Title: Jar of Hearts
Author: Girl Who Writes
Characters: Emmett, Alice, Seth
Word Count: 6194
Rating: T
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Drama
Summary: He's becoming grimly aware of the sheer size of what they are trying to accomplish, and he's not sure how anyone - even gods and monsters - can manage it.
six. be prepared
It's the fastest trip they've ever made back to Forks, even though Alice says that they don't have to rush that much. But Emmett's already decided that he'd prefer being early than late.
Alice spends the trip logging visions, drawing and noting down every single thing she has seen so far - he'd forbidden her from forcing visions, especially so close to Seth, when she had already given herself a nose 'bleed'. She hadn't been happy, but she'd finally agreed.
Seth has taken over the front passenger seat, trying to get through as many college assignments as he can on Alice's advice - whatever happens next is going to be chaotic, so the last thing that he needs to worry about is school work in the aftermath.
He had spent most of the trip demanding Alice go over what she knew in detail, and she had remained impossibly stubborn about what she revealed.
"Nothing is certain, Emmett," she had finally snapped. "I'm only as certain as everyone else is, and you aren't. Our choice is we play this hand and try to get them back or we don't. That's the only definite thing I can tell you."
(Will they be okay? Will she be okay? Will they remember? Will they be human if they come back?)
(Will they be okay, Alice?)
(What's going to change, Alice?)
(What aren't you telling me?)
By the time that they pull up to the Forks house, Alice is treating everything like this is a military operation whilst still barking orders at Seth to get some sleep and not spend hours awake playing video games.
(If this works, Seth is going to have to deal with Sue Clearwater and Alice being on his ass about eating and sleeping and studying; and watching their family have to meet and know this version of Alice is both incredibly funny and incredibly sad.)
The Forks house still looks wrong, even after all this time - no cars out the front, no colour, no life. The outside of the house could do with a fresh coat of paint, and all of Esme's gardens have overgrown and gone to seed. All the cars are in the garage, instead of pulled around the driveway - they only need the Jeep, really. It had taken them weeks to psych themselves into going to the hospital to reclaim Carlisle's Mercedes. All lined up, tucked in with their covers for some future they never thought was coming.
(He's been meaning to pull out the Prius for Seth but he can't bring himself to do it. Rose had been so transfixed by pulling apart an electric car, seeing how far she could push it, improve it. He just kept putting it off. It was just another thing that still felt too hard.)
He feels like he should have taken better care of the place, except what was the point? It was just them and this version of the world. The dining room was a struck-through list of the dead, and a crudely drawn map tracking their road trips, all over that fancy french paint Esme had giddily painted the least-used room in the house. Alice had started a family portrait in the upstairs hallway during one of her uglier periods - they all hated it because of how fucking realistic it was, and she'd angrily slapped black paint over their faces the last time she found Emmett staring blankly at that perfect replication of Rose.
Seth had begged him not to let her paint portraits again.
He's trying not to get his hopes up, that this stupid plan is going to work and they'll all be coming home just the same as when they left and looking at the wreckage of Esme's home… well, karma might bring them back just because he really doesn't want to have to explain any of it.
Alice is still listing all the things that they have to do before they leave again, an endless litany of both the inane (cleaning and restocking the Jeep, laundry, charging all the electronics and battery packs), to the more unusual and difficult (getting satellite images of the Avengers' compound, creating 3D models, overlaying the lot with maps of New York state to get the right GPS coordinates; somehow locating enough ammunition and two full tanks of gas that they can safely stash in the back without getting found out - gas hoarding comes with a steep fine if they get caught; clean and test all of the family's guns, and hunting until they can't take another drop.)
Seth sleeps whilst he and Alice clear out the Jeep - they've got it down to an art form these days. They do all the maintenance themselves because Emmett doesn't want anyone to touch Rose's work, and you couldn't be a Cullen and not be given some rudimentary engine and car maintenance skills. By force, if necessary - Rosalie took it all very seriously.
Had taken it all very seriously. Would take it seriously.
(This was all fucking with his head, he didn't know how Alice lived like this - in a realm of possibilities.)
Alice hasn't touched her Porsche in years. He knows why - Jasper's sunglasses are still on the dash, one of his jackets on the backseat. The same way Rosalie left a handbag on the passenger seat of the BMW. It's still there, waiting.
It's easy to find grief in every corner of this damn house.
"How much damn soda does Seth drink?" Alice mutters, dumping empty cans in the recycling bin, scowling. The era of harassing Seth into not eating junk food has long since passed, but Alice still complains and insists on including inedible health food in their grocery orders against all logic.
Emmett thinks it's funny that his sister, who has never been maternal, has picked that hill to die on. He and Seth aren't above donating the worst of the health food Alice buys, but she persists.
"Enough to make those stocks you bought back in the 80s worth it," Emmett jokes back, but Alice huffs. The stock market is only just recovering, and Alice is antsy to go back to her favorite game. He'd asked her once, how much money they'd lost and Alice had laughed darkly and told him he didn't want to know. That the House of Cullen was still obscenely wealthy, could wile away their days without worrying about a thing. But she'd been resentful that she'd failed, that she hadn't been able to protect them from that shortfall, that she'd lost the game.
She'll get it all back, and then some. He has faith in her.
It's early morning when Seth stumbles out of his bedroom for coffee and breakfast, and Alice takes that opportunity to vanish into the forest to be able to go over her visions again, to make sure they are still on the right path.
There's an odd sort of tension, knowing that they have a deadline, a purpose. Never have any of their road trips had such a fixed schedule, had a final destination. Seth is kind of halfway between jittery and sluggish, and it's Emmett who gently suggests he go for a run, go check on the res before they head out again.
"Alice has enough chores for us that this might be your only chance." Seth laughs at that, and Emmett's always been impressed by the way the kid rolls with the punches, takes each blow as it comes; how he catches his breath, and climbs back to his feet again ready for whatever came next. He doesn't know many grown men or - vampires - who would take as many blows as Seth has and still find joy and humour and just anything good out of life anymore. They're all familiar with the stories in the media, of the people - especially kids and teenagers - that hit rock bottom after the Snap and then just kept digging down.
Not Seth. He looked around and started building something for himself.
If he wants to be honest with himself, Seth's done more for him and Alice than they did for him. He gave them purpose, yes, but he gave them some humanity. He's not going to deny that the void Rosalie left behind didn't inspire violence and anger and a pain that wanted to claw out a bloody pound of flesh or two. To have him sit well and still, surrounded by her clothing and her scent until his joints seized and his skin began to mottle and flake. There were dark days, and having a kid around - a lost boy, an orphan… it didn't fill the void, but it made it quieter.
He'll take what he can get, honestly. And he's more grateful to Seth than he can say.
—
Charlie Swan shows up two days later, obviously finding out they were home from the grocery delivery; there's no way to keep a secret in this version of Forks.
It's not a great time for him to show up, and even less great is the fact that Seth cheerfully invites him inside… to where Alice has every single gun in the house laid out on the dining room table. It's not a small collection, honestly - they have a few family guns that they kept as part of their cover. Nothing fancy, just practical. But Jasper had collected a few over the years, enough that looked impressive spread out for cleaning and testing.
Charlie had gaped at the guns and then at Alice, still focused on dismantling one of the Glock pistols with the confidence of someone who knew what they were doing (as if a good Southern boy like Jasper would have brought guns into the house without making sure his wife knew how to clean, fire, and handle a firearm - even if she was entirely bulletproof).
Charlie's worried about Alice a lot over the years - he's tried to talk to Emmett about it a few times, and there's not much Emmett can say.
"Sorry Chief, my sister lost half of her reason for existence in the Snap. Since she's an immortal amnesiac, psychic ex-mental patient, she's doing about as well as she can. I'm doing my best, and she's eating and talking and not actively contemplating doing herself serious harm to my knowledge, so I consider everything okay."
He knows that Charlie is projecting his sadness over Bella onto Alice, that his daughter might be gone but one of her closest friends is still alive and Charlie wants Alice to live the life that Bella never had. Alice's still alive and supposed to be a college graduate by now. Not disappearing for months on end with her older brother and a kid from the reservation that Charlie's not entirely sure how they know.
"…What is going on?" Charlie looks stunned and exhausted, and Seth is frozen in shock, realizing his mistake. Emmett is wondering what lie Charlie will believe, and Alice is still going over the guns like a seasoned professional.
"Where did these come from?" Charlie just looks at them as no one says anything, and Alice snaps ammunition into the rifle that has to be nearly half her height.
"Charlie," she says seriously. "What would you do to get Bella back?"
Charlie's face changes from horrified to well-worn grief and then to the sort of patronizing understanding that has become a fixture from any 'adult' that manages to corner Emmett and demand answers about how the poor Cullen children are coping.
"Alice…" Charlie begins, and the compassion is almost visibly leaking off him.
"She's not crazy," Seth blurts out and Emmett watches as Alice freezes for a micro-second, the surprise that flashes over her face at that statement and he wonders how many times his sister has heard the opposite of that statement - all the times forgotten in her human life, all the times in her vampire life and then after the Snap. Hell, he used to make jokes about it - 'Crazy Alice' - until it wasn't funny or cute anymore. Until she was talking to thin air and staring at nothing and destroying her closet.
"The Avengers have found a way to bring everyone back," Emmett says lamely, hearing how hollow his words sound. Like he isn't pinning every hope and ounce of determination in his body to this endeavor. "We're going to help."
Charlie's eyebrows raise even higher as Alice begins dismantling another gun.
"Guys, that is… so, so far out of your realm of responsibility," Charlie began. "Alice, you and Seth have no business being anywhere near that kind of fight, you'll get yourselves killed."
He's not expecting what happens next. None of them are.
Not for Alice to pick up the nearest handgun and fire it twice into the floor (into Esme's beloved reclaimed floorboards, oh god); before Charlie can do more than jump away she closes her hand over the barrel and fires twice into her hand.
Charlie Swan is going to have a heart attack, his eyes are falling out of his skull and he's gaping at Alice.
Alice, who tosses two crumpled bullets onto the dining room table, flashes Charlie an unscathed hand.
"You can use your service weapon if you think it's a trick, Charlie." Her voice sounds slightly distant, as if she's trying to hold herself back from this conversation. "But if you could do that, would you go? If it meant they all came home again? Nothing can hurt more than not having them here."
Charlie just stares at his sister like he's seeing her for the first time.
"You're like them, then. Those Avengers," he manages, looking older than ever. "Is that why you survived? Because you're stronger and… different?"
They can all hear the unspoken question - did Bella die because she was weak? Did they steal her rightful place amongst the living by being Other?
"No," Alice lets out a laugh and gestures behind her at the list of struck-out names. "No, we died like the rest. I'm not one of the strong ones. And we're not like the Avengers. We're just…"
"The Cullens. We're just the Cullens. Local weirdos," Emmett breaks in; he can see the toll this conversation is costing Alice and a sudden awareness that it's always going to be safer for Charlie if he knows less.
"And you?" Charlie looks over at Seth who just grins at him.
"Family secret," he says, before meandering over to the table. "Which one's mine?"
But before Alice can slide anything over to him, Charlie is there.
"Do you know even the first thing about gun safety, Seth?" Charlie is all business, as he measures up the handguns on the table. "Harry was gone before he would have taken you out."
"Mom showed me with the rifle once but said I was too distracted," Seth admits.
"Well, it was Sue's dad that showed me, so let's do this right."
And that's how Charlie Swan ends up teaching Seth to shoot six days before they leave. He has a hard time looking him or Alice in the eye again, and he sees that eat away at Alice just a little bit. She had always had a soft spot for Bella's father. Charlie Swan was the closest she had ever gotten - would ever get - to seeing how real parents behaved, what a human family was like.
Because no matter what, Carlisle and Esme would always be too young, too displaced, to ever capture that. That they had all lived too long, were all too strong and fast and smart, to capture that typical family dynamic. What they had had always been good, had always worked well, and neither he nor Alice would ever complain (especially not now) about their family. But he understand what Alice sought out from Bella and Charlie, what she savored being adjacent to that.
He envied Alice that, in some way. She has no memory of her human family to hold Charlie and Bella up to; she could simply appreciate them as they were, without the brand of regret he has when he tried to remember his mother; or when Rosalie thought of her brothers, or Esme and her son.
But Charlie's distance wouldn't matter - they'll bring home Bella and everything will be okay again. Charlie won't have to keep trying to fit Alice into the hole that Bella left behind. Alice won't have to pretend that she's not hurt that revealing her true self to someone who she cared about, even just a little, resulted in this polite but distant rejection.
They can fix this - he's got faith.
—
Charlie is - unexpectedly - there to see them off, looking more like he's present at a funeral than anything else. In the early morning light, it's easy to see how much older Charlie looks - the grey in his hair, the dark shadows under his eyes. It hasn't happened overnight, and it's a stark reminder that just because things don't change for him and Alice, that they don't change, that it's not like that for everyone else. That the weight of all that has happened sits differently on humans than it does on an immortal.
"You got everything?" Charlie asks gruffly, as he loads in the gun bag; Alice has been thorough, had returned from Newtons with a cardboard box of ammo and a scowl on her face. There's nothing Alice hasn't packed, honestly. He's pretty sure he saw a ski parka in one of the boxes.
"And then some," Seth says with a grin, a breakfast burrito in one hand and a coffee in the other.
"Good. Don't do anything stupid, okay?" Seth chortles at that, as if barging into the Avengers compound to join some kind of fight isn't the epitome of ego and risk, and one of the wildest things the Cullens have ever attempted. And Seth? Well, he's a long way from shot-gunning a beer and going cliff-diving at La Push.
Stupid doesn't even come close to what they're about to do.
"We'll be fine, Charlie," Seth says, taking another bite out of the burrito. "If things go wrong, I'll just use one of these two as a meat shield."
Alice is wearing yoga pants and a t-shirt with glitter on it - all black, of course - but it only highlights the ridiculousness of what Seth has just said.
"We'll be fine, Chief," he adds cheerfully, digging deep for the act. "Worst case scenario is that we get stranded and have to walk home." It's easier than he thought, to all into old patterns of convivial Emmett, the himbo-bro looking for the next prank or joke or funny story.
Charlie looks mildly horrified at that, even when Seth laughs.
"You kids get stuck anywhere, and you call me. We'll get you back home somehow." The determination in his voice makes Emmett feel sorry for him; as if there are any travel options available to them that Charlie could afford.
"It sounds like you're all doubting me," Alice says, pursing her lips in irritation. "As if I would let us get stranded." As if it would matter - Alice would expect them to run home if shit hit the fan, and never consider that a problem. Not to mention airline travel might be offensively expensive, but Alice could afford it. Alice probably had standby tickets already booked.
"Never," he says and Seth nods and then shakes his head trying to assure Alice no one would even expect her to make a mistake.
"Good." She nods once and goes and climbs in the passenger seat, ignoring Seth's indignant cries that he already called shotgun whilst she was doing her make-up. But Alice just ignores him, already primly setting up the GPS.
"How does she manage to be more annoying than Leah? That's her real gift," Seth grumbles.
"It's the visions," Emmett says flippantly, and mentally wincing when he notices Charlie's eyes widen.
"We'll call you when it's all over," Seth turns to Charlie, flipping topics instantly. "But you'll probably know, I guess, because everyone will be back? I'm not sure how it works."
"Yeah, about that," Charlie rests his hands on Seth's shoulders - it might be possible that Seth is taller than the Chief now. "You keep yourself out of trouble, and you call me when you can. Anything you need. I want to make sure all you kids stay in one piece before anything else."
Alice has gone still inside the car, and he knows she's listening. Knows that Charlie doesn't fully believe in what she knows, in what they can do. But that he is also very worried for all of them - certainly more worried than afraid of them and what they are.
"It'll work," Seth says decisively and somehow that is the signal to climb into the Jeep. The way Seth says it, it's not a hope or a wish or mindless optimism from a kid that can find it in any situation.
It's a certainty, a bet he'd make without second-guessing. All-in.
So that's how they leave for the last time, with Charlie Swan raising his hand farewell in the rear vision mirror and Seth's words hanging in the air.
It'll work.
—
It's a long trip.
It didn't feel like it would be when they were planning it out, when they were hunched over the map Alice spread over the dining room table so that she could mark impassable roads as they planned. The little coil of red ink that tracked across the country, that marked out rest stops and meal spots for Seth, hunting grounds for them, and routes where they wouldn't draw attention (the gas is hidden inside the backseats of the Jeep, just in case they get checked because Alice has never once managed to forge the gas-allowance papers well enough. She blames the ink).
But it is. It's terribly long because everything they are betting on is on the other side of the country; this is a wildcard that could very easily go sour and leave them with nothing. Less than nothing.
Not only is he not sure how he'll deal with it if this turns out to be nothing, but he's got a rising sense of unease about how Alice will react. Because it really does feel impossible; time-travel. If this is what Alice is wrong about, if this is the very first time he should have bet against her, he knows that putting her back together will be ugly.
And Seth. Seth deserves a home, deserves to go to a college class in person, and meet people with normal problems. Spend time on the res and rejoin his community. That this three-man war they've been fighting has to end, one way or another. And as they pass miles and miles of worn-out freeway, of forgotten cars on the side of the road, of abandoned gas stations and falling-apart towns… he's becoming grimly aware of the sheer size of what they are trying to accomplish, and he's not sure how anyone - even gods and monsters - can manage it. This is the last road trip, the last fight. He knows this before he's even decided it. That whatever happens, the next time they go back to Forks, it will be for good.
It's not an easy trip, either. One of the hunting grounds is less robust than Alice saw, and neither of them feel good about taking the three skinny deer they finally find so they go without. The motel they stay at is freezing cold and damp, and Seth might be special but he's still human and Alice is furious. They end up trading a half-gallon of gas to a stranded family - the husband's eyes wary and the mother's desperate - when they accept a handful of grimy dollar bills for something that is worth closer to fifty bucks.
Seth gives the kids snacks out of the trunk, their eyes wide and excited as he tucks another granola bar into their pockets. Alice gives them both the full story after they've pulled away; the money was been put back in the youngest child's pocket because sleight of hand was always a favourite game in the family. But their story is like so many others - headed towards the Canadian border in hopes of something better than another broken-down town.
The radio cuts in and out, and Alice patches their phones into the car so that they can keep cycling through the road trip playlists; Seth started making them years ago - Dumb Songs Leah Was Obsessed with in Middle School and Songs Mom Would Sing Along to But Get the Lyrics Wrong Every Single Time. They've added dozens since then - Music that Edward Forbid Ever Be Played in the House and Songs with Lyrics We Definitely had to Explain to Carlisle are the two safest ones. He can't listen to anything by Billie Holiday because he and Rose always danced to her music at their wedding. That was tradition. Alice can't deal with David Bowie. And Seth always skips the Beatles - his parents' favourite records, he had once said.
But the songs start sounding more like a funeral dirge, one for all the things they remember and have held tight to for the last five years. They start blurring and blending together, and when the music cuts out again, somewhere around Illinois, Seth doesn't turn it back on. They just sit in silence, watching the road stretch before them as the sun goes down.
It's a long trip.
—
"Alice?" It's after midnight and they've just crossed over into New York State; Seth is passed out on the backseat, snoring lightly, with headphones on. There's no way he can hear them.
"Mmm?" Alice has a bottle of reeking nail polish on her knee, laser-focused on her manicure. He doesn't ask.
"Are we going to die?"
She lets out a puff of breath and looks over at him; the shadows and light playing over her face makes her look haunted (like the question came too late and she's the answer; dead and gone, the ghost of lost girls).
"Maybe? I don't know," she says quietly. "I can't see, there are too many inhuman variables. But…"
"But?" He jumps on that too fast.
"I keep hearing 'one chance'. Someone keeps saying it over and over again, and I cannot get a fix on who or why or anything," she closes her eyes. "I know this is the path we're supposed to take. I wouldn't have pushed it if I thought there was too much risk. But I hate that I don't know enough."
Silence.
"We get Seth home at all costs, in one piece."
"Agreed. And… I left a note."
He looks over at her again. "A note?"
"For the family. If we don't make it but they do. Just so they know that we went down fighting to fix things. Like they would have done for us."
And they both fall silent.
He imagines that for a moment, to waking up and finding a note. One that says Rose died fighting to bring him back, as if that wasn't a worse hell than being the one that was left behind. As if the price that was paid was worth him. He knows why Alice wrote it, but it still feels like a special kind of cruelty.
"Emmett?"
"Yeah?"
"What's the first thing that you're going to say to Rose?" A drop of nail polish falls onto the knee of Alice's jeans. "When you see her again?"
The hole in his chest feels like it widens at that question; as if he can pour five years of grief and rage and fear and loneliness and deep, all-encompassing love and wonder and relief into a single sentence.
"I have no idea," he admits after a pause. "You?"
"To Rose?" Alice smirks and he chuckles before he watches Alice's face fall. "Em, I don't know what I'm going to say to any of them."
He doesn't have advice or a solution or anything for this. He could tell her to look for a vision, but that's only as certain as she is… As much as he is hoping-planning-praying that this all works, that Alice plays this hand right, and he's going to have Rose back, he still cannot picture that moment, cannot imagine how it's going to feel or what's going to come out of his mouth. Not once it's over.
But now? Right in this second as Alice stares out the window with a frown and lights on the horizon indicate some kind of town… well, it's not hard to find the words.
I'm coming home, Rose. I promise. I swear. I'm coming back to you.
—
It takes the best part of the week, but they make it.
The Avengers Compound is exactly what Emmett expected. Sleek and modern and clearly no expense spared. It's the kind of place that he and Jasper - and Rose - could cause millions of dollars of very entertaining chaos very quickly. And for a moment, there's a spark of anger at home nice this place is when so much of the goddamn country has fallen to ruin. The grass is still mowed, the windows are clean… it feels like an insult.
But at least it's in one piece, at least they've made it.
It takes Alice an embarrassingly short time, leaning through the driver's side window, to disable the gate that lets them in. (She huffs and points out that it took an entire day of visions in the middle of the Olympic National Park to work out how to crack it efficiently. It wasn't luck or bad security or particular skill. But Emmett knows that his sister is clever, smarter than she gets credit for, and the end result is the same: they're in.)
They drive slowly towards the main building, an obscure gesture of peace and not aggression; he doesn't want to start a fight upon their arrival, wants to give whoever is in residence an opportunity to greet them rather than them simply invading one of the most secure bases in the country, demanding to help.
Of course, he continues to be the universe's personal punchline as red lights flash around the face of the building and shutters begin to close over it.
"I think that they know we're here," Seth says, and Emmett mentally swears - he wasn't anticipating a warm welcome, per se, but this is… not ideal. This is not the beginning of agreeable negotiations. This is how they end up arrested and ... he didn't even want to finish that thought.
"Probably just a response to the security system being overridden with a hairpin and an old USB," Alice shrugs it off, leaning forward to get a better look at the campus. Emmett's suitably impressed, honestly, at the maps Alice organized and the 3D modeling she showed them - it's pretty damn accurate, right down to the fucking ugly Memorial Fountain.
But the way that Alice is looking around is making him… not nervous, but like maybe Alice has more of the story than she's disclosed. A wave of irritation washes through him, but he knows the drill - don't bet against Alice, even when it seems hopeless. Even now. He has to be in this, all or nothing. She knows what she's doing, and if leaving him and Seth in the… not the dark, but maybe in the shadows, of some of what has to occur, well, he'll go down willingly if it means that Rosalie comes home in one piece.
"Park there," Alice points; it's a decent distance from the front door, but Emmett's not about to argue.
It's not at all like all the times that they've gone looking for newborns. That's just wandering city streets at night, stopping to get Seth food or maybe helping someone down on their luck to get to safety. This time, Seth is positively buzzing with energy, as they begin to get their stuff from the back of the Jeep - Alice wordlessly hands over guns to both him and Seth; Seth is pointedly handed a Glock, the one that Charlie insisted was best for a beginner.
He gets the gold one and flashes his sister a grin and she rolls her eyes. He doesn't comment on the fact that the one she straps to her leg is one of Jasper's most prized possessions.
He's not expecting Alice to throw a motorcycle jacket at him.
"Cover up. The last thing we need is to start glittering," she tells him as she zips hers over her outfit. "There are spare shorts for Seth in one of your pockets." He's not surprised - he's usually tasked with carrying Seth's stuff when he's in wolf form, he's more impressed that Alice managed to get shorts folded down into a pocket that flat.
"Seth, the gun is only if you need it," Alice says, as she pulls on gloves, and passes Emmett a pair. "It's only a tool - I'd honestly feel better if you were a wolf for whatever happens next. Do not hesitate to shift."
"What do you mean?" Seth looks up from strapping the gun to his belt, and Alice looks away and slides what looks like a package of bandages into her pants.
"Alice?" He presses, and when she looks at him, she doesn't need to say a word. They all know. Whatever comes next is going to be big. Bigger than she has ever alluded to - before now.
"I'm sorry, I can't tell you more because I can't see through it. It's just a mess. But… the future is still there and it's still clear. I can still see them at home," she finally says as they lock up the Jeep. "We're on the right path."
"Okay," he nods - that's all he needs, really, to see this through - and Seth tosses his water bottle back into the Jeep before they lock it. "Let's do this."
"Where is everyone?" Seth wonders as they move towards the building that is still locked up like a prison. But there is not a single person nearby - there are definitely people inside, but no one has approached them or even noticed.
And then…
There's a beat. Maybe it wouldn't be noticeable if his senses weren't as sharp as they were. But for a moment, it's like the universe blinks or takes a huge breath. It's… it's a nice feeling. A good one. If he had to describe it, later, it would be the closest he'll ever get to knowing how Jasper's gift felt.
And then there's a bird. A fat little grey thing that swoops past the fountain, one that wasn't there before, one that comes together out of nothing in the middle of its flight, small enough to fit in Alice's cupped hands.
Seth is staring at it, as well. At the sudden appearance of two security guards in the distance, outside some kind of storage shed beyond the main building, both of them stumbling.
And the sudden sound of a cellphone ringing from his sister's back pocket.
Alice frowns as she pulls her phone out, glaring down at the screen before she stops dead. If it's possible, all the blood leaves his sister's face, her lips parting in surprise as she actually fumbles to answer.
"H-Hello?"
"Alice, Alice where are you?"
The sound of his brother's voice, even through a phone speaker, is like a sudden shock, like the world has become sharper and more real in that moment. That's Jasper, that's his voice on the line. Not another phone video or old recording. That's him. Which means…
"Jasper?" Her voice shakes, and she sounds like a child. "Jasper, is that you?"
"Alice…"
He can feel his own phone ringing in his pocket, and he pulls it out without taking his eyes off Alice; Seth is gaping at both of them, his own phone in his hand as he begins firing off text messages. They can still hear Jasper demanding to know where she is but Alice is frozen, her eyes wide as she stares up at the sky.
"Get behind the Jeep," she says, reaching out for Seth's arm. "GET BEHIND THE JEEP! EMMETT!"
"Emmett?"
He takes a moment to look behind him before he answers Rosalie, and he wishes he didn't. He wishes he had told his wife he loved her and he was coming home.
He wishes he'd stayed in Forks to wait for her.
Too late now.
"Jesus Fucking Christ," is all Seth manages to say as the missiles sail through to the compound and all three of them are thrown backward as the world explodes around them in blue light and a shower of metal and glass, and the last thing Emmett hears is Rosalie calling out for him from his phone.
Note
- I can never keep book canon and the guide and movie canon straight, so the Swan family background is that Charlie's parents had him later in life; Charlie's parents were pretty introverted - his interests in fishing and outdoorsy stuff came from hanging out on the Res.
- Yeah, Harry died before he taught Seth to shoot, and Sue put a hold on teaching him until he was older and more responsible. Yes, Leah knows how to shoot, yes Harry taught her, and yes she's the best shot out of the pack.
- I have written so many notes, and rewatched the battle scenes from Endgame so many times for the end of this chapter and chapter seven, and I really dislike the Endgame battle. So, I'm going to make some improvements. I just need that known.
- There were a few scenes cut - mostly Alice hacking, Emmett musing over the state of the house, and Seth getting drunk. Nothing that really adds anything important to the story, but if there's interest, I'll set them aside for either the outtakes/Ficmas '22.
- Due to the destruction of infrastructure after the Snap, a direct route between Forks and New York would be difficult to find and take longer than what we would expect to travel today. Towns have been abandoned, roads are no longer maintained, rest stops are closed - it becomes a much larger task to travel across the country after Thanos. There would also be an enormous global recession that would resemble the 1930s more than 2008.
- The idea that there weren't people at the Avengers compound during the Snap is laughable. There were definitely some kind of support/skeleton staff there 24/7, just for security/maintenance, and they were casualties when Thanos arrived. It's not realistic for a base of that size not to have support staff on hand.
- Why didn't someone call Seth before they got caught in the explosion? Reflex speed, honestly. Edward went to Bella's, Jasper was alone in the woods and had his phone in his hand before he was even solidified. Rose and Esme checked on each other before reaching for their phones, and Sue and Leah were checking on each other as Sue tried to find her phone.
- Emmett was going to give Seth the Prius because of the restrictions on gas, and I imagine Rosalie's garage being very organized; that to get one of the cars she was working on out involved moving other cars and there's no way Emmett would let someone else touch Rose's babies.
- I'm still pondering whether to write Ch7 and Ch8 back to back and release them simultaneously or a day or two apart. I suppose it depends on how it comes together, but we're literally set up to finally get some of the promised MCU into this fic. It only took me 18 months.