Title: Jar of Hearts
Author: Girl Who Writes
Characters: Emmett, Alice, Seth
Word Count: 3283
Rating: T
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Drama
Summary: "The fucking Avengers are attempting time-travel," she began and faltered. "A rat ran across some kind of control panel and triggered something and now the Avengers are going time-travelling. Whatever they do is going to work, Em. They're going to bring them back."
Silence.
He wasn't expecting that.
five. hold up
Getting the full story out of Alice had not been easy. She'd been furiously tapping away at her tablet and shushing them as she had done her research, sinking into half a dozen visions intentionally - Emmett had caught her wiping at her nose, and the sharp tang of venom on the air, meaning that she was forcing them and that worried him beyond anything.
Alice had tried to force her visions back when they had first lost everyone. It had been a few months of that low-hanging cloud of grief and shock, and one day she just hadn't come out of her bedroom. She'd stayed up there for three and a half days before he'd gone up to investigate and explain that he understood the need for solitude, he did, but her absence was upsetting Seth.
She'd been sitting in the middle of her bed, that fancy iron bed that Jasper had built for her, with the flowers and butterflies moulded to the posts and had never said a word against the frilliness of it.
(It had been Rosalie that like frilly, feminine furniture. He'd teased her over her choice of four poster beds, over canopies and hand-painted headboards; the mink-coloured velvet with the gemstones so many times. She'd finally picked a Japanese-style bed frame for their very last bed, one that he had liked, and he regretted it now. That he couldn't let his wife have her one little girlish indulgence without turning it into a joke. If he'd known he'd never break another bed with Rose, he would have picked one carved and painted and frilled, just for her.)
Alice had just been sitting there, cross-legged, staring into space with a towel in her lap. He'd been confused for a split second until his brain connected all the details - the sharp, acidic scent of venom; the raw, shiny trail running from her nose down her chin and throat and leaving a white-yellowy stain down her top and onto the towel. Her eyes were unfocused but pitch black, and there was something wrong about how she was rocking, how her hands were clenched together.
Pain. She was hurting herself, in whatever vision she was stuck in.
He'd yelled and shaken her and she'd come back to herself with an agonised gasp, her hands closing over her head… it had been a mess, and when he'd confronted her (insisting that she could breakdown and fall apart in a million ways and he'd be there for her, but he would not and could not stand by and watch her intentionally hurt herself trying to find a loophole, a solution. They were gone. No vision was going to show anything different.)
Now, he doesn't say a thing, and Seth silently offers her some paper towel so the venom doesn't drip on her top.
It's five hours into their drive that Alice cusses and shakes her head.
"Stop," she says, finally and Emmett's heart might be dead but it is pounding.
Did she get it wrong? She got it wrong and they aren't coming back. Whatever she saw was a mistake - maybe an old home movie or mistaken identity.
That tiny spark of hope - "I saw them at home. They didn't know what was going on. That any time had passed" - hurt as it spluttered out. He wasn't that lucky. He'd used up every ounce of his luck the day Rose had found him and that bear, and anything that had come after was just borrowed. A debt that had to be paid in full, and he had. No refunds.
Alice climbed out of the Jeep as he pulled over, taking a deep breath in the fresh air, the smell of her venom sharp as she went to pull out some water from the back.
"So," Seth said, finally speaking up, "what were you really seeing?"
Alice dumped the water on a ragged towel to sponge off her face, the venom bleaching the colour from the fabric quickly.
"I got the timing wrong," she said finally, tossing the towel in with the paper towels in the old bucket they used for that purpose. "We need to go back to Forks first, and prepare."
"Alice, you need to stop and you need to explain everything," Emmett said finally, irritation in his voice. "If we've got time to go to Forks, you can damn well tell us what you saw."
Alice blinked at him and for a second, he's seeing her. Not as the 'Alice' in 'Alice-and-Jasper'. Not as Alice-Alone or as Alice Cullen or as the mental patient or the family psychic. Simply as Alice, imperfect and impulsive and smart-mouthed and sly. As his other half in the fantastic hell of the last few years. Fragile as hell and constant as the setting sun.
"The fucking Avengers are attempting time-travel," she began and faltered. "Listen, I never really paid attention to them when they stopped colour-coding their outfits, but one of them was trapped? I think? A rat ran across some kind of control panel and triggered something and now the Avengers are going time-travelling. Whatever they do is going to work, Em. They're going to bring them back."
Silence.
He wasn't expecting that.
—
The really dumb thing is that Emmett has always been a big fan of Captain America and the Avengers. He had a bunch of the old, original merchandise and stuff from World War 2, from Cap's beginnings. Rosalie even got him one of the original Bucky Bears as a joke for one anniversary. It's sat on the top of the bookcase in their bedrooms for decades.
He (and Jasper as well, he wants to be clear) lost their shit when the first Iron Man suit appeared - Esme had teased them, acting like kids over the news footage of that technology (and promptly forbidden any attempts to build their own because the very last thing the Cullens needed was the American military knocking at their door because they'd thought a fun weekend activity was hunting down materials for a homemade tech-suit — "and that includes you as well, Rosalie!").
The Battle of New York had been ugly and terrible and a million other terrifying things, but it had also been incredible. Maybe because Captain America was back! And it was definitely him! There was no actor alive that could fake Cap that goddamn well, let alone with the kind of strength and training displayed in that battle.
Or maybe because Iron Man's suit was even better than ever, and he'd caught Jasper sketching out the design during the newsfeed, his brother looking positively transfixed at the potential behind the Stark tech.
Or because maybe seeing superheroes saving the world made him feel a little less inhuman - that he could criticise the Hulk's technique, point out the gaps in the Avengers' approach, scoff at a missed shot, and just enjoy the idea of being able to go out and use what powers he himself possessed for good.
Maybe a few times, after the battle, he mused about what it would have been like to be on the ground, allowed to join in the fight. Rose hated fighting, but Jasper would have (probably) been up for it. Alice might have tagged along if Jasper was going, and he could imagine his sister taking out one of the freakish battalions in wedges and a mini skirt.
He might have even gotten his hands on that shield, just for a minute or two.
Edward had laughed at him when he heard those thoughts, not meanly - more in a friendly, appreciative way. And maybe that debate was dumb and pointless, but there had been more than one day where he and his brothers had debated their own family's fighting skill in relation to the Avengers.
Yeah, the debacle with Ultron had been seriously messed up, and they had spent several days in the middle of the national park, waiting for Alice to give the all-clear to go home again. Ultron could have ruined everything, and Rosalie had been furious at the lazy, irresponsible approach to technology, privacy, security, and AI that Tony Stark had taken. (The whole ordeal had been ridiculous and scary, but it had been good, too - just a weekend in the woods, hanging out. That even if some psychotic A.I. had destroyed their carefully built lives, they still had each other and a national park full of game.)
He'd watched the press conferences after the Blip with Seth and Alice. Seen that most of the original Avengers had survived, but there was no real joy or satisfaction in that. He saw the spaces in their ranks, carefully and obviously left so that the public knew that they had lost people as well. (Rose would have been pleased to see the Vision gone, and Carlisle would have had long discussions with Edward about the loss of Wakanda's King and the economic and worldwide ramifications of that).
Mostly, watching Captain America and the Black Widow fumble through press conferences and short interviews in the wake of the disaster, Emmett felt old. Like he'd suddenly and finally outgrown superheroes.
Esme could throw a punch, it wasn't hard. And if you were going to go around calling yourself a superhero, you needed to be able to get the job done. It was as simple as that.
Standing in front of his sister, telling him so earnestly that it was going to be the Avengers that fixed this shit, he felt… tired. He felt like Carlisle probably did every time Emmett came up with increasingly outlandish money-making schemes (mostly just to make his pseudo father pinch his nose and explain to Emmett once again why the idea was at best, unfeasible. Carlisle always was an easy mark.)
"Alice…" Emmett began and Alice scowled.
"Emmett, I have seen them. I have seen… Esme shrieking when she sees the dining room wall, and I've seen Carlisle nearly crash the Merc trying to get home, and Bella confused why she's in bed in the middle of the day, and Jasper and Edward running back to the house and Rosalie is just yelling… I've seen Sue Clearwater crying, Emmett!" She stamped her foot and Seth looked so hopeful.
"You saw my mom?" he asked, his eyes wide, and for a second, he's still that confused kid that came looking for guidance at the home of his natural enemies because that made sense in some strange, twisted way.
Seth had had a raggedy Avengers t-shirt when he arrived, that he slept in. Emmett idly wondered where that t-shirt was now.
"Sue was there. I can't see Leah but I've never been able to see wolves," Alice said kindly and Seth is nodding urgently.
"If Mrs Cullen was mad about the wall, that means she's come back," Seth says, a sense of urgency in his voice, and Emmett feels sorry for him - needing Alice to be right that badly.
"Talk me through this, Alice," is all he says, but his head is already a million miles away, clinging to Rose and making her goddamn swear she will never fucking leave his line of sight again. Smelling that lemons-roses-cars scent that he misses so bad he'd dream about it, if he could. Anything and everything she wants is hers, as long as she never, ever goes where he can't follow again. Listening to Rosalie demand for him to explain what he's going on about and why he's being strange. The weight of her arms around his middle, her bracelet (the fancy one that can't be taken off) pressing against him, and her head resting against his shoulder.
He's getting his goddamn hopes up. He's pinning every single moment of… not peace, but acceptance - on Alice right now. It's like realising too late that he's falling and it's a long way down, and he's too far gone, so he might as well accept it and throw his lot in with Alice and Seth.
"Time-travel?" he presses when Alice fixates too long on unimportant details.
"I can't see much, I just get flashes - of the '50s, I think? And of the Battle of New York," Alice says decisively. "They're looking for a trigger, I think. I don't know, and I can't see enough clearly to decipher it - there's someone else blocking my visions."
"Maybe that's the part we're supposed to focus on - the time travel, not the rescue," Emmett said, possibilities blooming in his head.
Go back and save Rosalie.
Go back, stop Jasper from trying to eat Bella, so that they never leave.
Go back, and find Bella in Arizona, and leave the pack alone, to be normal kids.
… Go back and protect Rose.
Go back and rescue Rose and give her the family she wanted. The little boys with blond hair and the little girls with mischievous eyes. The house with a vegetable garden, summers at the shore, weddings and birthdays and graduations and… and…
He sees it in Alice's eyes too. But there was no overlap in her human life, and Jasper's. Maybe she could go back and save him from Maria, let him live out his life like a normal guy. Or maybe she could go back and find out who she was and just go off and find Jasper sooner.
Go all the way back and fix all the little snarls and all the hurts they carried with them. A second draft of the story, one that granted all their wishes, erased all their regrets. The temptation was tangible.
"No."
It's Seth who speaks, and his voice is angry. Desperate.
"You aren't going time-travelling." Seth looks between them. "Running away so you don't have to deal with this? That's just fucking selfish."
"Seth," Emmett began but paused. Seth was right. Running away to the past didn't solve anything. Mostly, it involved either dragging Alice and Seth with him, to a place where they have less than they have right now, or leaving them behind. And he cannot, in good conscience, do either. Not even to give Rosalie the one thing that she's always wanted beyond anything else.
He might not be a good husband, but he's trying to be a good brother.
"You get to run away from this! I don't! I still end up right here, alone!" Seth spat, and Emmett didn't need any special skills to detect the panic coming off him. "There's nowhere I can go and-and be with Mom and Leah and the Pack where this doesn't happen… I-"
"Seth." Alice's voice is soft, kind. "Just imagine, for a moment, you had a chance to go to a place with your mother and your father and Leah. Where none of this had happened and all the bad stuff and the hurt could be undone…"
Seth falters then, at the mention of Harry Clearwater. He understands a little, then. But he's got a point. He and Alice can run away into the past and leave this mess to someone else, and be with the person they love the most.
Seth can't. Seth is tethered to this time and space, irreversibly. And that means Emmett and Alice are too.
"We're not going anywhere," Alice finishes. "It just sounded… nice." She looks back at Emmett. "But maybe we could join that fight against the monster? Before everyone vanished?" She looks uncertain and then shakes her head. "I need to hunt before I look again." They're lucky that they're close to some kind of wooded area as Alice takes off, a black streak in the air as she runs off.
"Will the Avengers even let us fight with them? Or let us time-travel?" Seth asks, still irritated, as he rummages in the back of the Jeep for snacks and a soda. "Will time travel take us to the battle or do we have to get there ourselves? Wait, if everyone's still alive, do we take them with us?"
There are, of course, a million variables with time travel. Emmett dabbled in astrophysics back in the late 70s, and he's never met a vampire who doesn't have a kind of weird relationship with the concept and passage of time. Hell, more than one visit to Denali has dissolved into a half-yelled debate over the merits of time travel (Kate has - had - many opinions on the subject). And the thing is that Emmett can't answer them. Depending on whether Stark Industries has been testing time-travel for a while, or if this is entirely new research held together with duct tape and determination, there might not be solid answers.
Let alone the human element - all three of them would be laughed out of their homes if they showed up (would they replace their past selves, or would there be two Seths and Alices and Emmetts? Another problem) demanding they immediately head to a notoriously security-conscious African country to fight a giant purple space monster from decimating half of all life across the galaxy, even with Alice's visions.
And Seth's a shifter, they're vampires - what works for humans might not apply to them. As they wait for Alice to return, it feels like maybe time travel is a false flag. That the past is the past and messing with it sounds like a recipe for great and terrible things.
It's a shame his mind keeps going back, longingly, to the great things as he waits for his sister to return with answers.
—
Alice is gone maybe an hour and comes back with brighter eyes and determination in her stride.
"You saw?" Seth asks, standing up and stretching. He thinks it's funny, how Seth went from this kid who - for fourteen - was tall and muscular. But in hindsight, that kid was a scrawny thing.
Sue and Leah aren't going to recognise him, and that's a melancholy thought for someone who hasn't changed physically, since the 30s.
"I saw." Alice stops in front of them and rocks back on her heels. "We have a little more than two weeks before we need to be in New York - I think I've got a decent read on the location of the compound, especially if I use one of the computers at home to get a look at the satellite shots in the area."
Jasper's computer, the one on the third floor. The only one of the family's computers they didn't disable. Rosalie and Jasper ran the family computer systems with military precision, and both Emmett and Alice had realised quickly that most of them needed to be taken offline or risk a security breach that they wouldn't be able to deal with as efficiently as their spouses could. Jasper's desktop had only been allowed to remain out of sheer necessity for financial and identity management. And now hacking into satellite images for the superhero compound.
Esme had forbidden them from using family resources or hacking to snoop on the superheroes years ago.
"What then?"
"We get a fixed location, we reload the Jeep, and we head to New York. The future is blurred past a certain point, but everyone being back at home is fixed at the moment." Alice looked thoughtful. "There's definitely someone there blocking me. I thought it might be a time-travel paradox but it's definitely a person."
"What do we need from Forks?" Emmett asked. They were still nearly a month away from actually needing to head back.
"Gas for the Jeep - there's a severe shortage on the east coast. Restock food and medical supplies for Seth.
"And we're probably going to need Jasper's guns."
Note
- This is an MCU crossover, of course the Avengers were going to show up. If you're going to write self-indulgent crossovers, you've got to go big.
- Bucky Bears are a concept from the comics; I honestly do not know the origin, but consider it Bucky Barnes merchandise that's pretty goddamn cute and definitely something a Captain America fan like Emmett would have in his collection.
- Re: Alice forcing visions. I see Alice as having various kinds of visions - the ones that force their way through (like the Volturi on in Breaking Dawn); ones that she files away for later review thanks to the incredible power of the vampire's brain; ones she can actively search for; and ones that she forces out of her head. Forcing her power to work repeatedly, long term - especially when trying to see around things like shifters and other things that block them - does her physical harm in the form of headaches and nose 'bleeds'. Obviously, with Seth close-by long term, Alice has practised seeing around him, but not without discomfort. And when you add aliens and gods and genetically modified racoons into the mix, it makes it a little harder.
- You don't really consider exactly how long the passage of time between the Rat freeing Scott and the Time Heist is, especially considering Natasha has to go find Hawkeye until you sit down to take a bunch of notes and swear a lot. :) So, it's less a mad-dash across the continental US and more a 'we've got time to plan this' moment.
- Emmett is not a dumbass. Emmett is both capable and appreciative of his access to education. Is it his life's passion? No. Does he enjoy learning about things that interest him? Absolutely. And astro-physics was one of them.
- Yes, Jasper has guns in this universe. A very small collection, and intended as just that, but he wouldn't be much of a former cowboy if he hadn't taught his wife to shoot. Plus, due to the nature of Forks' location and the hunting cover story, it makes sense that the Cullens would have a few guns as props.
- Rosalie and Jasper being in charge of the family computer network comes from staringatthesky's glorious Rosalie POV Breaking Dawn rewrite (which is so superior to the book that I would argue you're better off printing it out, binding it, and ignoring Breaking Dawn entirely). I love the idea of the pair having 'hacking' computers for virus-writing and just being dangerous.