This part at least is true. If Alec doesn't like it, then whatever. This story is first and foremost for therapeutic purposes.
Two weeks after we arrived who-knows-where and I still hadn't spoken. I just couldn't think of what to say to the vampire who disposed my best friend and dog's bodies. On the plane I'd fallen asleep, to my and Alec's surprise. Then he'd woken me up, took me to a hotel and let me sleep for an entire day. After that I fell into the old routine of not sleeping. I tried to sleep all the time. I was no longer interested in staying awake and interrogating Alec with every question that popped up in my brain.
Sleep was welcome, but unattainable.
At first Alec tolerated my moping. Then he went around his usual business.
By the fourth day he started conversations that I never participated in. Just a lot of, "its too quiet" and "you know another reason why the Cullens could never exist?" Then he started to try and get me up and out in the open. We moved around a lot at night (since I wasn't sleeping anyway). He bought me the Twilight books, since I had to leave my copies behind. He said I needed it seeing as how it was my survival guide now.
Then he started to read them. I found it easier to stare at the TV and pretend to watch it.
"Jaylin," Alec would say periodically. I would look up. He'd force a smile. "Just making sure you're still alive."
As though he couldn't hear every breath I took.
Then one day he turned off the television and stood in front of it. I stared back at him. His bright orange eyes were light, but he still had a scowl on his face. It was how he looked most of the time. I'd gotten used to the idea that he was just perpetually pissed off.
"This is getting old, Jay," he declared. That's Alec. He always knows just what to say, that sensitive lug.
Blinking at him was my only response.
"You sleep about as much as I do, yet you're not really awake. It's like you're not even there. What can I do to pull you out of this?" He sat at the edge of the bed. I concentrated on something else in the room.
He pulled New Moon out of the Twilight pile and tossed it to me. I got the message. My actions sounded familiar. He hadn't pulled it out for my benefit though. He was trying to figure out what he should do.
"When Bella was depressed, what did she do?" he asked himself. I watched him curiously. It was weird that my survival guide for living with a vampire was also his survival guide for living with a human. He looked at me. "There are no werewolves to cheer you up."
He was provoking me. Trying to get me to defend the possible existence of werewolves and the Cullens.
I didn't respond. He sat beside me on the bed. We both faced the blank television.
"Perhaps..." he said. He thought for a moment rubbing his chin like he always does when he thinks. "Would you like to see me in the sun tomorrow?"
That was intriguing. If I had the will to move I would have been right on board. The truth is I've dealt with the separate deaths of both my parents. This death was different for a couple of reasons. It was a quick and brutal murder, I was somewhat involved in the killing, and now I was on the run for the rest of my life.
He thought again.
"Alright then," he finally said turning to face me. He was trying very hard to take care of me. It's not in Alec's nature to be there for someone when they need him. It wasn't until I got to know him better that I knew exactly how far away from his comfort zone he was in doing this. "What would the human like to do?"
I didn't answer. Like any pushy vampire would, his hand wrapped around mine and pulled me up before I had time to process the fact that he was touching me. He usually avoided physical contact at all costs. He wrapped his arm around my waist and held it against him as he carried me, somehow, with one arm about an inch above the floor.
He literally dragged me to a movie. I forget which one, but it was a girly movie. It did not magically give me the ability to speak though. Alec was just as bored with the film as I was. It was a hit with the couples in the audience though. The couple on the other side of me would not stop making out with one another. Even though it was a romantic comedy, the only time I felt like laughing at all was when Alec grumbled with unnecessary loudness, "No sense of decency."
We came out of the movie having achieved nothing. Alec couldn't even pretend that he'd enjoyed himself, which was fine because neither could I. What a waste of sixteen dollars. We went to the car and I let myself inside. When we didn't go spiraling out of the parking space and screaming down the street at an unnecessary speed like we usually did, I readied myself for a round of complaints.
"Jaylin," he said.
I didn't answer.
"Jaylin!" he growled. The suddenness of his voice and tone caught me off guard. I jerked backward and snapped my head around, consequently hitting my head on the side window. (If you couldn't tell already, I hit my head a lot.) "We need to have a talk about death."
He started the car ignoring my pained expression. Alec did everything like he was ripping off a band-aid. He drove aimlessly, away from our hotel. I watched the lights of the unfamiliar city go by and tried not to meet his gaze.
"You know about vampires," Alec started. If I'd been in a better mood I would have had a sarcastic comment already locked and loaded. "We live eternally. As eternal beings you see terrible things happen. Sometimes your...existence contributes to them." I stared at him incredulously.
Was he really admitting that I had something to do with Will's death? With Jasper's?
"But you carry on. Life is about carrying on," Alec said. There was a prolonged silence. It lasted a while as Alec made pointless circles around the buildings. "I'm sorry about what happened. It's not your fault. It's mine."
"No, its not," my words came out before I could stop them. I don't know why I feel the need to reassure Alec of such things. Maybe its just that he lived on humans for so long that I just can't think of what its like to carry so much guilt. I already had one death to worry about, God knows how many he has.
"Whatever the case may be, the point is that you learn to deal with death in my business. It's like..." he started and then his voice trailed off for a moment as he thought of a comparison. "Hospital humor." Hospital humor. I can't believe he said humor at all. I looked at him darkly.
"Have you ever known a hospital employee. When working for a hospital you see death quite often. In response you build defenses to emotionally handle what you see unless you are a sociopath. They have a tendency to have a dark sense of humor as a defense mechanism. They can joke about death and pain. They can accept the inevitability. The annoyance of prolonging life when someone is slipping away," he said.
He paused to let me deliberate.
"Do you understand?" he asked. I looked at him disgusted.
"You want me to laugh about what happened?" I asked.
"No. I want you accept the inevitability and build your defenses before you can get hurt again," he said. Is it weird that this made sense to me? The Game is very dangerous. Alec could get killed. I was probably going to be killed eventually. I debated on this for a while in the dead of night. The time when Alec and I are the most active, most alive, so to speak.
I thought about Will, his fascination with Alec when he first met him. Jasper's utmost respect for him almost immediately. What would they want me to do? What should I do with the rest of my life with their deaths hanging over my head? What do vampires do with all the lives they've taken?
Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Alec. He'd been nice enough to spare my life and give me a chance at coming out of this Game alive. I realized he was right. I did have to carry on, even with my guilt.
He noticed my staring and glared at me.
"Thanks," I told him. I meant it too. He was giving me reason to survive at this point. He gave the briefest of smiles. He cocked his head thoughtfully.
"I had my doubts, you know. This Game. It was a bad idea telling you that you were a part of it. And after what happened... I was sure that nothing good come of this even if I did win. But I might be wrong. Maybe contact is... good," he said.
"Contact?"
"Human contact," he clarified. Then he amended, "Actually, any contact at all. But I haven't been this close to life, this easily, in a very long time." He then took his eyes off the road. My knee-jerk reaction was the same as Bella's but I knew better than to scream at him when he was finally softening up. He took my hand, and like he did once before, placed his thumb over the center of my wrist where my pulse was strongest.
Then he wouldn't let go. I couldn't tell if it was awkward because I was becoming tempting and he hadn't fed in a while or just because he hadn't had much social practice with humans for a while.
"Do vampires get bored?" I blurted. It was time to change the subject. He glanced up.
"Extremely," he said.
"What do you do when you're so bored you think you'll go insane?" I asked. He scoffed.
"You don't want to hear it," he said. Now I was totally intrigued. I glared at him. Usually he was immune to my glares, but he must have been feeling unusually sympathetic given my depression. "I..." he hesitated for a second, readjusting his hands on the wheel. "Well, you remember our talk about hospital humor."
"You mean the one five seconds ago? I'm human, Alec, not demented," I said. I could see the retort he had in his eyes. I'd set myself up for that one, but he spared me.
"I fake my death," he said. I blinked once. He looked for my reaction. We just ended up staring blankly at one another. Finally he gave in and started to go into detail. "I like to make a scene. Cause a little bit of trouble. Then do something where no one would expect to find a body. Usually its a car chase."
I think my mouth fell open. Alec meditated on that for a moment. He was such a stoic, grumpy, jerk I hadn't ever thought he'd be a dare devil. It was hard to comprehend that he even had any urges to have fun at all. But when he's not playing a Game, he lives a real life version of Grand Theft Auto. I stared at him incredulously.
"Are you joking?" I demanded.
"Never told anyone that before," he mused out loud to himself. Then he looked at me. "It's quite exhilarating. I don't know what my fascination with being on the wrong end of a chase is, but I like to foil my pursuers..." He was talking about his life now, not the car chases. His brow furrowed and he pursed his lips in concern as he considered, "Maybe I have some compulsion."
I must have been staring at him like he was insane, because he quickly rerouted the conversation.
"Well, it doesn't matter. We don't need to fake deaths anymore. It'd draw to much attention to ourselves," he said. So would a "fan fiction" that had remarkable accuracy of real events, but oh well. I stared out the window looking out. He sighed to himself.
"Are all of our things in the car?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered blandly. We were always ready for a quick getaway. Silence filled the car.
I thought about how back home my disappearance meant next to nothing. And Will's? Will had a family who never knew him the way I did. His brothers were always teased so much he could never tell them anything. Not even that he was gay. By now I'd certainly been fired for job abandonment.
Depending on how well Alec's clean up job was, it would be...
Well, it would almost be as though I never existed. Of course, that's what made me the perfect pawn. I was a disposable piece of the game. Yet, somehow I was starting to grow attached to the player. Sometimes I thought of us as chess pieces, but that doesn't make sense. Alec was never on the offensive, only trying to protect the king piece.
The offensive...
"I promise to stop moping permanently on one condition," I remarked out of the blue. We were hitting the freeways again and therefore, probably to head to our newest location. Alec was surprisingly adjusting to my demand.
"You name it."
Don't think me harsh. Unless you lost the only person in your life that meant something to you, that cared, or even gave you a second glance, you have no right to judge me for my feelings.
"I want you to kill Nicholas," I told him. And it was true. I wanted him dead. Beyond dead. I wanted him rotting in hell. I wanted to go to hell and oversee the torturing myself I was so furious with the killer. Now I was watching Alec for his reaction. I wanted to see if he was appalled with the fact that a human would want something like this.
He looked exactly like I feared. Judgmental.
Not that he had any right, but I felt compelled to explain myself.
Alec looked back out onto the road thoughtfully. So I put it the only way I knew both of us would really understand, having read the mandatory reading. "I know its not right. Eye for an eye. But I don't care. If someone killed Bella, you can bet that Edward would find some way to avenge her."
"You cared for your friend like Edward does for Bella?" Alec asked confused.
"Not exactly. Its just that he was my only family," I said. Alec was careful not to respond. "The moment the Game's over, the second I'm dead, just take care of him so he doesn't do that to anyone else... Okay?" It was strange to think that I was giving my death wish now when there was no danger present.
"I promise," Alec said. He reached for me, again, uninvited and touched my hand. There was something bonding about the way he touched my hand. He always does it the same way. His thumb over my pulse, as though he's checking to make sure I'm still alive.