A/N: Content warning for body horror and graphic descriptions of torture.

(For a more in-depth chapter summary, check the author's note at the end.)

STRENGTH

"The message transmitted by this Key is that we must learn to create a balance between our spiritual and carnal natures and thus influence the lower of the two. This lesson of the need for harmony between opposing forces is often noted in the Tarot. "

—Eden Gray, The Complete Guide to the Tarot

Divinatory Meaning: Force of character, spiritual power overcoming material power, love triumphing over hate, the higher nature over carnal desires.

Reversed: Domination of the material. Discord, lack of moral force, fear of the unknown in ourselves, abuse of power.

—Joan Bunning, Learning the Tarot

—

DECEMBER 7TH? 2039

?PM MST

COWDREY?, COLORADO

The sound of dry-heaving made Alice's head spin as she found herself ripped out of the future and back into the present. Her head was starting to hurt and she couldn't risk having her nose start dripping while she was there. They would know something was off with her.

They would know.

She had to ignore where she was. She had to ignore everything. She could do this. She had to do this.

Alice sat leaning forward, her spine curved softly so that whenever she dared to open her eyes she would only have to see the front of her shirt. She did her best to avoid looking at her legs, mutilated and naked and outstretched before her, and her nails dug into the back of her skull, tangling her fingers in her hair. The current stench of venom was so much worse than it had been when it was just a steady trickle down her sinus cavity. Now it leaked from her split skin, delicately torn through at the backs of her knees and ankles. They were precise and careful cuts and Alice tried so hard not to think of the fact that so many of her ligaments and tendons had been severed. If she were to finally lift her head and look at her legs, she would be gifted with an interesting view of the tops of her tibias.

She wished she could push away the image of the inner workings of her injury—she kept her eyes shut, yet she'd still seen—but the frozen tissues and muscles were deep purple in some places and dark grey in others. The color was lighter where the venom flowed quicker, almost silver, and the deeper pieces of flesh parted easier under Esteban's hand.

No. She couldn't think about that yet. If she did then she'd get trapped again in another spiral of helplessness. She was the only one who could help Emmett right now. She was the only one who could keep him from dying.

And right now Esteban was killing him.

Alice closed her eyes tight and dove back into the well of her mind, visions flying through her at breakneck speeds.

She starts with a prayer and eagerly awaits for the gift she's asked for so politely. Esteban will go off to send for a pair of pants for her, appreciating her desire for modesty and her eagerness to confess her sins. Then, when he takes the second step outside of the homestead she turns, spins, dives through the portion of the wall closest to the corner and grabs at Emmett. She's able to kill one of the men but the second one grabs her before she can face him.

No. Again.

Esteban takes one step away, then a second step, and then Alice forces herself to start crying. Emmett can't speak properly—his jaw is trying to reattach itself after Esteban gifted him one final injury—but he calls toward her with a long groan, wanting to comfort her despite his physical state and agonizing deformities. "Can you kill me first?" She blinks up at the man who is ready to restrain her if she tries to leave. "Please, please have mercy." She does not give him time to reply before she's moving too quick for him to defend against and his neck twists in her hands.

"Xavier!" One of the men from the next room gasps, unbelieving that this Xavier has gone against Father Esteban's wishes, but when he enters the room, ready to dole out retribution against his own brother—another child of God—he faces Alice instead. His head rolls—

Alice found herself yanked back out of her head by an excruciating scream.

Esteban was killing him. She couldn't do this. She could absolutely not do this but if she didn't they would die within the next twelve minutes. It was too much. It was too much and she was only one person and there had to be a way out of this and—

Alice forced a few deep breaths and tried to count her toes slowly, but when she couldn't wiggle them, she panicked and lifted her head, just enough to confirm that yes, they were still there, and yes, she couldn't move them because of her severed tendons and ligaments. She counted them visually and tried again to move them, but instead winced at the agony that reverberated through her legs from her ankles and knees. She closed her eyes again and tucked her chin back against her chest.

Despite the pain in her joints—the silver wire wrapped around her ankles made it difficult for her body to heal its wound, but still, it tried—Alice was able to wrench her mind away from her body for long enough to dive into vision after vision after vision.

Where she had felt blind before, now she was able to see with minimal effort. Unfortunately, she couldn't see a damn thing beyond the woods they apparently were being held in. The only positive side to this was that she knew these woods so intimately. She knew exactly where she was.

Alice and Renesmee had explored this rotted home a few weeks after they'd moved. One of Ness' favorite things to do when they moved to new places was to find the dilapidated and abandoned buildings in the surrounding towns. This had been one of their last finds, just a few miles south of Wyoming, and east of Old Roach.

There was a pit half a mile to the west of this place—a dip in the geography of the mountainside that indicated some long dead lake or cave-in or something—and at the bottom of the dip was a ravine that led straight between the two mountains that currently split the north from the south. She had to get herself and Emmett to that dip and get as far south as possible. She had to get them out and she had to hope that Carlisle and Maria were still alive, and that they'd made it out and made it back.

She could see everything in these woods but she could not see beyond them. That terrified her.

The long, drawn-out scream—and, oh god, he was still screaming—was finally punctuated with an abrupt, gasping "Fuck."

Emmett. Emmett was making that noise.

She hated that her visions were working flawlessly within the strange area she could see. Alice didn't just have a front row seat to hear all of the ways in which Emmett could scream and swear, and to listen to the way his skin resisted when Esteban split him open. Oh, no, Alice was forced to watch, a split-second before each injury occurred, each blow landing as Emmett was sliced into by a beaded length of vampire teeth.

"This is the easier option! Venom hurts far less than fire, my boy." Esteban's voice was so clear that for a moment, Alice lifted her head, eyelids blowing open as her eyes tried to find him in her room, looming above her. Of course, he wasn't there. With the walls this thin, combined with the fact that she could see and hear everything that was happening to Emmett in her mind, she felt disoriented.

She tried to shake the closer future from her head, instead focusing hard on the plan she was concocting.

The second man turns to enter her room—it's the smaller man, unfortunately—but before he realizes it's Alice who has beheaded his friend and not the other way around Alice's hands are gripping his throat as she slides swiftly onto his back. It hurts; her feet and legs hurt so bad but at least she's mobile and she can do this. His head rolls and all Alice can hear from Emmett's room is a gurgling cry, no consonants forming from Emmett's newly-jawless skull. She doesn't have time to face the third man who is reeling from the shock and scrambling onto his feet. Alice grabs Emmett, pulls him up and after her and doesn't make it ten yards before she's tackled.

Not good enough. Again.

Alice waits an extra minute to ask Esteban for a pair of pants, using the same excuse the same inflection the same bowed head and mournful tone. The minute gives her ankles more time to finish sealing closed (around the wire but it won't matter) as the man still in the room—Xavier, she now knows—fails to notice the way her legs are bent and her feet are pressing firmly into the ground. Alice begins her trick, her begging for a mercy kill is so believable, her legs are in better shape and Emmett's jaw is reattaching slowly but he can at least press his tongue against teeth and his groans almost sound like her name now. She pleads for death, kills her captor, waits and then—

It took two seconds before she realized that the sound of violent dry-heaving was happening in the present, and was not the background noise to a vision. But because of her visions, and their sudden clarity, she was forced to witness it—Emmett's horrific mutilation—half of a second before it happened. Her reality had become nothing more than an echo of her mind.

Esteban is not smiling even though, when he speaks, it sounds like he is.

Father Esteban's face is mangled from an unimaginable injury. He possesses one half of his left eyelid, none of his right, and the barest bump of skin where his nose used to be is the only sign that one ever existed. He is entirely hairless and the scars that cross and overlap on his head make his skull look lumpy. Every time he opens his mouth to speak, Alice can see the crooked curve of half of his tongue, and is shocked at how the disfigurement does not impede his speech.

Emmett is lying on the ground, face up and heaving. It's not the pain that's reducing him to retching, but the sound his own flesh makes as Esteban peels back layer after layer of frozen tissue. Esteban is surgical in his precision, and when Emmett stops gagging, the arch in his back finally giving way as he rests against the old wood floor that is now cracked beneath his bulk, Esteban reaches out and slowly grinds a new line into the meat of his calf. Slow enough that it hurts more. Slow enough that the sound of tearing skin is abominably loud.

Emmett heaves again and tries to lift the arm that they dislocated to blindly swipe at them. One of the men presses his foot against Emmett's shoulder and the pop-crack sound indicates a new injury. The sound Emmett makes then is animal-like. There are no words behind it. It is a guttural cry that his body simply releases on instinct.

Alice found herself staring into her lap, pulled back again by an instinctual cry as it reverberated through her room. Again, Alice counted her toes as she attempted to move them. She wanted to bend her knees now and wrap her arms around them in a pitiful facsimile of a weeping child, but she wouldn't get away with it. Not yet. She needed to wait a little bit longer before the man watching her would allow her to accomplish that small goal.

Alice wasn't restrained currently—underestimation of her abilities was the likely factor here—but that wasn't anything she could work with yet. When she'd first realized they weren't going to keep her restrained while Esteban occupied the next room, Alice had flown through vision after vision of herself escaping.

She could do it. It was well within her ability and she had, in her mind, the proof of it in nearly forty different visions. Alice could get away. She could get back to safety and return to her family.

But in these visions, Emmett ended up dead.

Which meant that they were useless, cruel temptations from her gift of a freedom she would never be able to grasp. After the thirty-ninth vision of her survival and Emmett's doom—it had only taken her a minute to rifle through those possibilities—Alice shook all of those terrible realities from her head and began to build a proper escape. Choice by choice, vision by vision.

Emmett would come with her, and Alice would succeed in saving him, or she would not try at all, and would die here with him. Those were the only two options she'd given herself.

They would have to not just survive what Esteban put them through, but to submit to it. And if they could bear the brunt of this abuse, then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't die here just yet.

Unfortunately their current odds of survival were at a scant seven percent.

So far. She would find a way. She would, step by step, inch by inch, figure out a way to get them both out of there alive. Alice would be allowed to perform subtle fixes to her injuries, but she had to wait for the time. She would get Esteban out of the tiny homestead soon, but not just yet. She would make it through whatever torture they wanted to subject her to, but she'd have to endure it.

Alice would save her brother or die trying. She could do this. She could absolutely do this.

Emmett's low groan of pain made her flinch. Suddenly her grip on her hair tightened and her terror drowned out the rest of her thoughts. But what if they killed him? What if Father Esteban decided that he didn't want information, and instead he wanted to deliver their smoldering corpses back to the house?

Alice released her grip on her hair and clenched her hands together tightly in her lap.

"Fuck man," Emmett's voice was weak, but Alice saw, in her mind, the pained grin on his face. His stare up toward the ceiling was unseeing, but he kept his eyes open. He licked his lips. "Y'know it's Christmas right? In like, two and a half weeks."

Esteban did not reply. Alice watched as he stood and started cleaning his rosary, tooth by tooth, on a cloth tucked over his belt. He started to pray quietly while he turned his back on Emmett's broken body, and Alice stiffened when the man behind her in her room began to pray in time with Esteban.

Alice saw what Esteban was about to ask, and suddenly felt so nauseous. When she let out an involuntary cry she snapped her mouth shut, teeth biting tongue hard. She didn't wince out of pain; instead a terrible fear—a dread so strong she was dizzy with it—froze her completely. She ceased shaking and could only wait in horror.

The sound of Alice's noise forced Emmett to start speaking again, and his attempt at distraction—for Esteban had clearly heard her cry—made Alice want to truly weep.

"Hey, Doc. Or Father or whatever. Padre. Papa."

Esteban's soft prayers resumed, slightly louder this time.

Emmett let out a weak, breathy laugh, "You like jokes? I've got plenty for you. Here's one for the holidays. Or," the man whose foot was on Emmett's shoulder pushed down slightly and Emmett hissed. Despite the pain, he continued talking. "Ah, sorry! Holiday, I mean. Holiday! Singular, y'know? Christmas only! Yeah!" His voice was strained and Alice so badly wanted to call out and tell him to stop it. It was pointless to try and buy her time; Esteban would come for her, too. He didn't need to make this any more horrific than it already was.

But Emmett was Emmett. Her big brother who loved her and liked to take her side in arguments even though he knew she could hold her own. Who let her sit on his shoulders when she couldn't see above a crowd and who never protested when she wanted to try out a new hunting range even when he knew there were no bears in the area.

Alice loved him and he loved her and fucking hell he was going to make this so, so much worse for himself if he kept doing this; if he kept trying to keep Esteban's attention on him.

Stop, Alice wanted to cry out, her nails digging into the backs of her hands as she squeezed them together, clasped in a mockery of prayer. Please, please stop.

"Let me know if you've heard this one," Alice didn't even need to see Emmett's face with a vision to hear the wide smile on his face, "What do a Christmas tree and a Ca—"

Esteban nodded toward the two men behind him who moved silently, shifting their grip on Emmett so they were dragging him backward across the floor and then sitting him up. Emmett's position now mirrored Alice's. Only one of his arms was wrenched behind him and the other was hanging unnaturally, with just the palm of the second man's hand pressed against it.

"Ah," Emmett's cry of pain turned very quickly into desperate laughter as they readjusted his position. "Fuck," he gasped again, laughing. "Anyways. What do a Christmas tree and a Catholic priest have in common?"

Emmett waited until Esteban turned around before making as much eye contact as he could. The eyelid of his left eye sagged halfway over his iris, a gash beneath the brow exposing both flesh and bone beneath. Through the pain, Emmett continued to grin. "The balls are just for show."

Esteban didn't react. "I have a few questions for you before I release you from this world and send your soul to its deliverance."

Emmett groaned, as if disappointed. "Oh come on, that was a tame one. I could have told such worse ones. I was being so nice." He tried jerking his head toward one of the men restraining him and hissed in pain. "See, these guys know what I'm talking about, don't you?" He tried to turn his head the opposite way and another wince kept his neck facing forward. "That was downright polite."

"I am looking for two people," Esteban continued talking, not once acting in reply to any of Emmett's goading. "If you can help me locate either, or if you are either of these yourself, it will benefit you greatly."

"Unless you're taking me to Dave and Buster's later, you can't tempt me with shit."

"Where is your psychic?" Esteban's voice was suddenly loud, booming through the house and echoing far beyond it. Alice still didn't flinch. Alice couldn't think properly. "Your demon? Your witch?"

Right here, she tried to push her voice to say. I'm right here, please leave him alone. Please don't do this.

If Maria's words had warned Alice of one thing it was that all she could do now was buy herself more time. With Esteban circling above her like a vulture, she knew he'd swoop in eventually. Alice knew that there wasn't any avoiding the ways in which he'd pick her apart; the more time he spent inside this rotted house with them, the higher their chances of survival.

She could not speak up now, because they couldn't give in just yet.

Emmett knew this, too. "My what-now?" He grinned.

Esteban moved quickly, his strike precise and effective. Emmett's left eye—the same one that was halfway hidden beneath a drooping, sliced eyelid—was narrowly avoided as Esteban carved into the skin beneath it, just above the orbital bone. Any further pressure on Esteban's behalf would've slit neatly through the delicate organ. Even still, it looked as if he were prepping the eye for a violent removal. Alice's stomach rolled.

"And where," Esteban continued on, circling Emmett slowly, disappearing behind his back before stopping again, "is the mate of Major Jasper Whitlock?"

Jasper's name was spoken with such naked disdain, such furious hatred, that Alice could only stare at her hands, eyes open now as she anxiously waited for Emmett's answer.

Which was so, so stupid.

"Fuck you."

Because Emmett wasn't going to give him anything.

The next injury inflicted on Emmett almost made Alice start sobbing before Esteban even took a step toward him. Alice was only able to hold it together by counting to ten, wiggling her toes first—slowly, now that she could move them—one by one, and her fingers afterward.

Esteban pulls Emmett's shirt to the side which gives the man restraining Emmett's right arm enough of a hint to continue the motion. They tear the shirt entirely off, revealing a bare back full of pale, unmarked skin. Esteban inhales deeply and exhales, smiling softly, his lips moving silently in prayer.

Alice felt her trembling resume. She focused hard on her toes and her fingers. Six… seven…

Only, Esteban does not focus his attention on Emmett's back. Instead, the right arm that's been twisted painfully into an inescapable hold, gets twisted more and more… and more… until it cracks and pops and Emmett's letting out another involuntary groan of pain, his head dipping forward as he sucks in breaths to try and keep from screaming again.

Two… Three…

They release the arm slowly, unfolding it until it lies similarly crooked to the opposite one. Then, with one slow line Esteban tears from the skin inside of Emmett's wrist upward. The journey his stolen, weaponized canine takes is a steady one that only twists slightly to accommodate the natural angle of the arm, and when it reaches its destination, a few inches from the armpit, Esteban does something that Alice hasn't seen yet, and places the tooth, wet with Emmett's venom, in his mouth.

Nine… ten. Alice started counting again. Then she started counting backwards. No longer was she trying to twitch her digits in time with her numbers. One to ten and ten to one and back again and then forth.

The other teeth dangle from Esteban's mouth as his eyes hungrily assess the limb in his grasp. He turns Emmett's arm in a multitude of directions—the slice up the arm is one connected curve—and then aligns it so the palm faces upward. Emmett's jaw is clenched and the horrible noises still make their way through his teeth despite this. With both hands, Esteban grasps Emmett's wrist, placing his thumbs on either side of the bottom of the fresh wound, venom already pouring over and wetting Esteban's scarred, awful fingertips.

With nauseating slowness Esteban pushes his fingers into the bottom of the wound. The skin and flesh creak and groan with the pressure, cracks forming on the underside of Emmett's arm. Despite the symphony of pain erupting into the air like music, Esteban pushes his thumbs inside the muscle, deeper and deeper…

The present flung itself back into her face when the first crack-pop of Emmett's shoulder rang through the room.

Alice braced herself to hear the torture again, in real time, and wished to be anywhere else. This could not be happening. This could not be the way that they would die. It was too horrible to imagine, yet it was the reality she was being forced to witness twice over.

For the first time since this mess began, Alice found herself glad that Jasper wasn't here. If he could feel how terrified she was, she didn't know what he'd do.

"Where are they?" Esteban asked, three minutes later, after Alice had begun to rock in place and Emmett had actually managed to vomit up some sort of venom mixture. He'd stopped responding to the splitting of his arm which had given Esteban pause. "If you do not tell me, this will only get worse."

Emmett didn't reply, and Alice heard his heaving breaths—punctuated occasionally by another gag—and feared for a moment that she might get sick, too.

What would come up out of her, if anything, she had no idea.

Just tell them, she wanted to scream at him. No one could fault him for giving in. It wouldn't be his fault if he told; he was sick with pain and blinded by the torture they were putting him through. It wouldn't be his fault. All he had to do was say her name again. Or point in her direction. Anything.

Emmett's refusal to speak—or maybe it truly was an inability at this point—was terrible and horrific and stupid and brave and currently the only thing keeping him and Alice on the path toward potential escape. Time was of the essence, and the longer they could stay alive, the better. The more pain they could withstand the better chance at survival they had.

Alice just didn't know if it would be worth it after Esteban was through with them.

Father Esteban, a man of a Mission long gone but a congregation still under his influence, was looking for two people.

And both of them were Alice.

"Lord," Esteban began in heavy tones, his prayer loud and foreboding, "those who die still live in Your presence," Alice listened to the sound of his heavy feet shuffling around Emmett, and knew what was coming next, "their lives change but do not end."

Esteban circles Emmett one, twice, as he finishes the prayer, before stopping in front of the ruined arm. He does not make a show of what he does next—he could have been bending down to pick up a fallen item from the ground, as casually as he moves.

He grabs Emmett's limp, unmoving hand, bends the arm at the elbow, and keeps bending until the open wound on the inside of his forearm presses firmly against the open wound on the inside of his exposed, purpled biceps. The noise it makes is horrid. There is a wetness—a squelch that their flesh does not normally produce in any natural way—that sounds when the opposite ends of the injury meet and the venom leaks out. Worse is the crackling shift of tendons and crunch of bone as his muscular arm bends in a way that should be impossible for his size. Where there used to be a sharp point to his elbow, there is a concave dent, proving the lack of connection between his humerus and his radius and ulna. Emmett doesn't scream but his full body shudder forces the two men holding him to tighten their grip. They jostle him just so and—

She didn't want to see.

She didn't wait to see.

For once in her life Alice didn't want to be forced to see the future. She wished for her earlier blindness, prayed for it, even. But there was little she could do now, knowing what she knew and what she'd seen. Emmett's screams punctuated every single one of her thoughts. His moans and gasps ripped her from her visions. But each and every time Alice forced herself to plunge back into the depths of her mind, digging dangerously deep, searching for the proper route, the key to their freedom.

Or at the very least, their survival.

Alice waits two extra minutes to ask Esteban for a pair of pants, speaking with a steady voice that begets pity and produces a smile from his mangled, torn face. Her Achilles tendons are nearly healed shut, wire embedded in the skin until her venom decides to erode it, and she knows this is as whole as she'll be. Alice whispers to the man in the room with her, her voice so quiet that only the two rooms can hear her pleas, asking for death. She waits for the second to enter, strikes like a viper, turns, takes out the first man, is ready for the third but he evades and waits, knowing that she's going to grab Emmett and waiting for his moment to strike.

God damnit, no!

Before Alice could throw herself back into her mind, a terrible sound echoed through her head. Emmett let out a gurgling so foul that Alice sat straight up, nearly catching the eye of the man watching her.

Her visions tried flickering through her attention at that moment, not of her own volition, but because of what was about to transpire about a dozen feet to her left. She shook her head viciously, uncaring whether the man watching her would see the movement as suspicious and restrain her. Suddenly, that didn't matter. What mattered was that she did not want to watch what was going to happen to Emmett next. She couldn't stop it from happening.

Alice didn't want to see.

She didn't want to watch this man kill her brother.

But Alice knew that no matter what happened now—no matter what eleventh hour confessions spilled from hers or Emmett's lips—she was next.

"I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings," Esteban's voice shook the walls and Alice curled back into herself, fingers plucking at the dirt under her nails while she listened to teeth break flesh. "And I offer you this, too. Amen."

A/N:

Summary: Alice witnesses Emmett's torture by Esteban, both in her mind and in the present, while cycling through vision after vision, fruitlessly attempting to find a way out that spares them from death. All options involve getting Esteban away and killing their three other captors. Esteban reveals, while carving into Emmett, that he is looking for two people, and both of them are Alice; he specifically demands the mate of Jasper Whitlock and the Volturi's targeted psychic. Emmett's torture threatens to leave him with deformities on his face, arms, and legs, meanwhile he boldly goads Esteban on in a blatant attempt to keep him away from Alice. Alice acknowledges that the only way for her and Emmett to survive is if they can take the abuse, and hopes that they can buy themselves time, as it's their only hope for survival.