Title: Jar of Hearts
Author: Girl Who Writes
Characters: Emmett, Alice, Seth
Word Count: 2486
Rating: T
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Drama
Summary: He's sitting amongst his wife's… ashes-dust-remains. There has never been an Emmett without a Rosalie, not in any history that counts, and without Rose, he has no plan, no direction, no purpose.
The Snap did not discriminate when it took half of everything, and left them behind in the wreckage.
one. ashes to ashes
It was a normal night for them. There was nothing to indicate anything was wrong. The boys had gone hunting together, deep into the Olympic Ranges for predators.
If he had to remember one thing about that hunt, it was how … pleasant it was. They'd all caught what they had hoped for (with a helpful map from Alice). There were no disagreements, no mood swings, no storming off for hours. And with brothers like his, to avoid all three of those things was a fucking miracle.
When he looks back, he tries to work out when it started. They were running back, mud-splattered and bloody; for once, they weren't so late they couldn't clean up before school.
It's Edward first - just ahead of him to the left. Eddie leaps over a fallen tree and he … stumbles, only just keeping his balance.
"Jasper!"
He's laughing at Edward's stumble - perfect balance and all that - but Jasper isn't. In fact, both Edward and Jasper have this look of increasing horror on their faces, and it's only when Jasper grabs Edward and Jasper's hand goes through Edward's shoulder because Edward is turning into dust and that is not fucking right.
"Emmett."
He's never heard Edward sound so much like the seventeen-year-old boy he was, and he reaches for his oldest - and his youngest - brother, but by the time his hands are grasping out for Edward's, Edward is gone. There's nothing left of him, no clothes or cellphone or bones or hair or anything. It's not even proper ash, but dust that mingles with the dirt on the ground, and there's nothing. Nothing. He might as well have never been there.
He's not entirely sure if he's feeling his own horror, his own terror, and grief, or if Jasper is projecting. Neither of them knows what to do, to scoop what is left of Edward into their pockets, and flee home or to get help or to… what.
But then Jasper is running again, and he follows, desperation streaming off Jasper so strongly that Emmett can almost feel his own dead heart pounding.
Is it disease? Are there vampires diseases?
It can't be age, Jasper and Carlisle are older, the Denali girls older still…
His phone trills in his pocket but he keeps running and Jasper keeps running, and they aren't getting there fast enough.
Jasper keeps running until he crumples into dust, his golden eyes wide, and the one word on his lips lost as he disintegrates.
Alice.
He backs away from Jasper's resting place, like the dust is contagious - and maybe it is - maybe whatever happened to Edward spread to Jasper when he touched him.
Instead, he runs. He tears through the forest, a soundless rhythm in his head Rosie-Rosie-Rosie-Rosie and the kind of swirling, twisting worry like human nausea in his stomach as he bursts through trees and underbrush.
He's ten miles out when he hears the screaming.
It doesn't stop as he somehow moves faster, and bursts through the property line, to the backdoor of the house, which he half rips off the frame as he charges into the house.
The screaming - the wailing - is Alice, on her hands and knees in the sitting room. There's dust on her face and hands, and she's not all there, her eyes wide and glassy, as she rocks back and forth.
There's a weight in his stomach, one that gets heavier every second Rosalie doesn't appear, that Esme isn't trying to calm Alice. Instead, he skids to a stop and drops to his knees in front of her, tugging her into his arms, pointedly ignoring the dust that sticks to his jeans, that he sends floating up into the air.
This is an Alice he doesn't know, just like he knows a Rose that no one else does. The one that Jasper has alluded to, once or twice, in confidence. That it might have always looked like Alice was the one piecing Jasper back together, pulling him along in her grand plans, but it was never as simple or easy as that. Jasper held her together, she put him together. A balancing act.
Just the way that people assumed that he was the one that healed Rosalie of all her demons, when in truth he was just there, letting her know that whatever 'okay' looked like for Rosalie was for her - and only her - to decide. And that he's always been the luckiest son of a bitch in existence to be a part of her version of 'okay'.
Rose would have lost it with Alice by now. There's no way Rosalie would have tolerated this level of noise.
Rose isn't coming.
He holds his sister tight and mutters reassurances in her hair. They stay like that for a while until Alice just lets out a sob, and looks up at him, blinking slowly.
"He said he'd never leave me," she says in a wobbly voice. "He promised me."
"It wasn't by choice," Emmett rushes to tell her. "You were his last thought; he tried so hard to get home before he…"
Alice wipes her eyes, but she still doesn't look like Alice. She looks lost and breakable, and she sits back, noticing the pile of dust they're both sitting amongst.
"She… she was so mad," Alice babbles suddenly, grabbing his hand. "If anyone could have stopped it, could have reversed it by… by sheer will, it was Rosalie, Em. She didn't go alone, I had her."
He's sitting amongst his wife's… ashes-dust-remains. It's on his hands and legs and face, and he can see it clinging to Alice's hair and he kind of wants to match her wailing because there has never been an Emmett without a Rosalie, not in any history that counts, and without Rose, he has no plan, no direction, no purpose. The world has tilted off its axis, and he wants to go and bury his face in her clothes upstairs, clothes that smell like roses-lemons-cars until the tearing feeling in his chest just stops.
"Esme came running," Alice continued, staring off into space. "She didn't make it down the stairs. She didn't even notice until she was practically gone."
They sit in silence for a moment, or maybe longer until the day has begun. The sky has lightened, and they are still alone in a quiet house. No radio, no conversation, no bickering, nothing.
"Did you see this?" he asks finally and feels cruel asking.
"No." She sniffles, and he thinks how cruel it was to take Jasper and leave Alice. "It happened so fast; I saw Edward when Rose started to…" She took a deep breath. "I felt Jasper go." She shudders and there's a hitch in her breath, and he really doesn't want her to start crying again.
"We should call Carlisle," he says, and she nods but pauses.
"Call his phone, not the hospital. No one will answer," she whispers, but there's a look in her eyes he doesn't like and he doesn't want to ask, either…
"I can't see him answering, Em," she whispers.
He takes a deep breath and dials the number.
It rings.
It keeps ringing.
"Hello?"
It's a nervous-sounding woman's voice, and for a moment, he can't find the words.
"I don't know whose phone this is," the woman continues, her voice shaking.
"It's Emmett Cullen. I need to speak to my father - Dr Carlisle Cullen," he manages, but Alice is already shaking her head.
"Emmett, it's Nurse Fletcher," and he has no idea who that is, truly. "Your father… he's gone, Emmett." The woman sounds traumatised, and he understands. "Half the hospital just… disappeared, there was nothing anyone could have done…"
He throws his phone against the wall, and it smashes through the drywall as it shatters, and Esme's not even here to yell at him.
—
Somehow, Alice gets him to his feet and drags him into Forks. Something about people coming looking for them and they need to go to the school, where everyone who is still here is gathering. They're both covered in the dust of their family (Edward and Rose, mostly, and he wonders if bringing Alice a handful of her husband's remains would have been the right thing to do. They'd left Esme where she fell, a waterfall of dirt on the stairs.)
There aren't many people at the school when they arrive, and people are staring. He gets it; Alice looks like she just crawled out of an empty grave (Rose's; Rose sticking to her face and hair and hands and knees…) and he's splattered with mud and probably blood that he didn't think to clean up before they left but together they are a suitably haunted, stricken pair of siblings.
A couple of Bella's friends are at the impromptu gathering; the Latina girl is clinging to a man who has to be her father, with fresh tear tracks on her face. A blonde girl is sitting with a blanket around her, almost bisected perfectly down her body with the dust of someone - a classmate, a family member, a passerby. Just dozens of people standing around, confused and grieving.
But Alice stops when she sees one figure, stooped and already exhausted.
Charlie Swan catches her in a hug as she approaches him a little faster than she should, and he wants to pull her back because now parts of Rosalie are sticking to Charlie's clothes and from the look on Charlie's face and on Alice's, the dust on Charlie belonged to Bella.
He wants to chuckle, at the picture of Rose's face if she was told her ashes would be mixed up with Bella's forever now, or at least until Charlie does some laundry.
"She was in bed, sleeping," Charlie says. "I thought it was a prank, at first." His eyes are shiny and he takes a shuddering breath and looks closer at the pair of them. "Who…"
Alice seems to shrink into herself, and just shakes her head. "It's just me and Emmett now," she mutters. "Jasper's gone and Rosalie's gone, and Esme and Carlisle and Edward and now Bella." There's a tinge of hysteria to her words, and Emmett pulls his sister closer because he doesn't want what's left of Forks to watch if he has to try and calm her down from another round of hysteria.
"It'll be okay," he manages. "We'll call Denali and see how Tanya's doing. Cousins," he offers to Charlie, who looks relieved. "We'll check in on a few people," he continues, hoping to distract Alice, who keeps repeating their names under her breath. "Peter and Charlotte, Maria, Garrett, Randall…"
"Good. You kids can stay with me while you track down some family if you need to," Charlie offers but Alice manages to pull herself together.
"No, we'll be fine," she assures him. "Emmett's old enough and … we'll be fine. We just need to know what happened."
"We don't know much yet, but as soon as I do, I'll call," Charlie promises. "I'll put your names on the … Survivors list, you two go on home and take a shower, make sure you've got enough food and gas in the car. And you call if you need anything."
"Carlisle's phone," he says immediately. "Nurse Fletcher at the hospital has it, but we … can't go there."
Charlie seems to understand by totally misunderstanding why they can't go to the hospital and promises to see what he can do.
And then there's nothing else for them to do but go home. Go home and wash off the dust, and scoop what's left into Esme's vases (urns, now). Alice folds their dirty clothes and puts them in a box without a word, and he watches her collect dust from the trim on the coffee table, from the gaps between the floorboards, with a tiny paintbrush so that every grain of his beautiful wife is collected.
Then he takes her to where Jasper fell and she doesn't say anything. There's no way to tell what dust and dirt is Jasper and what is the forest, and there's nothing here for her to gather in her hands and hold tight. They sit for a while, just staring at the spot.
"If Maria survived, it's going to be bad," she manages as the light begins to fade. "And if the Volturi…"
They walk home at a human pace, and they both start to notice things that they missed before; the stillness of the forest, suddenly amiss half its animals. The sparseness of the trees, of the ground. As they make it home, the day sinking into night, he notices half of Esme's gardens just gone, as if waiting for someone to plant them fresh, when they were in full bloom less than a day ago.
There's a small figure waiting on the back porch, in dirty denim cut-offs. He looks smaller than last time they saw him, only weeks ago.
Seth Clearwater swallows hard when he sees them, and they can tell by the look on his face that whatever, whoever is left on the Res, it certainly isn't his family and friends, and Emmett is overwhelmingly sad for the kid that had to come to his natural enemies for safe haven.
"The pack," Seth begins. "It's only me, and Colin, and Brady left. And at home, it's only me."
Alice moves too fast and pulls him into a tight hug, and Seth hugs her back, despite the stench.
"I figured you might know something about what's happened," Seth continues, and he's trying so hard not to cry, that he's giving Emmett a headache. "I left Colin and Brady back to protect the Res, and came to find help."
He wants so badly to promise this kid it's going to fine, that they'll find a Tardis, a time-turner, a fucking goddess of time and rewind everything to stop this from happening but his wife is nothing but dirt, and his sister looks like a broken marionette, and there's a wolf pup looking so desperate and hopeful that the words die on his tongue.
Alice smiles at him, kindly, for for a second she looks like herself. That lost, glassy look she's worn all day has faded back inside her, and he hopes it stays there.
"Come in, Seth," she says, and motions that they both follow her in through the door he broke that morning. "I think we've got food."
Emmett takes off his boots before he goes inside (just like Esme always nagged for him to and he never remembered), and he wonders if the others are up there, laughing their asses off that the House of Cullen has crumbled and all that's left is a broken psychic, an underage shapeshifter, and the guy with his wife in a jar.
He thinks it might even be funny to someone.
Notes
- For a long, long time I tried to write an MCU crossover, and this is the most functioning and reasonable version of that dream. This was originally written for Whumptober in 2020, and was available on Tumblr and AO3 before now. I'll be uploading all the chapters quite quickly, so I apologise for bombarding your email
- I hope you enjoy this incredible display of mindless self-indulgence and thank you for reading!