A/N: I participated in this year's Whumptober event over on tumblr. I'll be cross-posting three of my four submissions on here over the next hour or so. To read the fourth (part of an unpublished, unfinished WIP) you can find me over on tumblr under the same name, flowerslut. Like always, these fics get posted to tumblr and AO3 first.

WARNING: Major character death and lots of canon-typical violence ahead.


WHEN THE MOMENT ENDS

There is agitation rolling low in his stomach, festering at a simmer that never cools. It is a vital necessity that he can not afford to lose; not that he'd be able to rid himself of it even if he tried. He stares ahead as he stalks down the dark, damp hallways, and he dares anyone to stop him, to speak to him now that he finally knows where he's going.

Two days. Two entire days she has been back.

He pushes the agitation back beneath the surface before it can bubble up into something overtly visible; into something more. He is in a near-constant state of upset. But he still can't afford to get angry right now. He needs to keep his wits about him. He needs to keep paying attention.

It's helped himself stay alive for this long. (And his long-worn habit of compartmentalizing had never been so useful than in the aftermath of that April morning years ago.)

She has been back for two days and no one has told him.

Bodies had barely begun to be carted away when Jasper finally spotted him across the room. He hadn't noticed Demetri's arrival, and the faux-innocent expression he had brandished (and his knowing, awful eyes as he smiled with his mangled, pitted cheek) had forced Jasper's annoyance to crescendo, just for a moment.

The only thing that prevented him from picking a fight right then and there—because it is well-known within these walls that Jasper is most impulsive, irritable, and irrational right after feeding—was the knowledge that Alice was back, and that he needed to see her.

(It is also well known that without unfair interference, he is dangerous. A finely tuned weapon. If not for his pathokinesis Aro wonders if 'survival' wasn't a liable gift. He doesn't offer anything the guard doesn't already possess, but taking Jasper on in a one-on-one fight is something that you do not do in Volterra.)

She isn't in her quarters, or hiding away in the day room on the upper level (the one place that offers a glimpse of daylight in their awful prison-home) and Jasper has half a mind to go find Aro and demand to know where the hell she is before he realizes, with an acute sense of dread, that he knows where she is.

It's been four years since she last used this hiding spot.

He can feel her from three floors away, and with each and every step he takes his agitation pulses much like the beating of the heart he just put a stop to ten minutes ago. No matter the years that pass he hates it when the blood clings beneath his fingernails and the terror-agony-desperation clings to his awareness.

His gift is as much of a burden to him now than it was back in Mexico, but his mind remains in a far, far worse state here in Italy. (Even Aro doesn't like taking his hand anymore, with Jasper's misery eating away at everything he touches.)

But he is still alive because he is strong. Because this is not his first trip to hell. And the burn that erodes his mind but soothes his throat just so happens to be one of the things that keeps him upright.

There are two threads that keep him tethered to this life. To any life anymore. (His last life feels so long ago. Memories of fields and cities and cars and rain. Memories of laughter and warmth and family. It's only been a handful of decades but it sometimes feels like this is the old humanity that he tries to cling to in small ways.)

Blood and Alice have always been the only two things that mattered to Jasper.

And now they're all he has left.

Burn marks still scorch the ground beneath his feet as he pushes his way into the room. This was the home of the undignified executions. The heads of bodies that mattered little to Aro or Caius rolled across the stone floor of this stuffy room with it's low-ceilings and death stench. A room preferred for practicality, not fanfare. The only ventilation is a grate in the center of the ceiling, and even that barely provides an adequate escape to the violet smoke that signals another dead vampire.

It's a vent that is connected to a few of the upper rooms on it's journey to the surface. The same rooms they'd all been held in for the first few months of captivity. The rooms in which Carlisle had retreated into his head while Esme had sat by and lost her mind.

(Their deaths hadn't marked the beginning of the end. Just the continuation of a promise that had been made back in the Olympic peninsula. Jasper had thought of it as a mercy—they would have rotted away either physically or mentally before long—but instead it was another nail in the coffin for the once-lively house of Cullen.

Despite all of Edward's wildness in the weeks following, Jasper had hoped he would pull it together. Emmett begged and bickered with him, Alice couldn't get through to him—nor was she properly allowed under the close, near-constant supervision that focused on her from the start—but Bella was still there, still trying, still aware.

Then the insinuation that Renesmeé had been located and 'dealt with' snipped through the final tether tying Bella to their reality. All cooperation from her ceased, and that was all the excuse they needed. Jasper still remembers the way her entire aura shifted and then imploded that day, Caius' words as much of a taunt as his sneer when he delivered the news.

Carlisle and Esme's deaths had been a mercy. Bella's had been a display. Edward's had been necessary.

The last gift from his young brother in his last seconds of life had been Jane and Alec, torn and burning and beyond saving.)

Alice is easy to spot in the far corner of the room, and the sound of Jasper's shoes grates on his nerves. They are too loud in the silence. When she does not turn at the sound, Jasper knows it's because she hasn't noticed him yet, and that makes him anxious.

(He'd been summoned to the throne room once after she'd gone comatose for twelve hours. Jasper almost ended up dead that day after learning how long she'd been like that—on the floor, unresponsive, trapped in visions she couldn't control—before they thought to try and involve him.

Aro had frowned at him, his sympathy all fake. His concern for his 'seer' a facade that Jasper couldn't be fooled by.

Jasper had cupped her cheeks, trying to pretend that there weren't half a dozen pairs of eyes on them. After a few minutes and some carefully spoken words, he'd brushed a short strand of hair behind her ear and Alice came back to the present with a scream.

Thankfully, his neck healed without scarring. Her nails hadn't torn into his flesh too far.)

Alice's emotions are buzzing and fluttery and moving too fast for him to decipher. He knows before he even reaches her that she's stuck, trapped in another web of visions. Gone is the thick anguish that typically haunts her aura now.

Anger and violence are raging within him swiftly; he doesn't know how long she's been here in this room, but his instincts tell him that it's been the entire time she's been back. Likely since she crawled into this room to hide.

Her dark, almost-black cloak that they make her wear during assignments is still tied around her shoulders.

Jasper doesn't touch her yet—he knows better to do that without her explicit permission anymore—but he does reach out and tug the knot at the base of her throat loose. Whether that does anything to help her in this specific moment, he's unsure, but the heaviness of it on her shoulders was always too apparent to the both of them.

Too symbolic of what her cooperation stood for.

It's not long after the cloak hits the ground where Jasper can feel the buzzing of her emotions begin to clear. There's no way to know for sure how long it'll take her to come back to him—he's waited hours before—but when it's clear she's on her way back to the current world, the world they properly exist in, he forces himself to focus.

The difficulty that comes with using his gift this way nowadays is as frustrating as it is humiliating. A reminder of a weakness that still exists within him. But love never had to coexist with hate when he was at Maria's side down in Monterrey. And maybe that's always been a shortcoming of his own design, out of his hands and his control. But the space inside of his chest is only so big, and despite his ability he can only process so much of his own emotion at once.

It takes a couple of minutes to shove the anger and frustration to the wayside, but when he's able to push them down enough the fear and worry and love are quick to fill the void.

I love you, he wants to tell her, and as he says it in his head it forces himself to feel it more in his body.

He hates how rarely he is able to do this any longer. Hates that he was forced to compartmentalize this way. Hates that he was forced to store his love for Alice under lock and key, only to access in case of emergency. But he doesn't hate how it's kept him alive.

How it's kept them both alive.

(Rosalie had been Jasper's best bet out of all of them. If anyone could've found a way to exist out of spite and in the face of any opposing circumstance it would have been her. Should have been her. And Emmett had been there, by her side through it all. Every single step of the way. Miserable and angry and prepared to do what he had to do to keep himself and Rose alive.

Jasper still doesn't have the full story. All he knows for certain is that mental fortitude did not make up for a lack of physical strength. When he and Emmett returned from an errand to find that she'd been reduced to ash in their time gone—hours; they'd barely been gone for hours—it almost didn't feel real.

With Renata frowning, and visible for once, behind Aro's shoulder, Demetri across the room, glaring at them with teeth bared as his torn-open face leaked venom into his hand, and Alice, on her knees at Aro's other side, eyes blank and unseeing as her hand remained grasped in his, the scene made little sense.

The stench of Rosalie's death clung to the entire room. Her ashes still smoking on the ground in front of Aro.

Jasper supposed he'd always seen Rosalie as too similar to himself. In the end, he'd mistaken her fiery strength for cold resilience. Where Jasper didn't allow himself to feel, Rosalie had continued to feel too much. He still doesn't know what happened that day to cause her death—though he knows that Demetri is at fault, and that Alice will never, ever tell him the entire story—but Emmett's ensuing death is the one that haunts him the most.)

When she finally blinks, a cacophony of emotions strike him harshly—anger and fear and disgust and a sadness so heavy Jasper swears he can feel it's physical weight—and he finally reaches out for her.

"Oh," is all she says when her dark red eyes finally focus on his face. By that point his hands are already gripping her arms and he's pulling her into his lap. Her emotions are still turbulent and swirling and caustic but he's focusing very, very hard right now on trying to remember good things, so when he tucks her head beneath his chin, placing his bare hand against the side of her neck as he holds her against him, Jasper knows that Alice can feel it. Feel him.

They don't exchange words for several minutes. Jasper is not in the business of soothing any longer, but he tries as hard as he can to do it for Alice. Every time he lowers his guard and forces himself to feel he's risking himself. But if he doesn't exist to keep Alice safe—safe and whole and as sane as he possibly can—then he exists for nothing.

"I'm tired." Tired is an understatement, but he holds her close and tries to ignore how badly those two little words pain him. Here, with her, away from the rest of the Volturi, he can feel things like love and pain and fear. It's a luxury he should not be affording himself right now.

But his Alice has just spent two straight days trapped in her mind at the mercy of uncontrollable visions, sitting on the very floors that Emmett met his end on, nearly fifteen years ago now.

("I give up."

Silence reigned before the same voice chuckled, shattering it with it's hysterical nature.

With hands raised, Emmett's laugh caught on an angry sob. "I can't keep playing this game. There's no end. There's no winning." The silence in the throne room had been deafening when he'd started to speak. And even Jasper had been watching him in shock. This didn't sound like the man who had stood by his side for twelve years of hell. There was no fury or rage of a man pushed to the brink. This wasn't a prisoner of the guard fighting for his life. This was finally Emmett.

"We will not stand by to hear—"

"You don't stand for anything except cruelty in the name of justice," Emmett had snapped back at Caius. "You've proved your point. You've served your justice. Killed my family. This is all I have left," he'd vaguely gestured to Jasper behind him and Alice in front of him, "I hope you're happy. I'm not doing this anymore."

Emmett embraced Jasper before they'd escorted him out of the room that day. Jasper had been too stunned to react. He was too angry with Emmett's willingness to throw in the towel, too caught off guard and still reeling from Rosalie's death to think straight, and too betrayed to even look him in the eye.

Every day he wished he'd hugged his fucking brother back.)

Alice lifts her hand and presses it on top of Jasper's. He knows she's trying to return the favor, to search for a moment in a happy memory to send comfort back his way—he can feel the sweet calm fluttering so, so softly against him. But after a few seconds of concentrating she gives up, and drops her hand.

"I'm so tired," she repeats the sentiment, pressing her face against his neck. They don't usually get time like this together. Aro likes her ability to be close by, and even if she gets sent out on a mission it's rare that she's allowed too much time away from his reach. Jasper knows that Aro likely hasn't come to retrieve her yet because he knows she was stuck.

But Demetri will likely be by soon to check. Especially now that it's known to him that Jasper went looking for her.

He picks up Alice's palm and kisses it, and for the first time in a long time, it smells only of her.

The sob she holds in makes her chest constrict, but she speaks through it, her words shaking. "I can't do this anymore…"

Jasper pushes back his frustration at that statement. Because he can't have her saying things like this. He cannot have her crying on the floor this way. He can't have her at this point. She's been here before—the last time he found her here she'd cried in his arms for hours until she saw that Aro needed her—and he'd made her promise to him that she'd keep trying, keep going.

In return he'd promised to be more cooperative, that he would try to figure something out.

She'd told him not to bother, and then left him on the ground minutes later.

"I know," he whispers because he doesn't think he can speak any louder. He's losing his grip on the feelings that old memories help him access and is quiet for a few seconds as he forces out the calm attached to the memory of nights spent in fields and under stars. It's getting harder and harder to access the emotions he used to experience regularly, but he still tries. Because if he loses this ability they may lose themselves.

Volterra is a haunted, hopeless void. Its promise of peace nothing more than a myth.

"I know," he repeats louder, and his arms around her tighten. "But, Alice we have to make sure—"

"Jasper. No." She's shaking her head and her sorrow is too thick and the memory of summers in Des Moines and Christmases in Montana are snuffed out like candlelight in the wind. Her emotions are cold against his skin and even as he presses his nose into her hair—blood and smoke and ash cling to her and flood his senses—he can feel their misery entwine until he's shuddering a haggard breath against her.

It's dangerous to lower his guard because it's dangerous to do this. Dangerous for him, because he's vulnerable. Dangerous for her, because she doesn't need his added anguish on top of hers. Dangerous for the two of them because Aro doesn't like them to have time alone together.

"There's nothing more we can do." Not yet, he used to always say. Back when he was confident that he could find them an escape plan. But for as much as he knew he was capable of killing Demetri if given the right opportunity, he quickly realized through the years that Demetri was not the only tracker Aro had at his disposal.

One hunter down would just put another in his place.

Her hand reaches up until her arm is snaked around his neck, gripping the hair on the back of his head. The kiss she gives him makes him feel like a livewire, and he knows that as long as she sees they won't be caught he'll kiss her for as long as she allows.

It's been months, maybe even a year now, since he's been able to kiss his wife.

But Alice is not Jasper's wife in Volterra. Alice is Aro's personal oracle. The Volturi's all-seeing weapon. The most coveted jewel in their collection.

Alice isn't Alice.

"I don't want to do this anymore," she whispers the words against his lips as she parts from him, and Jasper growls because the only emotions he can access right now are the unhappy ones. And this decidedness, this resignation from her, does not leave him in a good place. "Please," she forces more words out and Jasper knows its because she can see him about to speak. "Please, Jasper."

"What are we supposed to do then?" He's sorry for the way he snaps at her, but he can't have this. This is not something she can do. He needs her strong because that's how she stays safe. Because if he can figure out a solution one day, it's only worth it if she's still there, still protected, still fighting.

Alice kisses him again and he returns the favor with renewed vigor, and if he's a little rough with her she doesn't protest. She pulls back when one of his hands is gripping the back of her neck, crushing her to him with a devouring kiss, and places her hand on top of his, holding his grip firm even as she leans away.

"Aro is going to come for me soon," she speaks fast and soft. "I don't want to go with him." Her eyes lock onto his, and her determination is fierce. "Don't force me to go with him again."

But Jasper can't agree to that. He cannot stop Aro from taking what he wants. Alice knows that Jasper can't stop Aro. Because if he tries to keep Alice from Aro, he'll be killed. And he has to stay alive so he can protect Alice in any way he can.

Alice knows his next words, so when she reaches into the small bag strapped to her hip, Jasper doesn't react, he just waits for what she's going to say in reply to words he doesn't even need to utter.

She reaches for the hand that isn't holding her by the back of the neck and when he feels her deposit something wiry into his palm, he finally looks down. It's hair. Different shades of crumbled, ripped-out hair. Hair both brown and blonde.

It takes half of a second for the scents to wash over him, and instantly he understands.

Peter, Charlotte, Maria. This means they're all dead, too.

There'd been whispers he'd overheard months ago, of another 'cleaning' of north America. He never once thought that they'd force Alice to assist, or even allow her back to the place she'd once called home. Or that the Volturi would go after the only other people still alive on this planet that he cared about.

Peter and Charlotte had been away from the wars for almost a century. It certainly wasn't their involvement that damned them. But their relation to him, and to Alice, too.

"There is nothing I can do to save you." Her words are quiet and her emotions are pure agony and there is no hope to be found here on the floor where their final sibling was reduced to purple smoke and ash. Jasper is next. His strength can't save him now. "And I can't let you leave me here alone."

When her hand tightens overtop of his Jasper flinches away from her, yanking his hand back and off of her neck as he stares at her in horror, in anger. She can't ask him to do something he would never dream of, even in his worst nightmares.

"They are going to kill you," Alice reiterates the words hollowly, "and I will be left here alone, trapped, and I will never, ever get out." She blinks at him. "No one will come for me."

Jasper hates that he understands now. They aren't just killing anyone who knows them, but anyone who could possibly know about Alice and her ability. If she is going to be an effective weapon, safe within Italy's armory, no one can know.

No one is allowed to covet Alice, so the memory of her must be scoured from the Earth.

(She'd laughed at his expression after Peter and Charlotte were out of earshot, her golden eyes still so new and entrancing to him, even after all these months. "You worry too much."

"You said we'd talk about it."

"I said I wouldn't tell them without your permission. And I knew if I asked today you'd agree." She'd tapped her temple with her fingertip, "and I knew Peter would want to talk to Charlotte alone, because I knew that he'd be worried I'd say something about what I saw you two doing for twenty years." Her smile softened as she approached, and Jasper opened his arms out for her despite his worry and annoyance. "And I knew that would leave us with a couple of days to ourselves," she'd purred as her fingers trailed up his arms.

He leaned forward enough for her to wrap her arms around his neck, allowing her to pull herself up and wrap her legs around his waist. "You're right," he pressed a kiss above her ear as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her upright. "I do worry."

Alice kissed the corner of his frown, and Jasper felt love light him from the outside in. "I'm sorry. You know I wouldn't tell them if it weren't wise.")

He doesn't want to ask who else has been killed, or who will be killed next—and he knows that Alice knows—because these are not things he wants to think about if his days (or hours or minutes) are numbered.

"You don't know what you're asking me to do." And his anger has finally crumbled inward for the time being, giving way to a hollowness that threatens to swallow him.

"I do, and I'm sorry."

"Tell me there's anything else."

"I'm sorry."

"Tell me there's hope even just for you."

"There is nothing left for me if they kill you and you've left me alive." Jasper stares at her in open horror. Alice stares back and talks even faster now. "I will never leave Aro's side again. I'll be miserable for eternity. Please," she begs him again as she reaches back into the pouch. The next thing she presses into his palm is a silver lighter. "don't damn me to that fate. Please Jasper."

He wants to plead further with her because this is never something he has ever considered in any of the possibilities that have swam through him in the past twenty-seven years. For their family death has been both a mercy and a consequence and a threat always looming overhead.

It is not, and never should have become, the final gift he has to bestow upon the center of his existence.

He does not ask her anything else. He does not ask her what he's to do afterward because he knows she won't see it. Because whatever he does next is still a death sentence. Alice will never see outside of this room again and Jasper will not live past daybreak.

That is not something Alice sees. It is something that Jasper knows.

He kisses her again, aggressive and desperate and wanting, and thankfully there is enough time for them in the moment. For clothes pushed aside and for mourning one another in the only way they can now. "I love you, I love you," she whispers on repeat as they move, and even though Alice can't help it, Jasper refuses to think beyond this moment. Because when the moment ends, so does everything.

Right now is all they have.

(The first time he told her he loved her she'd been swimming and hadn't even heard it.

But even still, Alice had shot up from the deep so quickly that she almost took him off of his feet as she flew from the lake, straight into his arms, kissing him so deeply that it only took seconds for them to undress one another.

"I didn't think you'd hear me," he'd mused sometime after, brushing his thumb across her lower back. Of course she'd seen him say it, but until he learned how to surprise her, he'd never be able to do it.

"I've been feeling it every time I touch you for weeks now," Alice had purred, smiling, "I've just been waiting for you to say it." She pushed him back against the dirt and kissed him fiercely. "Now I get to say it, too."

He'd grinned at her and she'd laughed.)

He doesn't let her face him when he does it. He stands behind her, holding her closely in a lover's embrace, pushing forth the last bits of calm and peace and serenity he'll ever experience again. Alice will take all of his love with her in death, her body a burial ground for his heart and his soul.

She kisses his arm as he snakes it around her neck. He kisses the top of her head as she relaxes in his embrace.

"I love you."

"I love you."

He doesn't hesitate—if he does, it'll only hurt her more—but it takes a millisecond before the deed is done.

Pocketing the lighter he strides out of the room, leaving everything he's ever loved behind. He will not watch her burn. He will not waste any time now. He doesn't have much more of it left anyways.

He doesn't have a plan and he doesn't need one. Aro can not see his choices now. Which means he will never see his own death coming.

The house of Cullen has fallen, Aro's eye is gone, and Jasper will burn Volterra from the inside out.


A/N: In no way did Breaking Dawn set up a happy ending. Ain't no way the Cullens will live in peace with a 'happy little forever'. Not a chance in hell. I have a giant project in production that covers that topic more in depth, but until that's complete I hope you enjoyed this far shorter, far sadder, alternative take.

Anyways, in other news: this past May the darling love of my life (volturialice) and I started a new Twilight podcast!

If that sounds like something you'd be interested in checking out feel free to look us up. It's called Three Books One Plot. We post episode biweekly (or more frequently, sometimes) and we, along with a rotating guest of the week, take turns reading Twilight and it's two official retellings, Life and Death and Midnight Sun, all at once in a joke-filled, nostalgia-driven look at the craziest story to ever be published three times by the same author.

Check us out on any social media sites you frequent and you can stream us now on your favorite streaming services now.