Chapter 24 Humpty Dumpty
A/N: Stephenie Meyer's characters pulled from my bag of tricks.
A little shorter than normal - but this is all I could handle writing in this chapter!
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Special thank you to my fabulous mother-in-law for suggesting the song
All I Need by Matt Kearney as Humpty Dumpty's chapter song!
Playlist on the profile.
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EmPOV
She didn't move, wouldn't speak; the makeup-slicked lids of her prominent eyes remained closed out of ambivalent petulance.
Or undiluted pain.
Whatever emotion it was, it felt almost contagious. She'd been left so potently dejected that the hopelessness emanated off her miniature form burrowing deep beneath my skin. Creeping, infiltrating, infecting.
Turning my head in both directions, I searched for the retreating form of Jasper or Bella - or some random brain dead assface - along the manicured path. Someone was at fault here; though I spotted no one, the fact remained.
Edward, I knew, was still behind in the locker rooms, so whatever had caused the emotional annihilation before me couldn't have come from him. Another person I could automatically eliminate from my mental "Who the fuck?" list was Rosalie. She would just never be capable of walking away from her friend in this broken state.
Since finding her just standing here, Alice had only uttered one sentence - offered but two words for me to begin tearing apart in search of the cause. Because even though Ali's worst nightmare had come to life across her stricken brow line and boulder-bearing shoulders I still hadn't been able to grasp the definitive 'what.'
"He's left," she'd half gargled through tears and phlegm, half in-tuned to my brain, as if that portion of her had burned away before a verbal acknowledgement could be formed. Before I'd even arrived. Before anything could be done to preempt such obliteration.
Whatever it was, whoever 'he' was - this news had gone apocalyptic instantly.
"Shorty, please." It had been many moments since she'd spoken and retreated behind the lidded veil, closing herself off to even me. I couldn't find any more stores of patience – she was fucking ruined and I was more than ready to fix it. "Who left?"
My mind catalogued all of the important people, none of whom would leave. She had to be the one to orchestrate sense here because nothing was fitting together as I tried my jock brand of rationalization. Puzzles weren't my forte.
I needed more to go on.
So, I not so patiently held her hand and watched her eyelashes intently for a sign.
Flutter.
"Jasper-" She gasped for air, like something clenched at her windpipe, and curled both arms around her waist. "Jasper's left me."
Her radiating torture crept deeper and infected my calm.
Jasper's left … Jasper …
Jasper has left.
The screeching strings and chortling wind instruments swirling through my ears did not bring reason or sense or plausible answers to my growing list of questions. Fucking senseless orchestra. I know she was speaking the words, but what Alice spouted was illogical.
Jasper loves Alice. Jasper could never leave. And, Rosalie …
No, no, there was no way he had actually left because if he did somehow manage to full out abandon - shit - I'd have to kill that motherfucker for … FUCK … my girls. The bastard is going to decimate them both; Alice's first, Rosalie's millionth.
I couldn't ask Ali, couldn't bring myself to make her voice anything remotely damaging at the moment, so I sent the barrage of needed explanations hurtling towards my own stunned brain.
I felt physically weak as I tore through the crisis Alice's words put in my hands. Yes, there was a possibility Jasper hadn't actually left. Maybe there had been a fight. Maybe he simply walked away. But if it were just a fight, Alice would go after him. And the truth was, Alice was tenacious and she more than understood her own powers of persuasion. If there's a problem, and she had a chance of fixing it, she would. And get her way in the end, too.
This was anything but 'her way.' So, he would in fact have to be gone-gone to leave Shorty caught in this state of limbo.
And Rosie. She was finally healing. Together and through her own strength the fractures that riddled her past were mending. What would this do to her?
Standing under the weight of pelting rain and the bleak visual of tear streaked faces topped by familiar black and blond hair I felt bound. Jasper really fucked everyone.
Dammit, my girls.
And then, with an almost audible 'click' I made it past the wall and began connecting some dots.
Girls ... Rosalie … Alice …
Bella.
Holy fucking shit. I may have two girls, but Jasper-fuck had three.
Something must have gone wrong with Bella. That would be the only thing to make him bolt without explanation, without notice.
My thoughts immediately went to Edward and what foul shit he'd done now, but that didn't exactly fit as black and white in my assumptions as it would have a few months ago. He wasn't the same old fucker anymore, but that didn't mean he hadn't screwed Miss B royally. It also didn't change the fact that Jasper was now apparently gone.
"Where did he go?" I asked, reaching out towards her elbow. She stepped away from my touch, blearily meeting my question with a refusal of comfort and the full force of her gaze.
"I need to find Edward."
"W-wait, Ali-" I stuttered, unable to imagine her pain and equally confused by her disregard for it. But as the direction of her thoughts sunk in, the idea of Edward finding out Jasper was MIA obscurely - and all of the connotations that held - made my blood run cold.
With her stance obviously geared towards searching the campus I decided to offer what help I could, at a distance she seemed to need. "Okay, I'll check the suite. Call if you find him."
With a curt nod she departed down the empty walkway, much too slowly to be any form of the Alice I knew and loved.
Before ten feet separated us the reason for splitting up dissipated.
What we sought was striding towards us.
Oblivious.
"Alice, what the fuck is wrong?" His literal words were angry, but the timbre resonated with panicked concern as Edward fully absorbed the mess before him. It seemed he already gathered someone had done this, that she could never find this wasteland unaided.
The reaction I'd expected to receive was quickly thrust upon Edward as Ali's small frame crashed into his body, rocking him back onto his heels. Her sobs were dry as she gasped her way through not only her own desperation but, most likely, what her reality meant for Edward's.
If Jasper left, Bella left too, I rationalized as two more dots formed a line.
"Edward," her voice shook out through the muffling her mouth against his downy, black sweatshirt caused. "Jasper …. Jasper … they've left – They've left us behind."
She continued to tremble, hair to toes, as her fingers dug into Edward's back, and for the first time the true surprise of her complete unhinging registered with me. Alice was more than losing her shit – if she kept on I knew she'd full out lose every ounce of food and acid her stomach contained before threatening lung upheaval.
Over the huddled form clenching his midsection, Edward's eyes met mine as he slowly began to nod his head.
"Ed, man, we were just coming to look for you." He only continued to nod, eyes unfocused and sliding him far away.
"Hey, we could go back to the girls' suite, I really need to check on Rose – they are all probably there, hashing out whatever the fuck's going on anyway-"
"No." Was his reply, in what I can only imagine his voice would sound like seventy years from now. "Which way did Jasper go, Alice?"
"That way." Her head remained fused to Edward's chest, but she managed to make the words discernible in combination with a waving motion.
"He's looking for her," my unbelievably calm brother mumbled mostly to himself. "I need to find her before he does."
He planned to stop them. But it wasn't realistic with Jasper's head start.
"It's been like twenty minutes, man."
His only response was to pull Alice into his arms and rush away in the opposite direction she'd signaled Jasper had gone.
I considered following – it would no doubt be easy to keep up with Alice's weight slowing him down – but I knew I needed to go find Rose.
As my feet shuffled me towards her, fear of what would be left to find after I explained, or found her already reeling from her twin brother's most affecting desertion crept over me.
I could have been right, the three of them might be there duking it out unaware of the hell they'd have to pay that stretched beyond their precious biological family.
But I doubted it.
Jasper knew we'd all be arriving soon - congealing as lone teammates, plotting the reprieve. My interference would be for the sake of Rose, Edward's appeal would fall only on Bella's ears – no doubt successfully swaying her – and Alice would pluck at his heart strings.
Plain and simple, Jasper was a bastard. He just also happened to be a bastard who loved my Ali-girl. The same fucking asshole I plummeted to my death with her for; only better now because he had his counterpart. If he couldn't get away before encountering Alice again, he would never be strong enough to go. And in his mind Bella had to be put first , no matter how things had changed. At least, that was the wisdom Rosie had instilled in me.
And fuck, it wasn't our fault that ever since Bella arrived they'd both impacted our Fremont corner of the world, leaving it irrevocably altered. And now they were just gone?
Fucking Jasper.
He had to know there was no going back.
He had to anticipate the now unavoidable destruction.
He would have to stop running eventually. And when he did, would he finally realize we were all no longer who we once fucking were?
It had taken me less time than I'd predicted to cross Rosalie's doorway, but there she sat legs tucked up and serene.
"How are you?" I asked, leaning uncertainly against the door jam attempting to keep the anger that had peaked during my campus trek out of my voice.
"He asked me to come with." The smile was slight and certainly marred by the ache crinkling her eyes, but it was there never the less.
So, she knew they were gone.
"She kissed me goodbye." The complete change of my girl still surprised me; the genuine love she had for her nemesis cousin taking the cake – even over the mounting Jasper reconciliation.
"I don't want to be without him, Em, I don't." The love that charged between all of us broke me farther, as flashes of what the rest of the year without him would do to her, to Alice; how losing Bella would again alter my brother.
My strong Rosie's voice broke me from my forethought. "Have you seen Edward? Alice?"
I nodded, unthinkingly mimicking how lost Edward's own motion had seemed not long ago.
"I just came from them. They went searching."
I cringed internally at the people surrounding me that would all need support, that I would be there for. The amount we'd all been changed in such a short time when we hadn't even asked for it, when we'd hardly had our eyes open enough to recognize the possibilities, gave me hope.
In many ways these new loves had fallen into our lives.
And it was true – sometimes man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
As she quietly imagined the search spanning all of Fremont that our remaining family was indulging in, something settled within her. Body relaxing further and eyes shining with fresh tears, she bravely voiced her truth.
"There's nothing to find."
My hope would need to carry us both now because there was still road to travel, even if it currently stretched out into a steep hill.
"Maybe not a Bella or a Jasper, baby, but there is always something left to find."
I sunk into the settee and pulled Rosie into my arms, showing her wordlessly that I'd never leave, that the road that remained before us would always be traveled together. Because until the pavement, rocks or dirt ended, halting at a canyon that only leaves backpedaling or the doom of crashing headfirst into the white rapids below as our options, there would always be life to find.
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Baby, you're so unusual.
Didn't anyone tell you
You're supposed to
Break my heart-
I cut off the intrusion as quickly and as stealthily as possible, careful not to wake the blond beauty nuzzled into my side.
If Alice's ring tone was only slightly annoying before, it was full on fucking abhorrent to me now.
"Yeah?" I answered in a stage whisper, creating a convex pocket around the mouthpiece with my free hand.
"Fuck." The simple word response was quiet and distorted, and it was alone.
"Hello?" I managed a little bit louder, thinking possibly we were both speaking too quietly for either of us to fucking get on with it.
Silence.
"Emmett- fuck! Are you there?" The voice sounded so far away.
Crackle.
"… Edward?" I was pretty sure it was him. Looking down at the display I verified it was in fact Ali's phone calling, so it made sense he'd be on the other line – somewhat.
"EMMETT, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
And I could hear him, but just barely as the noise around him finally broke through the earpiece and shrill sirens screaming in his background drowned out most of his words.
Wait, sirens? I concentrated on the piercing pitch.
Yes, those were sirens and close ones at that. Very close.
I continued to try and talk back but the noise was too loud for him to differentiate my words.
He sounded surrounded.
Almost like the panicked alert was traveling with him.
Almost as if he were traveling with it.
Within it.
I knocked Rose away as pieces of my mind severed from the blunt realization.
Edward was calling from Alice's phone.
So, where the fuck was Alice?
Why the hell couldn't she use her phone to call?
Rosalie jerked up looking flippantly in my direction, eyes still adjusting to the darkness of her bedroom.
"Emmett, dammit, what's wrong?" Everything outside my brain seemed to be traveling in slow motion as my mind continued to split off in every possible direction – fueled by undiluted panic.
"Rosie, I think something happened …" I sound drunk.
"Give me the phone-" It won't help.
"No, you can't hear anything but sirens." She grabbed the phone away in earnest.
Peering down at the blaring black box of poison, she registering who had called. "It's Alice. Alice! Alic-" No, baby, it's not Alice.
I stood pulling on my pants and deliriously reached around the floor for the rest of our discarded clothing, interrupting her as I went.
"Edward's the one who called, baby. Here, put these on."
"Why is Edward calling … from somewhere with nothing but sirens in the background… on Alice's phone …" Her disjointed words finally fused together. "Oh my fucking - ALICE! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god …"
And without disconnecting our one link to information, we both crashed out the door half dressed, half insane and more than half sure there was an ambulance racing our family through the wet streets of Seattle away from, or because of, a tragedy.
It seemed the nightmare of our day had barely begun.
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APOV
I felt like lead.
Not that he wasn't strong enough, no Edward moved us both along like I was merely a weighted bag strapped to his chest. Though much more precious.
I knew he'd protect me from myself. As best he could.
But in the mean time, he needed to find her.
And I more than understood.
I longed to find him.
That we wouldn't didn't matter. The reality couldn't keep us from looking. Everywhere.
So, when the air turned musky and tepid I registered that our searching had led us indoors – though which building we'd entered I was unaware. I didn't trust myself to look, either.
I was relying on Edward's shoulder to keep my eyes pressed shut; otherwise I'd become fruitlessly hopeful just as he had. My heart could need to find Jasper and I might even support my mind foolishly tricking me into contorting the odds, but I refused to condemn my sight. Not seeing him before me, wanting, begging me to forgive and understand and hold him would be it.
The end.
The sound of Jasper's whispered plea for my love left unanswered twisted into the echo of the hardwood floor under Edward's feet, both softening as doors squeaked opened straining on their hinges. The surrounding energy became vast and cavernous.
Before I knew how to stop him, Edward's arms lowered me into a firm, upholstered seat. I felt him walk away and his steps clattered over hardwood again.
Appalled by the thought that he was going back as we came, my head whipped around, hands clenching down on thin arm rests.
Motion and sight and recognition swirled together, revealing a determined Edward still as night on the CAT performance stage, lock jawed and staring at a piano. He was transfixed so completely, as if Bella herself was sitting on the empty, black bench.
I thought maybe he'd explain our destination, his fixation and then I realized just how long it had been since we'd hung out. Jasper would explain. Edward wasn't one to do any such thing.
I'd known these Edward 'laws' to a fault, until my brain bled Jasper's qualities into everyone else's. How quickly we cross our love wires, no matter the sort of love they carry.
The thoughts of lovers and friends, near brothers and the qualifications for family led me to the mental box designated for strange and ardent love that had been opened earlier in the day, before hell found earth.
"It was Heidi. All along, your 'first love girl' I made the save for, it was her? How could you not say anything? I can't believe you let me go on about her thoughts and opinions on relationships in the immediate wake- … I am so sorry, Edward."
My head was in my hands, finding more relief from the sightless burrow than properly reveling in my past stupidity and insensitive actions.
But he had loved her. If anything, it was the strength of Heidi's rejection that first taught Edward how to change for a woman. It had been a destructive change, but then again, it obviously had been a destructive love. Heidi was gay. And Edward, the youth fool enough to want her for himself anyway.
"How could you know? I didn't tell you. There is nothing to forgive."
Forgiveness felt like such an easy task at the moment if only I could have the chance. If only he'd return. But the sex would keep Jasper running; Bella's growth would continue to perplex him. I doubted he'd stop moving until they had turned back enough time to regain the control they'd known over their former, lesser selves.
"You had sex with Bella." It was a statement; his eyes had spoken this truth already.
"You had sex with Jasper, that's a much larger fucking deal when you compare the two of us." He was trying to down play. Maybe he can't bear for it to be the reason.
"And when you compare Jasper and Bella, which seems more the monumental giver to you?" Touché friend.
"Okay, yes Alice, Bella and I were finally together." The trance over stages, pianos and a semi-empty bench had been broken. He couldn't have turned his back faster on the whole scene - tantamount to life or death just moments previous - if he'd tried, and now he strode back to my front row perch.
"And?" I craned the dead weight of my head up, seeking out his eyes, praying I'd find the all too familiar need bubbling up inside him as it was me.
"Being with her has changed me." And I knew he didn't mean taking her virginity. He just meant her presence, the knowing, the together, now even the apart– simply her.
Where first love had brought an arsenic destruction, a polar true love had been his overdue restoration.
But him loving what took my own literal heart far away was beginning to crawl under my skin. And as Jasper took over the forefront of my thoughts again the crawl turned into deep lacerations.
I would never rid myself of this pain. The thin, open sores striped up my insides and cut me to the core.
Every additional question or memory – silent 'I love you's', my skin touching his, ridiculous rumors and ancient drawings – I felt more of myself slipping.
Injured, confused, lost, heavy – I needed to feel fresh. A cleansing action.
"You know what I need."
Edward's green eyes were black in the shadowy room, nothing discernible moving behind them. "You don't want to check at the suite?"
"I don't want to see anyone else." My legs felt stronger with the promise of what we were moving towards serving as an instant shot of adrenalin. And just in case they hadn't left I needed to know. "I have an idea."
I led us away, from what I still wasn't sure but this place held meaning, memories. It probably saw more truth in the beginnings of Edward and Bella than anyone else. More than the doubting best friend and the cynical cousin. Certainly more than a campus full of decrepit students bound to live a half-life so void of anything real that recognizing it would have been impossible.
And was that our future now as well? If Jasper was anything it was calculated, dedicated. I knew he was using this to try and make up for his past mistakes, and so Bella and Jasper wouldn't return. Without him was there any hope?
I hadn't realized how long we spent in the theater but the waning daylight indicated the lies we were attempting to believe. We can find them before they go. We'll look. We'll scour. We'll convince. So many lies.
There was no convertible to find in the outdoor parking lot or the garage. Gone.
Wearing B's helmet, I held onto Edward for dear life as we raced to the bridge, praying I'd find a way to claim what was left of mine in full. I began forcing myself to repeat that losing everything wouldn't seem so desperate once I figured out what else there was to encounter.
I forgot to breath as we rode and gasped into my helmet as belated tears fell for the 'could have beens.' Moving on was impossible, but living on seemed nonnegotiable.
And what would come next was the only way I knew how to make it to tomorrow.
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EPOV
The water below was rough. The storm raging just under my own surface was worse.
"I don't need this ritual for myself anymore."
Had I meant it, I wondered, questioning the last time I'd stood in this exact spot; the only visit I'd ever made with someone other than Alice. And as the words I'd spoken, promised, fucking vowed - to the girl who didn't stop owning me no matter how many miles she put between us - repeated I knew the answer doubtlessly.
"I just know I can't start over from you."
But what would I do now? What was my purpose in this new life I'd forged if she wasn't there to prove my worth to, if even the catalyst for so much change hadn't found it to be enough.
So, here I stood with my one constant girl. My platonic pal, the sister I'd always have. And she needed this.
"I never want to wash myself clean from the time we spend together. No matter what."
No. Matter. What.
My ears throbbed as my straining voice ricocheted there. Because now everything was ephemeral; Bella, my once resilient defenses, the worst day of my life – all short lived. All over before they really began, but capable of influencing every moment from here on out.
"I cannot imagine not holding on to every second I've been enraptured by you, forever."
Without Bella I'd still have to move, make, do. But without the memory of her? I couldn't continue as myself without that.
And the water below ensured she would be gone. That may not have been Alice's intention, but it was my own reality.
"I will always be here for you."
Even in the darkness she was all I could see. The vision of her ever-before me brought my voice back, strong and guilty, broken and blessed. I got her for so little damn time – I would never give that time back.
"I can't – I can't, Ali. She is everything. And yes, I do mean 'is.' I cannot go back now. I promised I never would." We couldn't begin regretting the amazing things – people – that made us who we'd become. No matter the pain. Then we'd just end up running too.
"Your promises walked away when she did."
I knew Alice needed me, found strength in the equal save, but her words only reminded me how much we still had yet to learn about Bella, and Jasper by extension.
"I can't start new from her." I was nodding again, because I'd known she was broken and pushed my way inside. And she'd accepted me, fully within her, in so many ways. I was so fucking lucky. I was also a dumbass for not being more careful.
My mistakes would stop now.
"And I can? What the fuck is 'new' anyway, oh great King? We need this jump. I need this jump." Ali's eyes were swelling shut.
"I'm not that person, that foolish man any more; you know that." I couldn't meet the slits still visible beneath the puffy evidence of her inner need to embrace this last resort. She had no more tears to give. "I'm sorry, Ali. I just can't."
"Well, I have no other choice," she croaked, voicing what I already knew.
Her jump came swiftly, without the count – the count we'd added four and five to simply because neither of us had been ready by three. Ironically, she didn't even require the mention of 'one,' her need to walk out of water unburdened too irrefutable.
Though I'd never remained on the bridge before, her splash came faster than I anticipated so I hurriedly leaned out over the ledge to watch her break the surface.
But she didn't spring up quickly at all. The tossing water seemed thick as tar limiting my vision and barely allowing me to make out her floating body, slowly rising to the surface.
I attempted to suck a breath in, but was met with the resistance of my heaving chest.
I had no air or thought and patches of blindness swam in front of my eyes as Ali stayed face down, only shifting with the rhythm of the tumultuous water.
A rock. Or the water's floor. Alice's fall had been obstructed.
Inside I was screaming for help, any fucking aid or direction as I didn't know whether to jump in and possibly strike whatever she had and have no chance of pulling her out, but I couldn't think any more because she had no air and her neck and I had to get to her so I threw myself over the edge, angled just far enough away that we wouldn't collide on impact.
Freezing water locked my muscles up tight, but I towed her weight as carefully as possible to the flooded bank because I didn't know how to tell if her back had been injured. The water levels were so high and I couldn't command my mind to start compressions but my hands moved instinctively and mouth cupped my little, tiny best friend's purple lips. I heard a voice calling out from somewhere and between the two and fifteen action managed to yell for them to call 9-1-1.
And I didn't stop.
I would never stop.
All she'd wanted was for me to save her, and I wouldn't fucking let her down ever again.
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A/N: Will you trust me?
The EPOV Lavender's Blue outtake can be found after Chapter 22 Roses Are Red's A/N.
Appreciation and love go to my girls stolenxsanity and ViOlentSerenity – T, E ~ Your support – and prodding - is what gets these updates written!
So much love, RAE