chapter vii

-

It's not raining. It should be, with the sky splayed open and waiting for the inclement weather to roll through. Clouds hang heavy over the city, and the storm drains gurgle with last night's downpour, piping it out to the nearby ocean, turbulent and cold. Everything about Seattle is grey and rainy. Jacob can barely remember the muggy heat of summer in the southern states with the windows open and the sun on his face, now that he's again trapped in the coastal autumn.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, he thinks, but he can't remember how it should have been. He lets the thought slip away.

Jacob is walking on a street in Seattle. He's not really sure how he got there, not past following a scent a few hours back, a while ago when the sky was still dark. It's been long enough that he's lost the trail, and is wandering aimlessly past rows of suburban houses, hands in his pockets and head down. By now, it's late enough that even the drunkest clubbers have staggered home and fallen asleep. Late enough that even the night is beginning to fade.

There are only so many roads for him to travel. There are only so many places to look in the city, trails to follow, before he reaches the end. There isn't much time left.

Somewhere near the horizon, the sun is rising, feeble light behind the murky clouds. The raindrops start to fall. He keeps walking.

-

It's strange, this sudden absence. It leaves Jacob off-balance at every turn. He looks over his shoulder, looking for Edward trying to hold onto a smile, and instead he ends up staring at the impersonal blank walls. He walks to the refrigerator and gazes at the blood packets and doesn't realize what he's doing, not until it's too late. He goes to sleep and, expecting to see Edward, he wakes up alone.

In the murky light of early morning, he makes his way home. He sits down, alone with a beer, and listens to the radio hosts banter with each other. There's no easy fill for the empty air, not even drinking, though it tastes about right. He takes a swig of the beer, looks over, and is again dully surprised not to see Edward. It's too easy to forget, some moments, and too easy to remember for the rest. Like he breathes, he misses Edward.

The urge to move is tugging on him. It's a strange feeling. Jacob wasn't the one who had wanderlust under his skin, bleeding out for the next horizon, looking for something that was already gone; not the way Edward had been, when he got that look in his eyes, chasing down the miles through the lights and the shadows.

His thoughts fade out into silence, with not a werewolf or a vampire or even a human to acknowledge them. He doesn't feel real anymore. There's nobody else there to confirm his existence, and there's no need for him, not here.

He breathes, and misses Edward.

-

The window of the apartment overlooks another street. Not the same one, street or apartment, but close enough to be an irrelevant difference. It's still raining.

He can hear her high heels clicking against the linoleum, the snick of cupboards being opened and closed carelessly, fake wood cracking under the abuse. "Nobody needs this much junk food," Bella says, laughter in her voice. "They must be hideously overweight."

She wobbles over to him on her stilettos, hands caressing the outsides of her thighs, like she's checking to make sure they haven't expanded. Needless worries. Nothing will ever change for her, now.

"If it makes them happy," Edward murmurs. He can see the cars below them, speeding by, and his mind is caught by the headlights. Everybody on the street was going somewhere, moving forward, living in a fixed time; he'd somehow slipped between the cracks. Stayed still, for all these muted years.

Her footsteps, soft on the carpet, come up behind him and her hands slide around him, settling around his shoulders. She rests her head on his back. "You make me happy," she says, and he can feel her jaw moving against his spine.

Her body is the exact same temperature as his own, same temperature as the room. It's like they're not really there; just a daydream, released into the air.

"Why did you leave, Bella?" he asks, not moving. "Why did you run away after you were turned?"

For a moment her hands stiffen against his shoulders, but then she relaxes again, and presses herself closer to him. "Edward," she sighs. "Must we talk about this now?"

"I want to know."

She heaves another deep breath, unnecessary, and her breath is just dust in the room. "Very well," Bella says. "Do you mind if we take this somewhere else?"

They go to the master bedroom. It still smells like strangers, the couple who own the apartment, and there are photos of them hanging from the walls, clothes of theirs still on the floor. Edward sits on the bed, and Bella settles down next to him.

"Well. What do you want to know?" she asks, fidgeting with the hem of her miniskirt.

"Why'd you leave me?"

She makes a small, distressed sound. "It wasn't because of you!"

"Then why?" Edward asks, and he doesn't mean for his voice to crack like that.

"It's hard to explain, Edward. It wasn't you. A part of it was the blood, a bit, after the transformation," she begins awkwardly. "I mean, that was a big part of it, the blood, I really wanted it, but it wasn't just that."

"What was it, then?"

She pulls on her hair, avoiding his eyes, and finally confesses, "When I was turned…I expected to be more beautiful."

"But you were," Edward says.

She turns beseeching eyes on him. "Not as beautiful or Rosalie, or Alice, or any of them. It just wasn't good enough. Not for you." She smiles, touches his cheek with one slender finger. "You've always looked like an angel."

"You were…" Edward says again, trailing into silence.

Crimson eyes misted with memory, she either doesn't hear or doesn't listen, and drops her hand. "I thought being a vampire would fix things between us, make me more worthy of you. But it didn't. And I had to be, Edward, don't you see? I had to be perfect. You deserved it. You deserve the very best."

"Bella," he says, torn between longing and revulsion, because he did this, he did this to her, "Bella, no, it wasn't that, I loved you for yourself, as you were—"

Her mouth curves into a smile. "You loved me for my blood," she corrects.

Edward is stunned into silence.

"Or at least at first you did," she amends. "I'm not stupid. I knew, Edward. I always knew. But when we fell in love, I wanted to be someone you could look at, someone you could be proud of. I knew that I would have to be better to be with you."

"I didn't love you for your blood," he says, feeling sick.

"You don't now," she replies, and picks up his hand, placing it on her chest, right above where her heart had once kept her alive. "I'm not good enough yet, but I'll keep trying. I swear."

"Why did you kill those girls, Bella?" he whispers, voice cracking, and he sees the bloody sockets of the dead girl's eyes, staring at him, implicating him.

"It made me beautiful," she says, and smiles.

Like headlights in the dark, he can see her eyelashes flutter, calculating, but he doesn't move. Not when she kisses him, too hard and too desperate, hands coming up to bracket his face, because he doesn't know how to say no to her.

He wants to say no. He wants so many things, and none of them are this. All he does, though, is close his eyes.

-

Jacob loses track of the days, lets them slip away from him in a blur of sunrises and sunsets during rain storms. The world moves on without him there to witness.

Despite that, Alice finds him. Somewhere on the highway during yet another bout of rain at some ungodly hour of the night, she pulls up in front of him. She's driving a blue Porsche with bright red brake lights.

"Jacob," she says, throwing open the door of the car. "You look terrible."

He stops walking to stare at her. Her black hair is wet and plastered on her forehead, and she almost looks human, human enough that at first he can't place her face.

"Get in the car," she says.

"Alice?" he manages to say.

She rolls her eyes, expression turning into a scowl, and replies, "And Edward told me you were smart. Yes. Now, into the car, and try not to get the seats wet."

Numbly, Jacob shuffles around to the other side of the car and gets in, dripping wet, only to find Alice has laid towels over the passenger seat. There's more leg room than in the Volvo, but the interior smells too new, like the leather was freshly dyed and the metal was just welded. There's GPS navigation on the dashboard instead of a radio.

Alice revs the engine and the car screeches forwards, the rain lunging towards the windshield. The Porsche is much faster than the Volvo.

"What are you doing here?" Jacob asks.

She keeps her eyes on the road, swerving past a slow-moving truck. "I'm here to help you find Edward," she says.

"He doesn't want to be found."

"That's only what he thinks," she says dismissively. "And despite what he did to her, that bitch broke Edward's heart, and I'll be damned if he goes back to her like a whipped dog."

Jacob glances over at her, surprised at her language, and for the first time in days he feels more than partially awake. "Did you know this was going to happen?"

She raises one hand and scrubs at the short hair at the back of her neck, frowning into the rearview mirror. "No."

"Thought you could see the future."

"I'm not omnipotent," she says.

Jacob musters up the energy to glare at her, but like Edward, she simply ignores it. "What did you see, then?" he snaps.

On the outside, Alice seems calm, face completely serene, but her fingers tightening around the steering wheel gives her tension away. "Look, Jacob, I don't really care what you think of me, but believe me, I would rather die than watch this happen, again, and do nothing about it," she says, pressing her foot on the accelerator. The car jumps forward. "Right now there are so many different outcomes that I can't just narrow one down and call it destiny. So you can just shut up."

The car speeds on, in complete silence.

"I'm here to help you, by the way," Alice adds after a minute.

Jacob sighs. "Well, you're doing a great fucking job."

-

Strangely, the condo is exactly as Jacob left it three days ago. He's forgotten about places staying constant, not flickering and evaporating while he looks away, lost in the heat mirages in the rearview mirror.

Alice doesn't even bother flicking on the lights, just says, "Go have a shower."

"Why do you care?" Jacob says, not even looking up. He's too tired to have a proper rebellion against her, and as far as defiance went, it's a piss-poor effort.

"Because I have to live with your stench. You've been walking around the city for three days straight. You smell. Go clean yourself."

Her tone allows no argument, so Jacob obediently trudges off to the shower.

The bathroom is cramped, with the door hitting the toilet on the way in, and Jacob nearly knocks the upright sink over on his way to the shower. He pulls off his clothes. Alice is right, he is starting to smell, and he can't remember the last time he changed his clothes.

The porcelain shower is turning yellow with age, but the water is hot, steam condensing on the walls and ceiling, swirling around Jacob's feet. He can feel his shoulders relax.

He feels wasted. Like in the hazy time before he'd wolfed out, when he was fourteen and got so drunk at a party he was still feeling it the next day. He was smashed out of his mind, but he found it again later. Right now, he just feels tired and broken, unable to think clearly, like he's stumbling through life with fingers outstretched, grasping for something to hold onto.

Edward is still gone.

The shower wall is cool against his forehead, beaded with droplets, and his eyes are hot and prickling. He closes them. He lets the water beat down on his back, and tries not to think anymore.

-

Bella curls up in Edward's arms, head tucked in his chin.

"I love you," she says softly.

Edward doesn't reply. Through the window, he can see the sun rising, pale and uncertain against the line of dark buildings.

"I love you too."

-

Alice is flipping through the pile of newspapers, and doesn't look up as Jacob shuffles downstairs the next morning.

"Feeling better now?" she inquires, circling an article in red pen.

He pulls open the fridge and finds the remains of several take-out meals, which haven't started to go bad yet, and he keeps forgetting it's only been a few days. "No," he says, kicking the fridge shut. "I feel much cleaner, though."

Alice shakes her head. "We need a plan," she says.

"When has it ever been a 'we'?" Jacob snaps, sitting down on the table and sticking of fork into his leftover fried chicken. "Where's the rest of your family, anyways? Don't they want to help?"

"Well, you're back to your charming self, at least," she says.

"Answer the question."

"Of course they would want to help. The thing is, they don't know about it." She flashes him a smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "This is the best for everyone involved. Trust me."

The fried chicken tastes soggy. Jacob chews it anyways, watching Alice move onto a new paper and run her finger down the page, frowning. "I thought you didn't like me," he says.

Still she doesn't look up. "I'm indifferent to you, if that makes you feel better, but we need to work together if we're going to find Edward and Bella, because otherwise it'll never work."

"Maybe I don't want him back."

"Don't be stupid," she says. "You're in love with him."

"Well, maybe I'm not anymore."

"Really," she says, raising her eyebrows. "That's why you've just spent a few days wandering the streets looking for him like a lost puppy?" Jacob stayed silent. "Face it, you need my help."

"No. I don't."

"You know you do. You haven't had any luck on your own."

Jacob switches tactics, hoping to take her off-guard. "Why would you even come to me? Why don't you just use your freaky mojo to find him?"

"Doesn't work that way."

"Then you're not going to be able to help me, are you?"

Her fingers, pale and white against the grey newspaper, twitch, but she just turns another page and begins perusing it. "You're the stupidest person alive if you think 'mojo' is all I can do."

"Fuck you," Jacob retorts, sagging in his seat and pushing the chicken drumstick away. He's not hungry anymore.

She doesn't even bat an eyelash. "Very mature, Jacob."

There are dust motes landing on the table. Jacob watches them drift by, stirred by unseen currents. His human-skin feels too tight, fraying across his muscles, cracking with every tiny motion.

Alice is still waiting for his answer. Her eyes aren't moving, fixed on the paper, and she's unnaturally still, even for a vampire.

"How do I know I can trust you?" he asks.

She takes her time answering. "We both love Edward," she says. "I wouldn't do anything to betray that. Even if you can't bring yourself to believe anything else, believe in that."

After that, silence. The rain is loud, gurgling through the gutters and battering against the windows. Jacob mulls it over.

Finally, he asks, "How are we going to find him?"

"Not on an empty stomach," she says, snapping back into motion, closing the red-marked paper. "Come on, we'll get breakfast. My treat."

Jacob doesn't understand how her mind works.

They end up driving the Porsche to a cheap diner filled with minivans and trucks, lured off the highway by the promise of cheap food. It's falsely cheerful place, with red vinyl seats and bad murals on the wall and the windows, and the waitress looks hungover, but it all seems basically harmless. Alice orders a huge breakfast for Jacob.

"Your body must produce a lot of insulin," she says, watching with clinical interest as he jams a whole pancake into his mouth and tries to chew it. A cup of coffee steams away, untouched, in front of her hands.

Jacob cocks his head in question.

"If you normally eat that much, you must have more than the normal amount of insulin on your blood," she says. "Carlisle would be able to explain it better. He'd like to see how werewolves work."

Jacob gives up on chewing and just swallows the pancake. "Why, so he can figure out how to kill us?"

Her eyes glint, and she taps her nails on the chipped table. "Hardly. Carlisle is a doctor, not a murderer, and aside from Emmett, he's the only one in the family who likes you."

"Emmett?" Jacob asks, taken aback. "Why does he like me?"

"He thinks it's cool that you're a werewolf."

"Oh."

"He also said that he thinks you'd probably appreciate sports and video games more than Jasper and Edward. Emmett really wants someone to go to the hockey playoffs with him."

"Huh," Jacob says.

This time, Alice's smile does reach her eyes, crinkling her skin. "That's what I said," she tells him, adding a packet of sugar to her coffee with calm precision. Not even a granule of sugar falls on the table.

After she doesn't say anything else, Jacob turns his attention back to his meal, and by the time he sits back and stretches out, he's feeling almost full. Alice is looking out the window at the pale wash of dawn, eyes fixed somewhere over the cars rushing down the road.

"Are you done?" she asks. "Good. We need to start searching."

Not bothering to reply, he watches as she pulls a twenty out of her purse and put it on the table, next to the coffee, and stands up. She pauses to look back at him.

"Coming?" she asks.

"Yeah. Yeah, for sure," he replies, a beat too late, and gets up to follow her out the door.

She's definitely not Edward, but the little details, sometimes, are exactly the same. It keeps catching him unawares.

You fucking freak, he's gone. You haven't found him yet, and you're not going to find him now. He's probably gone to Canada. Or Mexico. Fuck, maybe even Europe by now.

Stupid bastard.

I don't miss him.

If Jacob just left now, went back to La Push, he knows the pack would take him back, given enough time. All he had to do was leave.

Alice, hand on the door handle of the Porsche, glances up as he slouches over to the car. "All right?" she asks.

"I could just leave," he says.

She gives him a look and opens the door. "You're not going to, though."

"No," he says, sliding into the car. "I'm just saying. It's a possibility."

"An unlikely one," she retorts, sliding into the driver's seat and staring the engine.

"Why didn't you tell your family that you came here?" he asks.

She turns out of the parking lot without the familiar click of the turn signals, a move that makes even Edward look like a safe driver. "I like doing things on my own," she replies, accelerating. "Other people confuse things."

"What about Jasper? I thought you two were, y'know…" Jacob wraps his fingers together and holds them up to demonstrate. "Married?"

Her mouth thins. "Marriage doesn't mean we have to do everything together."

"Oh, c'mon, you two are happily married in undead bliss or whatever. Don't give me that crap."

Alice heaves a sigh and taps her fingers against the steering wheel, flashing the gold of her wedding band. "I love Jasper, but…Edward's my brother, and we look out for each other. We always have."

Jacob absorbs that, and then says, "Why are you being so honest? I thought you didn't like me."

"I don't," she says, "But I'd like your help, and I know you're sizing me up, so lying seemed like a bad idea. And you've been good to Edward. It's the least I can do to answer your questions, however stupid."

"Well," Jacob says, and can't think of anything else to say. He settles with, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she says imperturbably, and runs a red light.

-

Alice's plan for finding Edward is basically the same as Jacob's plan for finding Edward, which boils down to walking around until they found him.

"Okay, so why can't you foresee the future and find him?" Jacob asks her as they walk down the block, facing the accusing stares of the people in cars. He hits the crosswalk button. "I'm not trying to bitch about this, but—seriously. Why not?

Alice looks tired in the way that vampires look tired, all marble skin and sad, inhuman eyes. "I told you, it doesn't work that way."

"Why not?"

The crosswalk light changes, counting down, and they cross the street. "Fine," she huffs. "I'll try to use short words, so you can understand."

"Nice, Alice, really kind of you."

"The future has many different possibilities. It isn't set. Usually, I can see the most likely outcomes, because they're the clearest of all the visions, but right now about all the possibilities have an equal chance of coming true."

"Why'd you even come here, then?"

"We've been over this before, Jacob," she says, sighing. "I came here because it narrowed the possibilities down. They keep changing, every second, but they're still hard to see. It's a mostly useless power, really, because as much as it does help sometimes, a lot of the time my visions don't come true."

"Really?" he asks.

"Comic books don't get things right, Jacob."

His reply is automatic; "Fuck you," he says, but then adds, "What do you see, then?"

"I see Edward dying. I see everyone dying, a lot of the time. So far those visions haven't come true." She looks down, shoulders curling inwards. "I hope they stay that way."

At loss for what else to say, Jacob replies, "That sucks."

She snorts. "Yes, it does."

They keep walking.

He misses home. Like a hole in the chest, he misses the pack, even though he wished he'd never been part of it, wishes that things had stayed simple and that the vampires had never come to Forks, mixing them all up in something mythical and too big for them all. He misses his family.

"Jacob?" Alice is saying.

He wrenches his thoughts back to the present. "Sorry?"

"I was asking if you've already checked the apartment."

"First thing I did. There was nothing there."

She looks sideways at him, only a little bit suspicious. "Why didn't you try to stop him from leaving?"

The question that has plagued him. "It's stupid," Jacob says. "It's not a good reason at all."

"Try me," Alice suggests.

He bites his lip, trying to find a way to put it. "I didn't think I could stop him," he says, at length. "And I didn't want to know. I think I wouldn't have been able to make him stop. So I didn't try."

Her lips turn down, but she shrugs, and doesn't press for more details. "So, nothing in the apartment. Did you find anything else?"

"No. I couldn't find them. I still have the Volvo and all the credit cards and things, so I'm assuming they didn't go anywhere."

Mid-step, Alice stops, and sighs, running her hands through her hair and making it stick up. "I guess we do have to use my visions, then," she says, frown deepening. "It's already been too many days."

Jacob just nods. The whole thing is spinning out of his hands—it has been for a while. For now, he can only follow blindly, hoping they end up in the right place.

-

They go onwards.

-

"I love you," Bella whispers, looking up with a smile, hands supporting a dead man's head. His neck is broken. Edward can smell the blood dripping from his slack mouth, welling up in the scrapes on his knuckles where he'd tried to fight back.

It's not long now, he tells himself. It all feels so foggy, though, and he can barely remember the time between losing Bella and finding her again. Only she's different now. She's really fucking different.

She lowers her head to bite the man's neck. His skin tears away, and Edward looks back to the street, hoping against hope that he'll see Jacob driving down it.

Not long now.

-

Jacob and Alice are sitting in an internet café, combing through the news sites in an effort to find any recent stories that could be about vampires. The lights overhead give everything a slightly unreal look, disconnected from reality, and all Jacob can see on the screens is that the stock market is crashing over and over again.

"I knew this would happen," Alice mutters beside him. "Stupid Edward, he's kept me from the market. Looks like most of my funds are wiped out."

"Big deal. Sell one of the cars." Jacob doesn't have any sympathy for her plight; he's wondering how the people back at La Push are doing. Those without several million's dollars of unused machinery in their garages to fall back on.

He's about to log onto his long-neglected email account when Alice hisses. "Shit," she says, in a gasp.

"What?" he asks. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle—he's never heard her sound like that before, like she doesn't have enough air to force out the words. She sounds scared.

"Don't look around, and don't panic," she says quietly. That only freaks him out more. "The Volturi found us."

It feels like something's walked over his grave. "Shit," he echoes. "How screwed are we?"

"Depends on how polite we are to them."

"Fuck." Jacob stares at the screen in front of him, distantly recognizing it as his email inbox. There's a whole bunch of them that he hasn't read yet, and probably never will. "Can't we escape out the back?"

Alice screws up her face, focusing, and a spasm of pain shakes her. She opens her eyes. "No good. We'll get killed. They've got the place surrounded."

"Fuck. How did they find us?"

"I don't know!" Alice said, before regaining her composure, smoothing out the creases in her face, and repeated, "I don't know."

The whole situation is giving Jacob vertigo. "What the hell do we do now?"

"The only thing we can do," Alice says, the ghost of a smile crossing her face. "We go see what they want."

Jacob stares at her. "That's a terrible plan."

She shrugs and gets up, pushing in her chair. "What can I say? I've always wanted a stand-off. Come on."

-

The sun is setting in blaze of golden light, but it's early enough that the glow is making Alice's skin sparkle. The two of them move into the elongated shadows of the alleys and wait. Jacob kind of feels like he should be smoking. Murdering someone. Just standing in the deserted alley, waiting for something to happen, feels odd.

"Whatever they do, don't offer any resistance at all," Alice mutters to him. "They'll use that as an excuse to kill you. Let me do the talking."

Jacob elbows her, but the height difference is enough that it hits in her in the shoulder. "So your powers are useful for something after all, aren't they?" he says, offering her a smile.

She returns it slightly grimly, brushing her hair back from her forehead. "Try not to get killed."

The air is crisp, growing cooler. They wait.

In a minute, a vampire shows up. He's dressed in a suit, with tie that's probably made of Italian silk or something expensive, and is wearing a smirk like it's just another part of the outfit. "You must be the werewolf and the sister," he says to them.

Alice meets his gaze calmly, hands in her pockets and chin in the air. "You must be Volturi," she retorts. "Why have you got us surrounded?"

"I'm sorry, my dear, but I can't tell you that." His gaze shifts over to Jacob, considering him, but he looks back to Alice to answer. "You're pawns in a deal, so to speak. Our intentions are not to cause you harm—unless we feel you're threatening us."

Jacob bristles, but Alice puts a hand on his arm, clamping down with hard fingers and shooting him a look. "Are you going to take us somewhere?" she asks the vampire.

He just smiles and says, "Only for a while."

"I don't suppose we have any choice," she says, still in the same level voice, but Jacob can see her eyelids twitch, and her fingers go tighter around his arms.

"You don't," the vampire agrees, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves. "Come with me. And please, for your own sakes, don't try anything."

Alice and Jacob exchange a look. He tilts his head towards the vampire, eyebrows raised in question; she frowns and shakes her head, and tugs on his arm a little, pulling him forwards. They all walk out of the alley. It's probably the last dingy back alley Jacob is ever going to see; he mourns the loss as he steps into the sunlight, trying to shield Alice.

The vampire watches them. When Jacob meets his gaze, he utters a short laugh and opens the door of a waiting white car, indicating the backseat with a careless gesture. "Honestly, when they told me you were fucking the brother…" The vampire shrugs. "I didn't believe them, but maybe you're just working your way through the whole family."

His grin is full of sharp teeth and malice. Jacob can feel the wolf clawing through his skin, seething with rage, and braces himself for the shape-shift.

Alice yanks on his arm again. "Don't do anything stupid," she growls, jaw clenched, and pushes him into the car's backseat. She slides in after him, and the vampire closes the door.

Jacob drops his head, feeling caged. The car has no leg space.

"We're fucked," he says.

She sighs, and releases his arm, only to pat it consolingly. "Pretty much, yes."

A panel separates the back from the front, and Jacob can't see anything through it, or the darkened windows; all he can do is feel the vibrations and see the faint shapes of trees blurring by the windows as the car begins the drive to nowhere.

Alice takes his hand and grips it, hard. "It's going to be okay," she says.

Despite what he's trying to tell himself, Jacob is really, really scared. He squeezes her hand back anyways, trying to infuse it with warmth, and misses Edward's skin for a painful moment.

"We're going to be fine," he says. It feels like a prayer.

-

The car drives for a long, long time. Jacob measures out the minutes in his own heartbeats, feels them pulsing against Alice's lifeless skin. She looks washed-out in the dim light, eyes downcast.

"Got any aces up the sleeve?" Jacob asks quietly.

That makes her roll her eyes, but also breaks the unnatural stillness of her face. "Maybe," she says. "I'm looking right now. It's gotten even murkier."

The car lurches to a stop. Jacob finds himself oddly reluctant to let go of her hand, to lose that bit of contact; but he does, and braces his legs against the back of the seats.

Someone opens the door. Jacob glares, and the same vampire as before just smiles, teeth small and sharp like fish scales. "We've arrived," he says.

Jacob gets out first, blinking at the sudden artificial light. They're in an abandoned warehouse, completely empty but for a few stacked cardboard boxes and faint, dusty imprints on the floor, probably where things had once been stocked.

"Why are we here?" Alice asks. There's only the faintest of tremors in her voice.

All in all, there are six vampires there with them. The first one looks over Jacob's head and nods, and before he can even react, Jacob feels his arms being wrenched up behind his back. He goes rigid, but the person holding him jerks his arms up further anyways, and he growls.

The first vampire saunters up to him, still grinning, and pulls off his sunglasses. His eyes are blood red. "I hear that you're responsible for Felix's death, Jacob Black."

"Go to hell," Jacob snarls.

A smirk. "You're just lucky Jane isn't here, or this would be truly painful. Without her, we have to do this the old-fashioned way."

He steps back. Jacob can see the punch coming from a mile away, but there's nothing he can do to stop it, despite his efforts to pull away. The vampire's fist slams into his jaw with a crack.

Jacob's vision goes red, and his head lolls to the side. The vampires are laughing. Somewhere in the distance, he can hear Alice yelling at them to stop.

Jacob straightens up, painfully, and looks the vampire in the eye. "That all you got, bitch?"

The vampire is holding his own wrist, looking thoughtful, but his eyes darken. "Not even close," he says, and punches Jacob again, harder than before. Jacob head snaps to the side, and the vampire gets closer, fingers digging into his chin, eyes narrowed."I'm going to cut you into tiny pieces before you'll even consider dying."

Jacob spits out blood. "Taking Felix's death a little bit personally, aren't you? Were you fucking him? Or was he fucking you?"

That earns him two more punches, and a knee to the gut that has him doubling over, wheezing. "He was like a brother to me," the vampire says, low and deadly, and after that, Jacob's world is reduced to a red haze, punctuated by sharp bursts of pain. It's all he can do to hold on.

Sometime after he feels most of his ribs splinter, Jacob mercifully blacks out, to the sound of Alice raging against the vampires in the background.

-

Edward makes his move just after sunset, when the night is only beginning to leech the warmth out of the day. The covers of the bed are wrinkled, but Bella is in the kitchen, singing along to the radio in a voice Edward can barely recognize.

"Edward," she says, looking up and beaming. "What do you want to do now?"

"We're going hunting," he replies, throat raw.

Her eyes light up. "Who?" she asks, already turning off the radio, stilettos skittering against the floor.

"Some old friends. You'll see," Edward says. He takes her hand in his. "Come on, we need to get going."

For a fraction of a second, she resists, eyes sharpening slightly, but then allows herself to be towed after him. "Who?" she asks again.

"It's a surprise," Edward says. "You'll see."

-

Jacob wakes up later. There's no longer any sunlight filling the cracks in the warehouse walls, and when he moves, the broken bones seem to have healed at least a little bit.

He and Alice are both chained to support poles, hands behind their backs, and there are still Volturi standing nearby. One gives them a half-glance and then looks away again.

"Jacob?" Alice says. Her voice sounds rougher than usual.

"Alice?"

She exhales and goes limp against her pole. "I thought they'd killed you."

"Takes more than a pussy-ass beating to kill me," Jacob replies, although it does hurt if he breathes in too deeply. He stops trying to breathe. "How long have we been here for?"

"A few hours."

"What the fuck," he says, too tired to add any emotion to his voice, and rests his head against the pole. "Are you okay?"

She shrugs. "I'm fine. They slapped me a bit when I tried to get them to stop hitting you after you were knocked out, but other then that I'm fine."

"Guess we pissed them off."

He can only see her from the corner of his eye, but she looks even smaller than usual with her hands tied behind her, hunched over her knees and hair falling into her eyes. He barely even knows her, doesn't fully trust her, but she's all that he's got right now.

The manacles knock against the floor when he shifts, trying to get more comfortable on the floor. "Why haven't they killed us yet?" he asks.

"I asked them," Alice says. "Then I looked. All I got is that they're waiting for someone."

"Who?"

She closes her eyes for a bit longer than a standard blink. When she opens them, the pain is close to the surface, strong enough to make looking into her eyes like looking into the sun.

"Edward," she says. "They're waiting for Edward."

-

Edward knows Jacob's scent. From miles away, he can track it, chase it down; he's caught it before, two nights ago, maybe more. Bella hovers beside him, anxious. She hasn't realized yet.

"Where are we going?" she asks again.

He pulls on her hand, maneuvering them through the shadows, avoiding the tired eyes of people stumbling down the streets. "Hunting."

She stops dead, feet planted in their flimsy stilettos, a snarl curling her voice. "Edward. Tell me where we're going." Seeing his surprised look, she relents, and says in a softer tone, "Please?"

He grinds his teeth, feeling the phantom bile rising his throat—though it's been years since he's tasted the acid of it, choking him—but manages a sickly smile.

"The Volturi are here," he finally says. "I thought we'd pay them a visit."

Bella's eyes widen. "Are you…are you sure?" she says, eyebrows knitting.

"Bella," he says, clasping her hand and pressing his lips to it, looking deep into her eyes. "They tried to break us apart. They wanted to kill us both. It's time we had revenge."

The streetlights cast shadows across her face, making the creases between her eyebrows look deeper, and in the space of a second, she looks human again, fretful and concerned. It passes, and her skin again sparkles slightly in the orange glow. She smiles at Edward.

"Of course, darling," she says. "How far away are they?"

"About a mile," he replies, lightheaded with relief.

"I'll race you," she challenges, laughing, and Edward feels almost physically ill.

You did this, he reminds himself, running after her, trying to keep his feelings under control. The buildings and faces of strangers blur. You made her like this.

Jacob's scent grows stronger, laced with fear and pain, and Edward slows down. They're in the warehouse district, and the pavement is rough and cracked, surrounded by a tall chain link fence, topped with barbed wire. He can see two white cars ahead, and it smells like vampires and foreign skin.

Bella is closer to the warehouse than he is, looking worried again.

"Is Jacob…?" she begins.

He shakes his head, feels the lie scratching against his teeth. "I don't know."

The frequency of Jacob's mind is familiar, comforting, and he reaches out mentally for it, hearing Jacob's voice in his head again.

I'm going to kill that one first, that fucking bastard, he is going to cry like a little bitch when I'm through with him, then that one, because he never stops talking on his cell phone, and then…

It feels like something had been missing in Edward's chest, and was suddenly replaced, leaving him whole for the first time in days.

"You didn't know?" Bella says, mouth pursed, and he looks at her one last time.

It's not the girl he loved anymore, though. The person who stands before him is a strange woman, skin pale with vampirism, eyes reddened and dilated, but the most striking change is what lies behind them. She's not Bella anymore.

Goodbye, Edward thinks. "I love you, Bella," he says, a farewell, the only one he's going to get.

She tilts her head, studying him. "I love you too," she replies.

"This is the warehouse," he says, looking towards the looming building in the darkness. "This is it."

Bella jumps first, leaping over the fence and wire on top of it, and he follows her, hitting the ground silent as a cat. The air is cold and damp on his face. He pauses on the way to the warehouse, crouching near the vans, and slashes the tires with his hands.

Already at the doors, Bella looks back. "How sneaky do we have to be?" she asks.

He reaches past her and turns the doorknob, unlocked, and pushes the creaking door open.

"We can go right in," he says, staring into the darkness of the warehouse. "They're expecting us."

Even if she herself doesn't realize it, subconsciously, Bella knows that something's wrong. "Edward," she begins, not moving, "I don't…"

"Do you trust me?" he interrupts, hating himself, but he can still hear Jacob's thoughts in his mind, hears Alice's, and there's no other way.

She doesn't even blink. "Of course."

"Then walk in there."

She still looks doubtful.

"I swear that everything will be all right," Edward says.

She looks back at him, eyes searching his face, but he meets her gaze and doesn't look away, keeps his hands braced against the doorframe.

Finally, she sighs, and walks through the door.

Edward offers a brief prayer, dead in the air and addressed to nobody, and follows her inside.

It's dark in the belly of the warehouse. Edward can barely make out the two figures, shackled to the poles and facing away from him, but once he sees them his heart leaps; they're Jacob and Alice, and both of them seem to be alive.

There are six other vampires there, and they all turn to watch Bella and Edward enter. "Cullen," one says. "You're late."

Edward can see Jacob jerk in surprise, but Alice doesn't move. Edward tries not to look at either of them, and instead looks at the vampire, who has crimson-colored eyes and an unpleasant smirk.

"It doesn't matter," Edward says.

Beside him, losing some of her momentum, Bella whispers, "Edward, what's going on?"

"Did you not tell her?" the vampire sneers. "Did you not tell any of them that they're bartering chips in your little game?"

Edward lifts his chin. "I kept my end of the deal," he retorts. "Let them go."

"Of course," the vampire says. "But first…"

The vampire walks closer, footsteps echoing against the cavernous walls of the warehouse. The other vampires all shift behind him, covering the exits, and for a moment Edward almost panics, but he manages to stand still when the other vampire circles around them. Bella flinches and grabs Edward's arm, staring over her shoulder with wide eyes.

"What going on?" she demands.

The other vampire merely smiles.

Edward pries her hand off his arm, not looking at her, and lets it fall. Her eyes are huge, shocked, and she presses both hands against her mouth, imploringly. "Edward," she whispers.

"I'm sorry," he says numbly.

"Come here, Bella," the other vampire says, grabbing her.

She tries to get away, moving faster and more vicious than she would've ever been capable of before, but it's not enough. Another vampire steps forward and together they manage to drag her over to the rest of the group, though she struggles wildly, screaming.

Edward looks away.

He can hear it, though, even as he looks blindly ahead at the steel rivets on the walls; he can hear one of the vampires crack their knuckles under the increasing hysteria of Bella's shrieking. He hears her scream his name, one last time.

Then there is a sickening ripping noise, and silence.

-

It feels like an eternity before the vampire strolls back over. His face is black with blood in the darkness, but his eyes gleam, and he holds a burned-out match in his hand. It leaves black streaks on his palm. Edward can see the glow of the fire through the cracks in the warehouse walls. He can smell the burned vampire flesh, like a shell of a person, finally laid to rest.

"We're finished," he says. "Now it's your turn. And please try to run. It'll make it more fun."

Edward's hands are trembling, so he puts them in his jacket, feeling them heavy against his stomach. "Until dawn," he says. "Give me until dawn."

The vampire studies his face, flickering from his eyes to his jaw, a smirk curving the edge of his bloodied mouth. "Why should I?" he asks. "I have no guarantee that you'll return."

"You have my word."

The vampire laughs in his face. "And what's that worth?" he says. "You killed that girl without a second thought. You said you loved her, you cold, sick bastard."

When Edward remains silent, the vampire shrugs and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, looking at the smear of blood with detached interest. "I can understand the need to get in one last fuck. You have until dawn."

Edward nods, throat working, and steps past him, heading over to where Alice and Jacob are slowly, stiffly standing up, faces cast into high relief by the flames of Bella's corpse.

"Alice…" he says.

She gives him a look, holding her wrists, and walks by without a word.

Edward stares after her, stomach twisting, and feels a large, warm hand land on his shoulder. "Is Bella dead?" Jacob asks. His face is purple with bruises, and he's moving stiffly.

Edward can only nod.

Jacob is quiet, and Edward can't look at him, can't look at anywhere but the dirty cement floor and relive the moment he heard her die, over and over again in his head.

"Good," Jacob says, and his arms come around Edward. Edward hugs him back, almost reflexively, and can feel him trembling. "That means it's over."

"It's not over yet," Edward mutters, quiet enough that only he himself hears it. Then, he says, louder: "Let's go."

The six vampires watch them go, like sharks, and Edward begins to unwillingly count down the hours.

-

And so they go on.

-

"You're leaving, aren't you?" Alice says quietly.

They're standing in the parking lot of the condo, next to the two cars. The sky is dark above them, with only a few visible stars, and lit with the orange glow of the city. Edward can hear pebbles crunching when he shifts his weight from foot to foot. The air smells like rain and wind, clean and fresh.

"I have to," Edward says.

Alice's eyes are achingly sad. "I know," she says simply, lacing her fingers with Edward's like it was enough to keep him there. Maybe it would have been enough, once. "You always had to be so goddamn self-sacrificing."

Edward squeezes her hand, and then gently detangles their fingers. "I did what I had to," he says, and kisses her on the forehead, not allowing himself to linger. "I love you," he says, stepping back.

"I love you too," Alice says, voice wavering. "Don't do it. Don't go. You've got us, you've got Jacob, now, too, you don't have to go. We'll find a way to save you."

"I'm sorry," Edward says, and takes a step back.

Alice huddles in on herself, hair ruffling in the breeze; she has never seemed more impossibly destroyable to Edward, like a chalk drawing in the rain. Edward aches for her.

"Tell the others that I love them," he says. "I'm sorry, Alice, I'm so sorry, but this was the only way."

She doesn't reply. Her eyes are unmercifully dry, but Edward knows her, and he knows what he's done to her. She swallows, hard, and looks in the other direction.

He turns around and walks away.

-

The interior of the condo is silent and still. The shadows on the walls look surreal, almost, and Edward walks past them without any noise, stepping up the staircase and onto the landing. He pauses in front of the master bedroom's door, trying to salvage anything that was left of his courage.

Four hours left.

"I'm awake, you don't have to hover," Jacob says, lying on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. He turns his attention over to Edward. "What's up?"

Edward laughs, a dry, choking sound. "I don't know," he says, sitting down on the mattress.

Jacob sits up, waiting.

Edward is overly aware of Jacob's presence, and fists his hands on the bed's cover, trying to erase the memories he has, of Jacob and Bella both. "I owe you an explanation," he says.

"You do," Jacob says calmly. He doesn't press the issue. Being beaten nearly to death seems to have mellowed his temper, for the time being at least.

The blankets are warm, probably from Jacob's heat. Edward rubs his hand against the cover, trying to capture it, but his hands only fray the fabric. "I made a deal," Edward says. It doesn't even feel like he's talking, and his voice, hoarse and broken, doesn't sound like his at all. "With the Volturi, they contacted me, told me not to tell you. So I didn't. They came for me. They said I could help them, help them find Bella, and I told them I wouldn't, but then they said they would kill you and my family. All of them."

"And then you left. You agreed?" Jacob says, reaching out to touch the back of Edward's neck. His fingers are hot.

"Of course I did. That's why I left you. I'm sorry I did that to you, but I had to find her."

"I understand," Jacob says, soothingly, rubbing his palm in circles across Edward's back.

It's too much. Edward curls up, head touching his knees and shaking, and Jacob reaches out and pulls him into a hug. "I'm sorry," Edward mutters. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

"Stop it. Edward listen to me," Jacob begins, but Edward buries his face in his shoulder and breathes in shakily.

"I'm a monster, Jacob."

"You're not," he replies immediately. "You did what you had to do. I would've killed her. She murdered all those girls in cold blood, remember? She would've killed more. It was necessary."

"Necessary," Edward chokes out, hands tightening on Jacob's back. "It wasn't fucking necessary."

Jacob just holds him a little bit more closely, rocking back and forth and making meaningless, quiet noises, stroking Edward's hair. "It's going to be okay," he says. "It'll be okay."

"All these years, I tried to be human," Edward says. "I tried not to kill anybody. And look at where that got me."

Jacob kisses his forehead. "It'll be okay," he says.

They're too short of adrenaline, too tired and bruised and broken to have sex, but they curl up next to each other anyways. Edward spends his last three hours with Jacob, watching him sleep, memorizing his face, feeling the leaden heart in his chest ache.

He waits until he's sure Jacob is asleep. Then, he shifts over and kisses him softly, one last time.

"I love you," he whispers.

He gets up after that, goes away and leaves, and only looks back once.

-

"If you don't agree to help us, Edward, we'll have to force you to," Aro says, still smiling.

Edward raises his eyebrows, trying to look unruffled. "How are you going to do that?"

"There are people you care about," Aro says, watching intently, looking for a reaction. "Your family. Nice little Alice. Your 'father'."

As much as he tries to hide it, Edward flinches, and the smile on Aro's face widens. "We'll kill them, nice and slow, if you don't make this deal."

Edward stares mutely up at him, and then looks down, finally acquiescing. "If I bring you Bella, you have to promise not to hurt them," he says. "Any of them. You let them all go, including Jacob."

"Oh? You really think Bella is worth that much to us?" Aro laughs. "We're going to kill the werewolf, regardless of her death or not. He murdered one of our own."

It feels, suddenly, like the room has gone freezing cold. "No," Edward says, lips numb. "You can't."

Aro arches a brow. "Can't we?"

"No," Edward repeats.

"What else do you have to offer, Edward?" Aro asks, still smiling. "What do you have that we could want?"

Edward sneers back at him, but feels fear sliding around his neck, heavy as a noose. "My life," he says. "My life for the werewolf's."

Aro's smile turns huge, stretching out his translucently pale skin. "You would trade your own life? After over a century of youth, you would willingly step into the void?"

"It's what I'm offering," Edward says.

"Interesting," Aro says, studying him. "Very interesting. You know, I would've accepted having you work for us, but this is so much better. You're quite the martyr, aren't you, my dear boy? Quite an admirable trait."

Aro stands up, dusting off the front of his robes. "Your offer is definitely accepted. It was a pleasure doing business with you, Edward."

-

Dawn is coming. Edward can see the road ahead of him, long and beckoning, and for the first time, the sight doesn't terrify him. The night is almost over.

Rain lashes against the windows, streaking silver down the glass, and he doesn't think of Bella or Jacob or Alice, any of the people he's leaving behind; all he can see now is the empty stretch of highway, the miles he must cross before the sun rises again.

The road calls to him, littered with empty promises and wasted years.

Edward starts the car.

-

you and me
we're in this together now

none of them can stop us now
we will make it through somehow

you and me
if the world should break in two

until the very end of me
until the very end of you

-

THE END

Thank you all SO MUCH for your support and reviews and recommending this to people, it really warms my heart. I'm sorry if you guys didn't like the final scene, but...it was never meant to end happily. Haha. Sorry.

Maybe Jacob comes after him, though. Then they move to Canada and bake cookies. The real end.