PYRAMIDS

"I am not well; I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason."

—Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

—

DECEMBER 6TH 2039

4:49AM MST

NEDERLAND, COLORADO

When Jasper was younger—barely in his third decade of immortality, barely knowing the world around him outside of blood and violence—he'd made the mistake of looking too long at Maria.

She'd always hated being watched and he'd been well aware of that. Usually, he kept his eyes averted and his hands busy. Usually, the latter would help him achieve the former. On this particular night he'd stood for a handful of seconds and watched her as she leaned forward and checked the wrists, hands, and pockets of the headless bodies laid before them.

Every purge left them with more bodies than the last. Every year Maria stuck with her routines and swooped like a crow, eager to pluck and scavenge what little items could be salvaged. She did this while they were changing, too. While the newborns screamed and sobbed and groaned with the agonies of their transformation, they were all subjected to the same thorough search.

Sometimes they had to cut a transformation short. Maria would find a malformation or some unfavorable piece of their new recruit and deem them trash, unfit for her army, and wave their existence away. "A waste of a good meal," she always said. Then, before the venom could complete its course, they'd be disposed of.

Twice Maria had discovered, upon her studies of these bodies, that the humans selected were pregnant. It had always been Jasper's job to drag these women away from the rest—they always thrashed and screamed and cried harder than the others, as if they knew what was happening, as if they knew they were futilely fighting for more than their lives—and tear their bodies to pieces.

The blood that sprayed from bodies undergoing change had always carried a sharp tang in its scent. It was thickened with venom, darker than usual, and did not taste good. (He'd tried it only once.) Their meatier parts had been tougher to tear than a usual human's, and depending on how long Maria had let the venom spread before deeming them unsuited for their life, and Jasper had never been able to replicate the noise outside of those deaths.

In this particular memory, he'd stopped tearing into the body in his arms—a leg gripped tight in his hand was attached to a lifeless, bare torso—and he'd watched Maria.

He'd studied the way her hands moved softly over the bodies. She retrieved the more favorable items during her initial searches, but sometimes, although they'd been forbidden, newborns plucked their own items to keep from their victims. Jasper watched as Maria carefully pulled rings from the fingers of one newborn before pocketing them, and then on the next body she unclipped a silver bangle and closed the tiny clasp around her own, opposite wrist.

The delicacy with which she handled the bodies she looted always made Jasper stop and think. On a typical night Jasper would dream up scenarios while moving, letting his thoughts tumble through his mind as he clung to desperate hopes and foolish reveries. On a typical night, if Jasper were lucky, Maria would invite him back into her bed where they'd spend hours wrapped up in each other.

Her hands had never been gentle on his body, even then. At the beginning he'd craved the same fine touch she reserved for the bodies she scrutinized, desiring it so badly that this had been the first true agony he'd uncovered in his second-life. It hadn't been the burn of venom, or the pain of thirst, or the terror of his victims. No, the rejection of his body—strong and capable and useful, everything she'd wanted him to become—as something that wasn't worth kindness was Jasper's first torment.

Maria had looked up at him, where he was standing several meters away, quietly observing her, and she had immediately halted her inspections. Then, she'd screamed at him, demanded that he toss everything, burn every piece, and when he'd resumed his duties she'd threatened to toss him in next if he let himself get any more distracted.

She'd still fucked him that night, of course. Jasper had been desperate for it by the time she'd called him to her side, pushing his pain down deep where it could go unfelt so that he could be allowed to touch her with the reverence that he wasn't afforded.

It would take decades more for the grief that Jasper had buried inside his body to grow roots, sprout limbs, and bloom deep inside the void that his chest had become over the years. His pain had planted itself a home in the spot that used to be alive with feeling. Maria stopped letting him touch her after the first time she'd felt it—his misery seeping out through his skin and into hers—and he'd been banished from her bed not long after that.

He'd thought that with Lucy and Nettie gone things would be different. Maria had told them they would be different. She had not lied to them, but Jasper's foolish ideas had taken on a mind of their own. His imagination had gotten away from him.

Now, as he watched Maria interact with Alice, a sick sense of deja vu overcame him. Maria remained close to Alice's side. Her hungry eyes watched every movement and devoured, as though ravenous, each word spoken from Alice's lips. He watched Maria reply in a low, careful voice to Alice and hated the reverence in her tone.

Aro had coveted Alice first, but now Maria watched her closely, and Jasper feared that there existed no world in which Alice wouldn't become another hidden bangle to be plucked and stolen from corpse to corpse.

The sheets of paper lay abandoned in the center of the library. Now, Alice's words filled the space around them all as she desperately recounted visions as she received them.

"It's hard to untangle them," she confessed as her eyes stared, unseeing ahead of her, her mind seeing something altogether different. "Kate is the easiest to see so I'm trying to stay with her but there's—" she paused, wincing, "it's—"

"They're jumping around a lot," Edward spoke up from where he was crouched in front of Alice. "Neither of us can see it but it's clear that's what's happening here." Maria refused to move from Alice's side, fascinated with what was occurring, and Jasper had almost been forced to strip all of Edward's anger away in the two seconds that Maria and Edward had locked eyes. Jasper might not possess Alice's gift, but he knew these two people very, very well, and knew that if they didn't start ignoring each other it would certainly lead to a fight. A physical one, if Maria had it her way. Jasper knew she was still pissed that he'd pinned her.

Edward was brimming with barely-contained fury. The instant they'd realized that Tanya and the rest of her coven were in danger Edward had been forced to reveal his own gift, too. Alice couldn't verbalize what was happening nor could she keep up a constant narration of events, which forced Edward to translate as much as Alice missed; as much as he could as Alice shuffled between as many visions as she could. She was desperate not to miss anything more.

Alice's fear and guilt were strong in the worried blur of the room's climate. A spark of fascination was also bright. Maria watched, from Alice's side on the couch, enraptured with the sight of Alice and Edward seeing things that the rest of them could not begin to comprehend.

Edward was now another bangle before her.

Jasper clenched his jaw tighter and his hands twitched at his sides. He wanted to help, but he knew that right now they had to wait and pay attention. From where he stood, settled between the kitchen and the den, he was turned toward Alice, but even as she recited what she could see—"Carmen is up and moving. Oh, thank god. She's out of the house, she's still going."—he found his attention split.

"She's not answering," Esme's voice was sharp with fright even with her words spoken softly. Jasper turned his head in time to watch as Carlisle placed a hand on her shoulder, his other hand gripped his own phone that was pressed to his ear. "I think it's too late."

"Try them all again, and I will, too." Jasper could feel Carlisle's doubt even as he instructed Esme. "With any luck, we aren't too late." Then, he sighed and pulled his phone back from his face. "I need to try and get in touch with Aro."

"Absolutely not," the words erupted from Jasper before he could modulate his tone. Jasper turned himself fully toward the kitchen then and took a few steps forward, eyes bright with anger, "You'll only confirm to him that whatever plan this is is working."

"Jasper, we have to do what we can. If this isn't them—" Jasper didn't know when he'd rested his hands against the back of one of the chairs in the kitchen, but the sound of wood splintering forced his attention to the handfuls of crushed wood he now held. Carlisle didn't comment despite Esme's sharp gasp. "If this is not them, it can only help us. If, god forbid, it is, then I can still talk to him. There's still time."

There isn't time, Jasper wanted to shout. Alice was planted across the room, reciting with an empty tone the way their closest allies were running blindly and fighting for their lives. The sand had drained from the hourglass at some point and they barely knew how much time had passed since.

"He is playing with the holes in Alice's visions," he snapped as he released the demolished chair, his temper momentarily unleashed, "Aro is obviously behind this." He threw an arm wide and gestured to where Edward was still kneeling before Alice, Maria at her side. "No amount of talking to him is going to save any of us now."

"Jasper, please," and not even Esme's aghast expression at his outburst affected him now, "We need to try everything we can." The wobble of her voice would have had him wracked with guilt at any other point. Today, it only served to frustrate him further.

He glanced back toward the den when he felt Edward's own temper rise, as if he were calling out to Jasper with a warning. Jasper strode back into the den and pointedly ignored the glare Edward had stuck on him. Instead he sat himself at Alice's other side.

It was even more difficult to ignore Maria's curiosity, too. Jasper knew that she'd never watched him yell at his family before. He knew that she was entertained by the sight. He could feel just as much from her.

Jasper lifted his hand to rest it against the back of Alice's neck when Maria lifted her arm and, quicker than he could move, draped it across Alice's shoulders, leaning forward to speak.

"You see his men, yes?" Maria's voice cut through Edward's recital of Alice's most recent discovery (—she was certain Eleazar was hurt and there were so many newborns but she couldn't see clearly enough to see how or where he was injured—) to ask Alice. Then, her words were a command."Describe them."

"I—" Alice flinched slightly. "Hold on." The flinch was not caused by Maria's sudden interest in what she was seeing, nor by the strange show of familiarity that half of an embrace displayed, but because of the way she was forced to stop and reshuffle and refocus. Her emotions buzzed, froze, buzzed, and then Alice flinched again.

The familiar spasm of pain struck him—the shock-panic-fear was the unmistakable companion of a physical ache—and Jasper did not hesitate when he pushed the soothing calm forward, engulfing half of the room into almost-numbness. He hated that Alice was experiencing this. It always happened whenever she tried to be in two places at once. She could still function with visions flowing through her mind, but when she tried this—reciting what she saw while fully engulfed in the future somewhere—it always caused her pain. She'd once described it to him as a terrible pressure behind the eyes that needled forward the harder she pushed, and made it hard to see anything if she pushed too hard.

"They're mostly men," Alice spoke quietly and then winced again. Before she could speak any further, a louder voice interrupted.

"Major, if you don't stop fucking with my emotions," Maria snapped, pulling Jasper out of his focus, "I'm going to make you stop." Her red eyes were furious at the intrusion of his gift—it had been so, so many years since he'd last used it on her and that night had ended in a fight. Since then, Jasper had sworn to never use it on her again and he'd actually stuck to his word—and the familiar glare felt like a bucket of cold water dumped across the top of his head. It felt like a hand pressed firm against a fresh bite mark.

The calm of the room dissolved quickly and Jasper was moving before he could think twice. He ducked his head, stood up, and silently exited the room.

The embarrassment he felt was as much of a shock to his system as her words and glare had been. It wasn't embarrassment at the way he quickly relented but at the way he'd forgotten something that had once been so vital to his survival. He was not allowed to use his gift on Maria of Monterrey. That had once been a common thought in his head. To remember it was important. To forget such a thing was humiliating.

The unmistakable noise of an argument had erupted the instant he'd taken a step away from the couch—the aura of the house was now a swirl of irritability mixed with fury. Worry and fear took a backseat while Edward and Maria yelled at one another.

The creaking sound of wood being pushed aside forced Jasper's attention down the hallway where he'd paused. Bella was hanging a set of keys up by the door—the still-broken, pitiful-looking front door—and looked up at him. Her expression was one of eerie calm as she walked into the house. The sound of Maria hurling insults at Edward didn't appear to faze her in the slightest.

There was something off about her aura, and it forced Jasper's paused feet to take root. He'd been intending to walk to the garage, where Emmett and Peter were watching the newborns, but now, something felt wrong.

The sensation of Edward's sudden explosion of fear made Jasper's head whip back toward the den. Jasper blinked himself back into awareness with the feeling, quickly shook off the numbing sense of obedient embarrassment, and stared at Edward. The instant Bella stopped beside Jasper, now visible to the rest of the inhabitants of the two rooms, Edward spoke. His words were shaky, wrought with despair.

"Where is she?"

Bella did not react to the question. She passed by Jasper, walked toward the kitchen table, and took her time as she sat herself in the chair directly beside the one Jasper had destroyed, her back to the den.

Edward was in the kitchen before she'd placed her full weight in the chair. "Bella," his voice shook as fiercely as his hands that reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders, turning her toward him in one swift motion. The screech of the chair against the stone floor almost made Jasper wince. "Bella, tell me you didn't."

It was that moment that the house was fully and completely silent for a small handful of seconds. No bickering, no reciting of visions, no busy signals echoing out of cell phone speakers.

No fluttering, half-human heartbeat upstairs.

The realization struck him the same instant it appeared to settle within everyone else.

Renesmee was gone.

Jasper had barely noticed Bella's absence. The last he'd seen of Renesmee, Edward had carted her back up into her room after Maria studied her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Sometime in the last half hour Bella had whisked Ness off somewhere. Her location was now only known to Bella and hidden from everyone else; the knowledge protected under the cover of her shield.

Jasper turned back toward the key ring hanging on the door and noted the absence of a key fob on it. Wherever Ness was, she had one of Rosalie's newer BMWs. There was a split second where Jasper wondered if Rosalie perhaps had been a co-conspirator, but when Rosalie stumbled into the room, her feet heavily marching down the stairs as she moved, Jasper felt her shock and concern.

"Bella," Edward sounded torn between yelling and crying, and Jasper finally looked away. He refused to watch Edward break down like this. Unfortunately, his eyes fell back to where Maria still sat, arm around Alice's shoulder. She was not smiling, but her excitement electrified the room around her. Her eyes were thrilled. "Where is she?" Edward asked again.

Bella finally spoke. "Somewhere safe."

"No, no, Bella, it's not safe now. No, you—we have to stick together." Edward was rambling in a way Jasper hadn't heard him speak in many, many years. He was desperate. "We can't send her out into the world when we know there are people after us! It's safer if she stays here. Bella, please, don't do this!"

Bella spoke again, and her words finally shook. "In forty-eight hours she will call one of our phones from the phone she was given. By then she will have met up with Jacob, and they'll be long gone. She'll let us know whether she's safe, and destroy the phone. The call is the signal that she made it to where she's supposed to go." Her voice cracked and she sniffled. "Jake will take care of her, Edward." Even despite the despondency she fought back with every word, Bella was resolute.

"No," Edward whispered, fresh fear and pain pulsing through the atmosphere. "They could still find her in the meantime; she's still alone right now. Please tell me you can at least—that you can track her until then? Please, Bella!"

The misery that engulfed the house as Edward pleaded with Bella was almost strong enough to make Jasper also question Bella's motives. He didn't though. Jasper had never been more shocked, more impressed with Bella than he was in this moment. It was a dangerous risk, but if a phone rang within forty-eight hours, it meant success.

Jasper tried to ignore the itching thought that reminded him that they first had to survive the next forty-eight hours to even know if Ness was alright or not.

If Bella pulled this off, it would absolutely land Renesmee somewhere far, far safer than where they currently existed. It was the last protection she could provide for her daughter.

The shock of Ness's sudden departure—the darling girl who had somehow cemented their family together stronger than they'd ever been before, all in their attempts and goal to keep her safe—was quickly trumped by his relief at her absence and his pride in Bella's precarious plan.

Jasper turned to move back toward the garage—he couldn't bear to stand there as Edward's temper won out and his fright was stomped back down (it was so much easier to be angry than sad, and hurt could force someone toward both) only to be replaced with angry words and furious demands—when he heard Alice's voice, so soft amongst the chaos that had erupted in the past dozen seconds.

Her words were clear. "Eleazar is dead."

Carlisle was at Alice's side by the time Jasper turned around again. One of Carlisle's hands was on her shoulder, the other on her knee. He paid no mind to the dirty look Maria shot him as he encroached on their space. "What happened?" he asked at the same time that Rosalie demanded, "Are you sure? Or did he just disappear?"

"I'm sure," Alice's voice was light and airy. There was no emotion attached to the reply, and that worried Jasper. "I saw it happen. Kate was right there. He's dead."

The flurry of fast words and worried conversation became a distant buzzing in his head as he finally turned back toward the garage. He would not linger for a second longer. He couldn't.

Jasper's first idea had been to call up their friends in Denali for help. It was what he proposed they do hours ago, right after Maria had been retrieved and just before she'd begun to scream at him, unleashing her fury upon him. Carlisle and Edward had insisted on waiting first, not wanting to involve anyone else just yet.

The mention of Esteban's name had cracked memories wide open in Jasper's mind, and his constant waking thoughts had been burdened by them ever since. Father Esteban was coming for him, and he would not show Jasper nor any member of his family any mercy.

Jasper felt sick even thinking about Alice laying her eyes upon the man's hideous, gnarled face. Even worse was the idea that Esteban would ever, in any reality, rest his beady eyes on her.

Jasper paused for a fraction of a second before he opened the door that led to the garage. He focused on Edward's cloud of explosive, righteous anger and internalized the emotions, bringing the fury inside of himself until his chest was full of heat and bursting with barely-contained violence.

He opened his eyes, opened the door, and walked down the few steps that brought him into the long garage and toward its occupants.

Emmett was sitting closest to the doorway, planted on a workbench that had been cleared off, and was already staring toward Jasper as he approached. Peter was further down, closer to the nine men that had perched themselves in various locations throughout the garage. Jasper could sense the tension of the room; the orders to stay silent had been grating on them and the hint of annoyance was an interesting thing. These men were clearly not as well trained as any of his old soldiers had been.

Peter was the first to recognize the look in Jasper's eyes. He shook his head and approached. "I can't do it," he was apologetic as he wandered toward where Emmett was sitting. His grief grew stronger with proximity and Jasper felt guilty that he still didn't know what to do or say to Peter. With Charlotte dead, there was so much left that needed to be said.

Jasper still didn't know where to start.

"I know," Jasper yearned to reach out and grasp Peter's shoulder, or embrace him the way he knew Emmett would, or to offer him anything. Instead, Jasper nodded toward Peter and did not move. The fresh anger was still trapped within his chest. "I won't ask you to."

Peter did not nod, thank him, or excuse himself. He simply kept walking. Jasper wasn't sure where he planned to go—maybe to go make sure Maria wasn't doing anything strange or questionable in Jasper's absence—but he watched as Peter climbed the stairs and disappeared back into the house. Jasper did not speak again until the door closed and the sound of the latch returning to its spot echoed through the room.

Jasper would not ask Peter for his help. He barely wanted to ask Emmett for his help. Unfortunately, he had to.

"Whatever you need," Emmett jumped up onto his feet before Jasper got the chance to ask. "I've got you." Emmett clapped a hand against Jasper's back. Then, he lifted it and squeezed Jasper's shoulder firmly before letting it go.

Jasper's simmering rage brought frustration to the foreground of his thoughts; why the fuck couldn't Jasper do that with Peter? Why could he not offer casual affections and quick, soothing words. Jasper felt his guilt increase and smothered it with more anger.

Jasper nodded at Emmett and moved toward the newborns, feeling confident with Emmett's easy stride behind him. Training newborns had always been easier as a two-person job.

Whether or not Maria emerged in the next few seconds to scream at him was yet to be seen. Hopefully, Jasper would put himself to use and Maria would keep far away from him.

Jasper uncapped the anger and reached down into the locked up, abandoned hull in his chest. He'd cracked the door open back in 2006; back when Victoria created a mockery of an army to try to do away with them when Bella had still been human.

He heaved it open now, not thinking about how he would close it again or what he was unleashing. He did not think forward to the repercussions of doing this or the impact it would have. The choice he was making was one that would help.

Jasper let a deadened, heavy feeling creep through his arms and legs and fill his brain with a calm clarity that pushed his guilt and fear and unease beneath the surface of the violence taking hold of the sea of his mind.

He thought about Charlotte and about Eleazar. He thought about Maria and about Peter. He thought about Esteban and made a decision to do everything in his power to keep Esteban from ever laying a fucking hand on Alice.

He inhaled and held it. Upon exhale he released every ounce of peace he could access. It was time to do what he was made to do.

A/N: I know back in August I was like "updates every Monday!" but those were hopeful delusions of a less busy man. Sure, you'll get a chapter once a week, but only god knows the specific day that'll happen. Shannon is a fool that thinks 2.5 jobs plus school plus podcast would leave her with free time for writing and editing and keeping up a weekly fic posting schedule. Shannon does not understand that there are only so many hours in a day. Shannon only knows Do Tasks, Feed Self, and Lie. Shannon has a sleep debt and boy is it collecting interest.

Anyways, I want to give a shoutout and special thanks to everyone who has left a review—all four of you. (Especially you Reinbeau; happy to have you back in my notifications!) If you guys want to take advantage of the bonus features I have for this fic—including Spotify playlists (if that's your thing) and lots of me just Talking About Roots—feel free to stop by my tumblr (also flowerslut over there) and come chat with me there.

Until next chapter.