THE SUICIDE OF TWO LOVERS
Divinatory Meaning: Choice, temptation, attraction. The struggle between sacred and profane love. Harmony of the inner and outer aspects of life.
Reversed: Quarrels, infidelity, danger of a broken marriage. Need to stabilize the emotions. Possibility of a wrong choice.
—Joan Bunning, Learning the Tarot
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4:44PM
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The ground beneath Alice's feet shook in a way that should have terrified her. It certainly would have if she were focused on anything other than the way they charged forward, their formation perfect and their attention monopolized by the atmosphere itself.
To her left and right were Carmen and Esme, directly in front of her were Emmett and Rosalie, and spread out all around them was a carefully decided upon and deliberately arranged march. By the time they reached Esteban's army, they would disperse.
Alice knew, thanks to years of watching this very scene play out during her earliest visions of Jasper, that it was within the first half minute that the victors of a fight could be easily determined. If they did not hit their opponents with all the force they had and if they could not enact their strategy to split Esteban's army and expand from there, they would drop like flies and succumb to death with a terrifying swiftness.
They were an army of twenty-four, thrown together within all the time they'd been spared, running toward what could very well be certain death. They were running toward an abyss. A darkness that concealed everyone's fate from themselves. Even Alice. Especially Alice.
Alice, who should have known what to do, how to proceed, and whether they'd win. And yet, she did not.
The only thoughts in her mind as they raced forward, adrenaline pounding, was that she would have to do everything she could to keep as many members of her family alive as possible. Alice knew that if she could trade her life for the lives of her loved ones, she would.
If her death meant Jasper's survival, she would welcome it with a cold embrace.
Two short whistles had them shifting slightly. Alice tried to focus on anything except their charge, but found it too difficult to fight against Jasper's influence. He had a death grip on their emotional states; their battle focus had not been this finely tuned back in Washington, when Victoria thought she could emulate the warlords with a technique she'd hardly understood.
This, what was happening now, was suffocating in its hold. Every time her mind attempted to spring away, it was snapped back to attention, as if she'd never tried to think of anything else in the first place.
It was dizzying.
It was maddening.
It was exhilarating.
They hadn't noticed the fires until they'd departed. Alice had stared blankly into the distance, at the darkening sky, and had been stunned at the smoke that rose above the tree line. She had been right, she'd realized with a sharp clarity. The realization pained her, and she wondered, yet again, whether she'd messed up by not mentioning that she'd already seen this.
Maria had slowed their pace for a few seconds once the fires had been detected, but only long enough to shout out quick instructions.
"Do not let them herd you outside of where we will split them," she had yelled, speeding back up. "If we can get through and get in, that is what matters. Do not travel parallel to the fire if they succeed in their maneuvers. You get past them and back to the central area of the battle or you die. That is your only option."
Fight or die. That was the only advice they had left. A simple mission with impossible odds.
One quick whistle from Maria echoed and Alice could finally hear it. The sound of a separate stampede; one heading directly for them. Esteban was only seconds away. The thought of seeing him again made her feet slow, just barely.
Alice hadn't even noticed her slip until Esme's hand pressed firmly into her lower back and hustled her along. Esme did not break stride, did not say anything, and it was all because Alice knew there was nothing more to say. Before they'd left, Esme had been the only one to risk giving Alice an embrace. Alice hadn't wanted the hug—she hadn't wanted anyone to touch her—and had recoiled at the unexpected contact, but in the end she understood that Esme was just doing what she needed to do to get through the night.
If the love Esme carried within her heart could get her through this fight, then Alice would let Esme steal all the affection she desired; permission be damned.
No one spoke as they ran; they were only a flash through the trees. They travelled over hills, rivers, and the rotting winters dead of the forest, with each second a chance to be their last.
It started too fast for her to make sense of it.
Maria let out a screech—her battlecry shattered the air—and Alice felt her bones ignite. All at once, their enemy was upon them.
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"Dearest, I do wish we could be gone from here together. Why should we tolerate having been thrown upon this black prickly earth from some kind of heaven? Even as a child I used to stand in great admiration in front of a picture dealer's window, looking at a bad color print dejecting the suicide of two lovers."
—Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice
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Jasper exploded onto the battlefield like an supernova.
It was a sensation that he hadn't experienced in many, many years. The sounds of Maria's growls, the feeling of her own blood-thirstiness, and the memory of battles from before flooded his system with endorphins. This was what he was built for. The process of tearing himself down to his base instincts had been necessary in order to relearn the ways in which he could fight. He'd once killed with a brutal efficiency that had earned him a reputation back in the south. Jasper had been ruthless, fast, and he never once hesitated.
With his first movement he grabbed two men at once—one by the forearm that had been reaching out toward him, the other by their upper arm as it pulled back to throw a punch—and with a twist of their limbs he ducked low, yanked, and used their momentum against each other as his feet slid forward. By the time they'd collided, head against chest and opposite hands scrambling for purchase against one another, Jasper twisted the first arm he'd grabbed around the neck of the second man. Jasper twisted further, using the newborn's arm to decapitate his comrade, before using his own opposite arm to tear the head off the second one.
It took him four moves and two seconds.
What Jasper lacked in fresh newborn strength he made up for with hot unbridled fury. With decades of battles behind him. With a hatred that could only be expressed through violence. Father Esteban would rue the day he'd targeted them. Jasper would burn him alive if Maria didn't get to him first. One army would fall tonight, and with the reckoning Jasper was set to deliver, it would not be his.
Jasper had never cared enough to think twice about Esteban's religious agenda, but if he wanted to be sent to some bullshit rumored afterlife then Jasper would bring him hell.
A woman with a cross carved into her forehead lunged for him. Jasper knocked her to the side, yanking her arm at just the right angle to tear it from her body in one quick tug. He chucked it far away, turned on his heel and ducked back to avoid Peter, who spun, pinned, and then decapitated a huge, screaming newborn. The next body that reached out for Jasper suffered a similar fate.
Within seconds he'd torn through their front lines—knocking heads, tearing arms, and ripping legs out from underneath people who were not quick enough to dodge—with an unparalleled ferocity. The determination to be the one to find Esteban rippled through his skin. He was close by. Jasper could finally smell him—incense and venom stinging his nose—and after over a century without the scent in the air the memories that it brought forth made him angrier.
A scream rippled through the air and Jasper fought the urge to turn toward it. It was a knee-jerk reaction that he batted down with a blind swiftness. A sense of affection tied tightly to a vague familiarity that was dangerous. He pulled back his focus, determined to keep funneling it into this patchwork army of theirs, and marched forward. These moments would make or break it, and although Jasper had killed seven within their first nine seconds, Esteban's army was still coming.
In the back of his awareness he could feel the repeated tug of pain rippling through his extra sense. Pain always translated through the acute shock-fear-panic that pulsed through the atmosphere; a sort of pop that Jasper could zero in on during a fight, like a newborn smelling blood.
All around him now, that pop pop pop tugged at his attention. Jasper flipped one man over his shoulder and was forced to drop to one knee, where he just barely missed the grabbing hands of a woman who tried to come at him from the side. He was frustrated when it took three full seconds to kill her and incapacitate the man, but he was quick to ignore the burning that bloomed across his forearm. Jasper could easily ignore the two fresh bites; they meant nothing to him. Quickly, he continued forward, trying to think about his mission—he only had a few seconds left to push through the to other side of their enemy and leave a path of destruction in his wake—as he expelled as much furious focus as he could manage.
This had always been the problem he and Maria faced back in the day with Esteban. What his army lacked in brute strength and combat skills they made up for with sheer fucking numbers. Where Jasper sharpened knives Esteban cultivated landmines. Vampires built for rushing toward a sure death in order to take as many out as they could. It had been maddening then, and it was maddening now.
It was so unlike the battle back in Washington. Victoria's army hadn't been trained in any meaningful way and had been given one mission: to kill a human girl. They surely hadn't anticipated that Jasper would pass on his expertise to his family.
Jasper shoved that dangerous memory away and spun out of the way of another lunge. He bounced the point of his elbow off of a newborn who didn't see him coming, and knocked him to the ground swiftly enough for Maria to dart in like a lightening strike and deliver the killing blow.
He could feel the ferocity of her hatred this close and in that instant he somehow knew what was driving her fury to burn brighter than his own. She had not spotted Esteban yet.
For half of another instant, Jasper realized that there was a chance Esteban hadn't accompanied the army. That momentary lapse of focus came with a cost. Maria shrieked and knocked him out of the way just fast enough that the punch landed on his shoulder blade didn't split the flesh completely.
Maria lunged for the man who'd gotten a dangerous shot in on Jasper. Jasper righted himself just in time to watch her send the dark-haired man careering into the dirt, face-first. With one foot on the inside of his thigh she wrenched the man's leg upward, so swiftly and with such violence, that when his torso split from his groin to his gut, the guttural cry of pain sounded more like a death rattle.
For all that he loathed her, body, mind, and soul, Jasper had missed her unflinching ferocity.
Maria fled his side and dove back into the fray. They had passed the fifteen second mark and were still scrambling for the upper hand. Time was ticking and Jasper knew he could not hold their battle-focus for much longer. Not if he wanted to keep his own wits about him and keep himself alive. More pop pop pops of pain burst across his awareness, all of them accompanied by a cut-off cry or an animal shriek.
Jasper tried hard to ignore the sudden shouting. But they were the only words being yelled on this battlefield where communication was typically accomplished with growls and screams, whistles and hand-signals, so Jasper could not help but zero in on the horrific noise.
Their first deaths happened so fast.
"NO!" The shriek of one of the hybrid girls was loaded with agony. Jasper knew that he had missed the death of the other sister; he'd likely noticed the pop of pain in his mind without realizing it had been one of their own. "No no no!"
Not two seconds later, a terrified scream that Jasper recognized filled the air. Pop.
In the blink of an eye, Carmen was gone. Things cascaded from there, too quickly for Jasper to keep his focus, and before he knew it, he was turning around and fighting his way back.
Too many of their enemy had pushed past their own front line despite the constant ripping, tearing, and killing. By this point, Jasper had killed nine people, and still, they kept coming. Another familiar cry echoed through the air; not out of pain, but out of sheer anguish. The electric buzzing could barely be heard over the fighting, and the blue in Jasper's periphery proved Kate's resilience.
He earned himself three more bites in quick succession; two on his leg from a woman who only fought with teeth, and another from a boy who'd tried to take Jasper's hand off at the wrist. He didn't spare the time to kill them as he pushed through, only maiming them enough to continue onward without chance of their immediate pursuit.
Jasper did not know where he was going. He did not know what he was doing. He dropped the collective focus he'd been projecting outward into his army and somehow lost his own personal grip on it, too. In his mind there was an instinctual urge—a raw, intrinsic need—that whipped his attention back from where they'd come and told him look back, turn around, go now, keep moving.
So, without knowing why, he did.
In the distance he saw Morgan fall, and Alan right after. Jasper watched and felt a numb detachment from his own surroundings. Emmett stepped forward and met the newborn who had killed both of them head-on. Rose stepped to his side to help, and Jasper forced his eyes away.
For a moment, he couldn't find what he was looking for. Three more of Esteban's newborns were in his line of sight, and as he pushed, pulled, and punched his way through, he felt a dull ache form in the pit of his chest. He couldn't find it.
He didn't know what he was looking for, but he couldn't fucking find it.
Jasper let his left arm fall too wide after he swept an enemy off their feet and when a set of teeth closed around his hand and tore, Jasper felt some of his fingers separate from his body.
He didn't have time to think twice about his new disfigurement. Instead, he turned and fought, as if uninjured. The fight ended three seconds later, when Jasper dug two of the fingers that remained on his left hand into the man's eye socket and yanked until he felt the skull split.
Jasper's attention was still on the land in front of him, eyes flickering from body to body, desperate to find what he was looking for.
Then, he felt it.
The acute sensation that filled his mind was rich with anticipatory fear. The pop of pain was not punctuated with a sound of ripping or tearing, and it was not accompanied by a scream. Underneath the fear and pain was a thick, heavy despondency he knew so, so well.
Jasper turned toward Alice, and ran.
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"As the man looks at the woman and she looks up at the angel, the truth conveyed is that the conscious mind cannot approach the superconscious unless it passes through the subconscious—a thought to consider in meditation. The lovers stand here in friendly harmony, with nothing to hide from each other, as the nudity of the figures indicates. A harmonious and successful life depends on the cooperation between the conscious and the subconscious."
—Eden Gray, The Complete Guide to the Tarot
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The instant that the man's hand had closed around her arm, Alice knew that this was the beginning of the end.
Carmen was dead. Maysun was dead. Four of Maria's men—Morgan Alan Travis Brendon—were dead.
Alice was going to be next. The man was old and he was bigger than her and faster than her and every time he made a decision Alice had the barest millisecond to counter him as best as she could. Every time he reached out to grab her with his other hand, she dodged, swatted, or snapped at him. She wasn't fighting elegantly anymore. She was fighting for her life.
But despite this: the man made no choice to do the wise thing and go for her neck. He hadn't even wrenched her arm from its socket or pinned her into the dirt; or at least, he hadn't decided to yet. He just watched his surroundings as he backed away from the battle, as if trying to remove a screaming child from a supermarket, and not like a man dragging a woman away to face her demise.
Alice twisted her wrist to no avail. Her visions showed her that he would snap her forearm in two if she did not wait until she had an opening. She did not want to wait; she could not risk waiting. He could have her arm for all she cared. If more of Esteban's newborns realized she'd been nabbed, it would be all over for her. Alice fought back every urge to scream—if she screamed her family would come to help if she screamed it would be distracting if she screamed someone else might die—trying so, so hard to prolong her freedom.
He hadn't killed her yet, but that wasn't saying much. Alice knew Esteban wanted her alive so he could kill her himself; or worse. Alice knew Demetri wanted her alive so he could deliver her to Volterra as a prisoner.
As a gift.
Suddenly, the vision of her death swooped into her mind, casting a shadow over every stupid, desperate hope that she still clung to. There'd been a part of her—childish and panicking and scared—that thought that maybe if she failed and she were taken again or separated from her family, she might still make it out. That maybe the army would back off. That if Alice submitted, things would be okay.
Something had gone unseen, she realized. She started to cry out now, unable to hold in her fear and batting at the hand that still scrambled to restrain her. In a last-ditch effort she leaned forward and sank her teeth into his forearm. Her bite was too small to do much damage, and before she could try to rip a mouthful of flesh away, she caught a punch to the cheek.
The crack of her skull was sharp. Her ears rang, her vision swam, and Alice was stunned for long enough that her knees gave out beneath her. The man yanked her around swiftly and snaked his right arm around her neck.
Before he could flex a single muscle against her throat, Emmett appeared like an answered prayer. He tore the man's head from his shoulders, and Alice had to pull her arm twice to yank it from the dead man's grip. There was hardly any time to turn and face her brother. Alice somersaulted forward despite the sharp pain in her head.
Alice was disoriented as she righted herself, but she was alive. And it was in that moment that Alice saw it all so, so clearly.
In less than two seconds, three men would swoop in on their location. Emmett would turn, kill one, and then find himself overwhelmed by the other two. Emmett would die at Alice's feet.
Emmett, her big brother, who had done everything he could to keep her safe. Emmett, who had faced Esteban with a grin so that his attention wasn't on Alice. Emmett, who'd called to her repeatedly and babbled to her through her entire horrifying confession.
Emmett had proved time and time again that he would choose to protect Alice over himself, and Alice did not feel deserving of that love.
Instantly, the choice was crystal clear.
Alice launched herself upward with her arms outstretched. Emmett's face just barely flickered with surprise when Alice wrapped her hands around his arm and pulled with every ounce of her might. Within a quarter of a second, Emmett was on the ground and Alice was in his place.
A newborn's fingertips brushed against her shoulder and a second's hand opened wide to grasp at the back of her neck. Alice let her eyes flicker closed and felt that it was worth it.
I'm sorry, she thought, and hoped that at least Edward would hear her final, heartbroken apology. She couldn't protect them in life. She hoped she could in death.
A body barreled into them like a freight train.
Alice was spinning through the air, unable to tell up from down. The feeling of fingers tearing her skin as they were ripped from her neck barely even registered over the pain of this sudden, brutal impact.
Alice's body collided with the ground and rolled twice before she was able to dig her hands into the dirt and drag her body into stillness. She gasped, confusion and fear and relief at war within her, and once she inhaled she knew what had happened.
Alice watched, entranced, as Emmett and Jasper worked in tandem, fighting and tearing into the three newborns with gruesome viciousness. Jasper incapacitated one, Emmett decapitated another, and Jasper punched his way through a third.
Emmett turned and disappeared back into the fray without a second glance.
Alice wondered if he knew that he'd almost died just now. Alice wondered if he knew that she had just tried to sacrifice herself for him. Tried and failed.
Alice wondered if this pathetic, empty feeling was the appropriate reaction to having the love of your life save you and the brother you loved so much from certain death.
Alice was on all fours in the dirt when Jasper finally looked over at her. He was barely five yards away; so close that she could see herself reflected in his red gaze. Alice watched as he reached down and silenced the gasping of the man whose side he'd punched through. One quick twist was all it took to rid the man's head from his body.
It was that moment that Alice took in her surroundings. The fire that had been so distant before roared and crackled closer to them than was safe. In the distance she could see the bright orange flames flickering up above the treetops.
Fire travelled fast. They needed to keep moving.
But Alice did not move. Instead, she stared up at Jasper, whose eyes had finally locked onto hers, and remained in place. Her hands were still stuck deep into the ground—the damp dirt was cool on the tips of her fingers—and her disbelief at her survival had stunned her into inaction. She couldn't fight anymore. This was as much as she could do unless she could put herself in between a member of her family and their enemy.
All Alice felt that she could do now was die.
She stared back at the man she loved, and wondered what he saw; what he felt. For one, single, solitary moment, the only thing she saw was Jasper. His expression shifted, his anger fled, and his eyes widened.
Jasper cracked, took one step toward her, and Alice felt something within her break.
"It's okay," his arms are around her as he carries her off and Alice can barely hear his words over the fighting behind them, "I've got you, I've got you."
He tucks her under his chin and his arms are around her and the feeling of wind blowing by them as he runs is only refreshing for a millisecond before she realizes what's happening.
Alice moves her arms to cling to him, and when she opens her mouth only a shaking sob falls out. Because she smells him now and she can feel him and Jasper is suddenly giving her every ounce of attention she's craved from him since she crawled out of the bowels of Esteban's base, naked and debased.
But he is fleeing from the fight, with Alice in tow, and she knows that because of this, Jamie, Carlisle, and Bella will die within the next ten seconds, one after the other after the other. She knows she needs to scream at him. She needs to rip herself from his arms and kick and flail until he puts her down. Until he turns them around and goes back to the fight. Until he stops running away.
"I'm sorry." The words tumble out of Jasper, and that's when Alice realizes that he's aware of what he's doing. He knows they're leaving their family to die. The apologies have already arrived. "I've got you now. It's going to be okay."
Alice buries her face against Jasper's neck and screams. Then, she tightens her grip on him, and relents.
Alice came back to reality mid-gasp with her eyes still locked onto Jasper's. Her pain, guilt, shame, and horror were as strong as they had ever been. The worst of it was the pure misery that seized her. Her heart was breaking all over again. Because, despite everything, she still could not let Jasper touch her. Despite how badly she wanted Jasper to hold her, to save her, to see her, she couldn't let him.
The instant she let him, Alice knew she'd give up.
Jasper took another step and Alice recoiled at his approach. In the second it took him to pause his feet a spasm of agony splayed across his features.
No! She wanted to scream. I'm not afraid of you! Please! She wanted him to hold her more than anything, but could not let it happen.
Jasper took another step forward and lifted his arms in surrender toward her. Two newborns appeared out of nowhere from behind him. Alice did not have the time to gasp, scream, move, or blink.
Within the next second, Jasper's head was gone.