoulder and the quick, bloodless dismemberment of one arm and then the other.

Bella quickly closes her palm as Edward twists in Victoria's grip, grabbing a fistful of that long, red hair and pulling her neck back into a long graceful arch. She wants to cover her eyes, or look away, but instead she watches—horrified—as Edward sinks his teeth into the supple curve of her throat, and pulling away a chunk of flesh.

Bella can make-out shapes, lines of red and white, fur and flesh. The newcomer is dragged away just as quickly, his screams racking up the sides of the mountain, calling for Victoria, Victoria—

But her nightmare's attention is otherwise taken.

Edward snaps her leg neck as she tries to get up, moving for the kill as Victoria struggles to limb away. He grabs her ankle and something—somewhere—cracks. She screams, loud, shrilly, pained, and real. The sound of it, the anguish, the pain, jolts something strange and protective in her. Almost as if hearing the noise in any other context.

Victoria is being dragged backward, towards the firepit when Bella realizes how close she is.

Victoria is five paces away. Her nails are scraping into the rock, cutting deep gouges into the earth, her teeth chattering with fear as she tries to speak—

It's a name.

It's James.

The original Tracker.

"Wait—" She calls out but it's too late. Edward sets her ablaze on their old campfire, the place where she and Jacob sat the night before, roasting marshmallows and telling stories, the Cold Ones, the Third Wife, the legends passed down one generation to the next. It becomes Victoria's pyre.

Victoria goes up in flames, her long red hair curling with the fire that will burn her until she is nothing but ash and soot.

Demetri takes her by the shoulder again, lifting her even though she cannot remember falling to her knees. "You're getting blood on that coat." He says simply and something warm and silk-like is tied around her hand, pulled taut. "Refrain from screaming, please."

And then she is off, down the side of the mountain, clinging to Demetri like an afterthought.

Before she can consider screaming and losing the residual air in her lungs, Demetri stops. The punch-gut feeling of a sudden stop reminds her of a roller-coaster ride she would have never tried out. All at once, her stomach and intestines are slammed into her spine and then bouncing back with the force of a racket ball.

She gages for air, a deep hollowing sound as she is unceremoniously set on her feet. Her feet that she is not quite ready to stand on just yet.

"Careful there," a low voice, not Demetri's tusks somewhere above her. She tips her head back to look up into Felix's smiling face. His tree-trunk arms cradling her against his chest. "Little winded there, sweetheart?"

Understatement of the century.

She drags deeply through her nose and out through her mouth.

The smell of pine and something acidic-sweet scents the air.

"I think I might throw up."

"Well, we can't have that," Another voice, younger this time, calls from a greater distance. Bella rolls her neck boneless to find Jane and Alec standing under a canopy of trees. Alec's lips curve, indicating he had been the one to speak. "It's always so annoying when your meal loses theirs."

The deep predatory stare that follows the statement just nothing to calm her insides.

"Can we please," Demetri's voice, direct and cold, cuts through the bickering that erupted between the siblings. "Would either of you like to take care of our special friend?"

Alec steps forward and Bella's heart slams in her chest as she expects pain, a numbing of senses, a cut to blackness—anything. Alec, however, bounces on the balls of his feet and launches himself upward, into the trees and out of sight.

"That should take care of your mate." Demetri says and, it might be the fear talking, but Bella swears his mouth tears around that word. Mate. She is at once curious and then terrified.

"What will he do to Edward?" She whispers, anything louder feels too much.

"Nothing he won't survive, you needn't worry." Demetri assures, or dismisses, Bella cannot quite tell with his unaffected politeness.

Bella feels her reference of axis tilting upright at Felix helps her, his palms sure against her shoulders, but not leaving them. Her legs still feel gelatinous. "There we are, love."

"'m not your love." Bella mumbles, more whiplash than actual annoyance. Demetri tusks. "'m gonna throw up on you." She wants to point—she thinks she points—maybe she points, but Demetri looks barely scathed by the comment.

"Regardless of that," Demetri says, picking at the seam of his coat. "We have arrived here with a special message from Lord Aro about your impending arrangement." Demetri's fine gold brows raise, but Bella cannot scry the meaning behind them. "He wanted us to let you know, in private, of course, that should you ever leave the Cullen clan, you would have a place in our guard."

Bella wants to laugh, but the unease feeling in her stomach doesn't ease.

She can hardly imagine being a vampire now, much less a member of the vampire mafia. The vampire mafia that has already carried her to a secondary location and is offering her membership.

She really, really wants to laugh.

"However," Demetri adds and the distinct clip in how he rolls his r's makes her think of how Alice clips her t's. Purposefully and with full drama. "It has come to my attention that you and the Cullen clan no longer have an arrangement, do you?"

If she didn't already feel it, Bella is sure her stomach would be churning right now. How much had Demetri heard? Did he piece together that if her and Edward weren't together anymore then she would not be a vampire?

She can feel her pulse picking up a sure rhythm in her chest.

"What arrangement are you talking about?" She manages.

Demetri snorts, sleeve picking over, he pierces her with those blood-red eyes and purses his lips. "I am talking about your arrangement to enter the Cullen clan within the year, as was promised."

"You do realize," Jane's tiny voice rises up, beautiful as a bell, "the consequences of defying the Volturi, do you not, Bella?"

Bella has never been more thankful for whatever weird magic wraps around her mind and keeps her safe from Edward's mind-reading and Jane's pain. However, she can imagine Jane would have no qualms giving her a taste of physical pain, if the mood took her.

But it's not just her, is it? It's the Cullen family.

All they sacrificed for her. All they've done for her. All they've built, just to be done in because she changed her mind.

"I am not," she says, pushing back thoughts of torture, her own revulsion, and the still spinning forest. "I have not broken my promise to Lord Aro." The words sound strange in her mouth, the inclination, the expression on the accent. "I will become a vampire, but," she pauses and takes a deep breath, "but not as Edward's mate."

There is silence for a moment.

Then Felix breaks it with, "So, you're saying you are single?"

Demetri's heavy gaze never leaves her face and Bella never leaves Demetri's. She can feel the steady weight of Felix's hands on her shoulders, keeping her aloft so all her energy can go towards not throwing up and not breaking eye contact.

If she were a wizard of reading expressions, she would say Demetri looks annoyed by this answer.

Felix offers to carry her onto the battlefield, her stomach and limbs not yet able to make the trek, and not yet equipped to make the run. However, before she can put too much thought into having the bear-like man carry her, Demetri is scooping her up with the firm, efficiency of a midwife carrying a newborn baby and speeds them to where they need to be.

They come to a stop a touch slower this time, her stomach not slamming or twisting or reconfiguring itself on the impact, and the slide back to her feet is smooth. Demetri's hand remains on her elbow, keeping her aloft.

They start walking.

Felix and Jane falling in step with Demetri, their long capes trailing over the grass.

The field smells like fire and soot, a combustion of gasoline and something different, something she cannot put a name to other than charred vampire. The steady pyre in the center of the field catches an upward draft, taking the smell and the glittery ashes up the mountain rather than towards town.

She hears her name and, when she can look up, finds the Cullens across the field, waiting.

Edward is still missing—but then, so is Alec—but otherwise, everyone is unharmed and accounted for. All of them have tears in their clothes, their hair and faces covered in ashes and soot, making them look like orphaned children in a dust bowel portrait.

Emmett and Rosalie are hip-to-hip, he leans down to kiss her temple, and Rosalie lays a comforting hand on his chest. Carlisle and Esme stand a little off to the side in a similar pose, but Jasper and Alice break off the symmetry of the picture. They stand apart. Jasper with his hands in his pockets and Alice standing anxiously in the center.

An orphan indeed.

"Interesting," Demetri notes and Jasper, as if in retaliation, steps closer to Alice, a shadow over her shoulder once more. Then, one of Jasper's hands reaches out, fingertips touching the outer side of Alice's wrist and then threading their fingers together.

They come to a stop a few feet away and, reflexively, Carlisle and Esme step forward, chins raised and an arm outstretched each. Without thinking, Bella raises a hand to them, their calm, warm gold eyes and concerned expressions, people who care about her.

A hard tug pulls her back. "Not so fast." Demetri's grip tightens then, almost as if he thought she had a chance of breaking away. Carlisle and Esme, however, stop. Their comforting embrace turning cold as they draw back into themselves.

"Has she done something wrong?" Carlisle asks in that way of his. Like a father confident his child did not start the fight on the playground. Bella is dually touched and chastened by the gesture.

Demetri glares for another moment, mouth pursing again. "In technicality, I suppose." His head turns, finding the member of the family he wants, he speaks, his slow, sure voice sounding musical to her ears. "Alice."

Bella watches the line of Alice's back, ramrod straight, her jaw an unmovable line.

"Most esteemed guards of the Volturi," Alice nods her head and the tension in her shoulders bunches as she takes in air to speak. "Is dear Alec playing with Edward, then?"

Confirming her fears, Felix guffaws. Jane smiles thinly. "You know my brother," she murmurs, "he always enjoys playing with dear Edward."

Jane's confirmation makes her skin crawl, but Alice looks largely nonplussed by the comment. "I had a feeling."

"Well, we all know about your feelings, Alice." Felix says, his voice a low baritone of a laugh. His eyes narrow, flickering past Alice onto the burning pyre. His eyes narrow.

"But the fact remains," Jane says, her high and girlish voice cutting through the polite chatter. "That she," Bella has never felt more verbally assaulted by a word, "is still human."

"A tactical maneuver." Alice says gamely.

It occurs to Bella then, that Alice being front and center is because she is meant to do a majority of the talking, just like in Italy. She wonders if the Cullens always let Alice do the talking when it comes to the Volturi.

"Why have a crazed newborn on our hands when we can have a human to use as a lure?" Alice says this so matter-of-fact, for a moment, Bella cannot find it in herself to argue.

"And wearing one of our cloaks?" Felix asks, his voice a low rumble as if holding in laughter. "That nearly led us astray."

It takes Bella a moment to realize that she is no longer wearing the cloak Alice gave her. She panics only for a moment before realizing that Demetri has it, folded over his arm like a waiter. Still, he stands erect, the perfect stillness of him making her thinking of a hunting dog lying in wait.

Alice's lips curve into a smile she has never seen before. She has seen sarcastic, she has seen sardonic, but never has she seen this Devil-may-care look. As if Alice saw the world erupting into flames and it pleased her.

"It's been several decades. I haven't had a good fight in a while. I couldn't have you ruining my fun." Alice's voice is all boisterous and gall, and for a moment, Bella realizes that she means it. All of it. As if in her old life, Alice was a warrior guard who not only fought blood battles, but missed the carnage.

"Oh, come now, caro mio," It is Demetri who speaks then, voice like velvet and silver, the very materials that made up Alice's cloak and Alice's past. His gaze is almost teasing as he looks at her now. His top lip curving up to reveal the edges of his teeth. "You have never enjoyed the fighting as much as Felix or Jane."

It's a presumptuous line. It's affectionate. It's flirtatious.

Alice is struck into silence, her eyes narrowing at the challenge. Her eyes have fixated on Demetri in a look not dissimilar to the one Demetri gives her, a slanted expression, all bunched eyebrows, narrow eyes, and a pursed mouth—fighting a smile.

Bella watches Jasper buckle as if struct by some invisible force. The guards' expressions flicker between confusion, indifference, and muse. Demetri says nothing else, eyes sweeping over Jasper and then Alice, who is still gripping his hand.

Then, Jasper slips his fingers from Alice's grasp and half-turns, an unsteady calm settling on his brow.

"Jasper?" Alice whispers, and Bella watches the ridged line of his back as he looks at her, his wife, over his shoulder.

Jasper murmurs something she doesn't catch and then turns his gaze to Demetri and for one terrifying second, the two of them look like the predators they are, creatures of nightmares, baring tooth and claw, ready to tear each other apart.

Demetri lifts his chin, his red eyes gleaming.

For a fraction of a second, his grip on her arm loosens, like he might drop her in order to fight and Bella has never been more anxious about being let go of then—

Then—

Jasper steps aside.

He turns to the tree line and starts walking.

hello! i am moving/switching jobs/kinda sick rn.

inspo for how Bella feels about seeing Demetri again? Asks no one. Funnily enough. I live next to a state park and one day, while hiking on a trail that requires you to climb across rocks and wade into a river, I saw a man, dressed in a full three-piece with lapels and a flower, and his hair gelled back, and he was just . . . doing everything I was doing, but more gracefully, and in a suit.

And like the dumbass I am, I followed him, from a distance (completely opting the Murders TM that happened there when my mom was a girl) and I know he wasn't a fucking ghost because he got into his car and so did I and I continued to follow him until I lost him around a bend . . . right around where I live. Can you imagine I have trouble sleeping? Yes?

Am I not ashamed to say I wrote this listening to Boys by Lizzo? No, absolutely not, that woman is a fuckin' fox. Demetri is the pretty boys)

please review, they make me so happy

- cafeanna