Title: Jar of Hearts
Author: Girl Who Writes
Characters: Emmett, Alice, Seth
Word Count: 2559
Rating: T
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Drama
Summary: There might be something in that, taking the last gift-gesture-offering Rose ever did for him on their End-of-the-World Road Trip. Alice can rip the heads off newborns, he can drive around in the SUV his wife carefully and lovingly put together just to please him, and maybe he'll buy Seth a beer in Tijuana.
Closest thing they'll ever get to therapy, he supposes.
two. survivors
What happens next?
It's a good question, and one Alice used to be able to answer. Her predictions have… well, they haven't stopped, but there are less of them. Maybe she's not saying everything but he doesn't press.
They stay in Forks. It's the easiest option, really. They have resources at the Forks house - all of Jasper's computers, Rose's cars, Carlisle's medication stash. And for, now, it makes sense to keep up the masquerade - the orphaned Cullen kids, in that big old house.
And Seth Clearwater. Neither of them have made more than polite inquiries about the Quileute reservation, because what can they do, really? They weren't allowed on the land, and nothing they offer will be accepted. Seth doesn't want to talk about it either, so they just… don't. Not yet.
The first announcements and news reports are hard to listen to - half of all living creatures. Humans, animals, plants, sea life… just gone. Then there are the people who survived, but died in the aftermath; the patients in surgery with the dust of their surgeons sinking into their chest cavity, the passengers on an aeroplane, the school bus with no driver. The news plays on, listing losses and catastrophes until he loudly asks if Seth wants to play Xbox instead.
Alice goes with them, and sits crosslegged on a recliner, watching them.
"Carlisle would have liked that," she says suddenly when Emmett realises the error in picking a war game - should have opted for a racing game instead.
"Liked what?" he asks, as he gets up to change the disc. Seth doesn't say anything, playing with the recliner buttons instead.
"'Half of all living creatures'," she quotes. She's been wearing one of Jasper's t-shirts under her cardigan, and the scent of his brother is fading the longer she wears it. "Carlisle would have appreciated that. That the universe thought we were living creatures. Might have convinced Edward that we weren't total monsters, either."
Seth looks up at her, confused. "Why wouldn't you be living creatures?" he asks, concentrating on the recliner tips him right back.
"We don't breathe or age or change," Alice says, a smirk playing around her face as Seth yelps when the entire chair begins to tip, but luckily it doesn't fall.
"But you eat," Seth accepts the controller Emmett passes him. "And you've got families. That means you still count."
"I wish we didn't." Emmett doesn't realise he's said those words aloud until he realises Seth and Alice are both staring at him. He wants to explain that if they didn't count, then there wouldn't be five vases lined up on the mantel (three empty) full of dust. That he wouldn't be sitting here playing Xbox with Seth Clearwater, and Alice wouldn't be wearing leggings and her husband's t-shirt, looking brittle and tired. That he wouldn't go into their room every night and bury his face in Rose's clothes to keep himself from going insane.
But he doesn't need to. They both understand - Alice sits with Seth when the boy sniffles and tries to hide it; Emmett hears Alice padding around Jasper's office, having a conversation with thin air, questions asked to silence. If there was some loophole they could grab with both hands and exploit, he knows he and Alice and Seth would take it, humanity and life and all those upright and moral things be damned.
"Just what everyone needs," Alice muses, leaning back and stretching like a cat. "A world where humans and animals were cut in half but the vampires weren't."
And she's right. That would be a mess. The fucking end of times.
"That would be a cool movie," Seth says absently, focused on the screen and forcing Emmett's car off the road and into a ravine.
Alice watches them play for a while before getting up. A few minutes later, there's a knock at the door and low voices. Charlie Swan, with Carlisle's phone. Emmett lets Seth win a second race, focused on the conversation Alice is having - why it took Charlie so damn long to bring the phone, how they're holding up; his irritation at the delay it took to get Carlisle's phone is tempered when he hears the genuine concern Charlie has for Alice. He doesn't know much about Bella's father, but he seems like a good guy.
Not that Alice needs to act the part - she looks broken. Most of the time he feels like he's seeing a part of her that he shouldn't be seeing, that the loss and grief that becomes her is somehow shameful to witness; it'd be less awkward to see her naked than to see her twisting Jasper's t-shirt in her hands with that glassy look of hopelessness she tries to hide.
Alice feels the same about him; that Emmett without Rose is devoid of that joie de vivre, that endless good humour, the extra joke. He feels tired in his bones, deflated, and distracted with the space in his chest that Rose used to fill. He feels like an old man, when he was never finished being a young man, never made it to middle-age.
But they are trying. Especially with Seth in the house - he's taken over the bedroom that Esme planned to give to Bella, mostly because it didn't stink of vampires as much as any other room; and neither of them wanted to dismantle Esme's studio or Carlisle's office. It wasn't really much - a mattress and box spring, a dresser and desk. Alice had given him a laptop to use and found some new bedding for him, and occasionally even remembered that a fourteen-year-old boy shouldn't be eating pizza six nights a week, and probably needed more boundaries than they were giving him. But Alice isn't maternal, and her attempts at forcing vegetables and a bedtime on Seth usually get forgotten within a day or two.
Charlie Swan leaves, and he listens as Alice puts Carlisle's phone into his vase, and then he focuses on the game so that Seth doesn't think he's letting him win because of pity or anything.
—
It's not until late summer that people start bothering them. Parents of classmates who suddenly don't have any children of their own to worry over. Colleagues and acquaintances who feel some kind of lingering responsibility. Busybodies, usually a part of some self-aggrandising self-appointed community group butting into everyone's grief.
Alice ignores the early attempts to interfere, to crack open the metaphorical door for anyone who isn't Charlie Swan. She's taken to doing the oddest tasks, but Emmett doesn't ask. At the moment, she's painting every single door in the house with a swirling pattern of flowers that is tiny and detailed and fills up the day. Esme would have a conniption if she saw her lovely doors like this (he remembers when Alice and Jasper first arrived, and her art projects ran afoul of Esme - she had apologised and channelled that manic energy into embroidery instead; there's a pair of unspeakably ugly curtains hanging in the Vermont house from one panicked week when Jasper went off with Peter and Charlotte).
Then the harassment starts - both her and him since he's apparently considered her 'guardian'. Alice hangs up the phone numerous times wordlessly before being so outstandingly rude to Mrs Newton that both he and Seth stare at her before Emmett remembers he's actually supposed to be in charge - as far as the rest of the town knows, at least - and calls to deter any more visits or phone calls or casseroles because Alice isn't well and the disruptions are upsetting her.
If Carlisle or Esme were here, they'd think to send Mrs Newton flowers or something as an apology, but they aren't, and no one can get Alice to apologise when she doesn't want to, and Seth confided in him that she's crying when he's hiding in the garage and Seth is totally at a loss over what to do about a crying girl that isn't Leah, so maybe they'll just leave it at that. Give the town something new to gossip about again.
But it does spark sudden realisation in both Cullens about a topic that has been long forgotten - school. Alice and Emmett have both graduated, but Seth had not. Seth had another four glorious years in high school, even if the Res school is down to double digits of enrolments, and probably won't even run every weekday.
Seth whines and begs and negotiates until Alice stamps her foot and demands to know what Sue Clearwater would say and that makes Seth all small and miserable, and Alice hates herself and Emmett solves the problem by making a large donation through one of their anonymous charities to the Res school so that Seth can at least do online learning, and apparently, that's a huge deal that is on the local news, and that makes Alice and Seth laugh because only Emmett would stop a teenage boy's whining by revolutionising a tribe's educational provisions with a cheque large enough to sustain a small city for a year.
But it's help - it means the children who suddenly have no parents and have to raise siblings can still study; it means that half-empty classrooms don't necessarily mean half-empty classes; it also means that other tribes with larger losses and no way of schooling are invited to join them.
That's one good thing they've managed.
He also fixed the backdoor as good as new, so it should be two, but he's pretty sure that doesn't count now that Alice has painted flowers blooming and dying all over it.
At some point they both bully Seth into going home again, to get his own stuff - clothes and bedding and photos and all those things you look for when you're in a house that isn't yours. He yells at them, they yell at him, and he storms off. But now there's a photo of him with his parents and sister on his dresser and a bunch of books crowding his desk, and the world's most beat-up DS under his pillow. There are more photos, somewhere - Emmett knows that because Alice knows where they are and then one day there are two framed photos joining the vases on the mantle - one of Sue and Harry Clearwater on their wedding day, and one of Leah laughing. Neither of them knows what happened to Sue or Leah precisely on that day, but Seth doesn't bring the ashes with him, so they don't ask.
Summer folds into fall, and what's left of Esme's gardens wither up. Charlie Swan checks on them every few weeks, sounding tired. There's a lot of work for him right now - mostly community and social issues, like scared and orphaned children hiding, people struggling with money, grief, religion. There have been some shortages of food since there's less being grown, less people to process and package and ship it, and a little town hours outside of Seattle is not a priority to whoever is deciding where to send a milk delivery.
They order Seth's food from high-end places online that deliver them quickly and quietly; Alice starts choosing long-life and bulk items, and no one needs to ask because it's obvious things will get worse before they get better. Seth holds a pretty intense grudge against the powdered strawberry milk, though.
But food shortages are the least of their worries, as Alice uses the dining room wall to start taking nonsensical notes, and Emmett's heard enough stories to know that losing a mate can be… well, he's not having much fun, but the very last thing he needs is to wrangle Alice if she's lost her mind. Dead or not, he knows he could never lay a hand on her even if she did go nuts out of love for his family, out of respect for Jasper, and out of this funny bond they've somehow formed, being the last ones left.
The notes turn into lists, lists of everyone they've ever known, in her swirling handwriting. Even people they know are gone, like Bella, goes on the list.
Then she starts striking out names, like she's slashing with a knife - Carlisle, Esme, Jasper, Rosalie, Edward, Bella, Sue, Leah, Sam, Jacob, Paul… Slash, slash, slash.
Then it starts getting interesting. Peter and Charlotte are gone, but so are half the goddamned Volturi (Alice smirks as she crosses out Caius, Jane, Alec, Dimitri because imagining Aro on his throne with grief-mad Marcus and only the minions is a very pretty picture indeed). Carmen and Tanya have survived, but Kate, Irina, and Eleazer are gone. Garrett is alive, but Randall and Mary aren't. J Jenks didn't make it either, which makes things… difficult.
Alice scowls darkly as she scratches out Maria's name, and Emmett wonders if it's because she didn't get to do the honours of destroying the Mexican harpy herself. Or because wherever Jasper is now, so is Maria, and Alice is left behind.
Finally, she is done, and the list is nearly balanced in living and dead. Alice's left eye twitches, and whatever she's thinking she doesn't say as she stands up.
"Alaska and then Mexico, then," she says to him, and he gives her the Look that he gives her and Edward and Jasper every time one of them forgets that not everyone has a gift and some of them have to use their words.
"We need to check on Carmen and Tanya; I think they need us," Alice explains, still examining the list. "I saw that we need to go. And then we're going down to Mexico."
"Maria's dead," he gestures at her list, and Seth wanders in stuffing his face with Pringles and turns white at the sight of Esme's freshly defaced walls; evidently Motherly Wrath is something universal across all of the species.
"Maria's gone, and left behind a bunch of fresh newborns," Alice sounds tired. "There's no one left for clean up, Em, no one who knows. And it will be bad if we don't step in soon."
There might be something cathartic in that for Alice, undoing Maria's life's work. Maria's lands weren't exactly in the wealthiest or most populated lands these days - Jasper kept a secret map that wasn't at all a secret - and if going down there and taking off a few heads saves a mother or father or child, then maybe it's worth the hassle.
"Fine. Alaska and Mexico," he agrees, and Seth cheers.
"Road-trip!" he declares around a mouthful of chips. Alice rolls her eyes.
"I'll make you up a passport," she says, not even bothering to argue with the younger boy that he'll be joining them. "We'll take the Jeep, Em - Rose just finished it."
The words hang in the air for a second, and he nods in agreement. There might be something in that, taking the last gift-gesture-offering Rose ever did for him on their End-of-the-World Road Trip. Alice can rip the heads off newborns, he can drive around in the SUV his wife carefully and lovingly put together just to please him, and maybe he'll buy Seth a beer in Tijuana.
Closest thing they'll ever get to therapy, he supposes.
Note
- Life after the Snap would have been hellish in so many way, and so many lives would have been lost as a result of the Snap, ones that I doubt could have been reclaimed when the Hulk used the gauntlet.
- It's about time the Cullens did something with that gross amount of money, and I think helping out the people they have repeatedly fucked over should be the beginning of some philanthropy.
- The absolutely last thing this 'verse needed was a depressed Alice Cullen, and a Volturi at full power. Just FYI. And imagining Aro dealing with no one but Marcus amuses me.