#b4 any of u say anything: you're welcome that I didn't do this in cotn

[flowerslut]

happy whumptober 

I’ll be following the lead of @volturialice in doing however many of these as I can in a Very Random order throughout the month. They will all be painfully unedited and posted as they’re written. Tonight’s prompt is a ‘canon’-divergent piece for my Call of the Night readers. (MAJOR SPOILERS for those who haven’t finished CotN)

No 16. A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY Forced to Beg | Hallucinations | Shoot the Hostage

Rating: T for allusions to violence Words: 2,238 Summary: The Protectors don’t make it to the clearing in time.

Borrowed Time

There isn’t a clock in the room.

There’s nothing, really. Not a bed—there would be no purpose for such a thing—or a chair—again, it would be meaningless—or even a window. Not one leading indoors or out. There’s a tiny vent on the ceiling, circulating air he doesn’t need to breathe, and there’s an intercom next to the black-painted door. The intercom is as pointless as the vent, in Jasper’s opinion. He hasn’t had a visitor in days.

Or maybe it’s been months.

He doesn’t quite think it’s been that long; his thirst isn’t bothering him as much as it usually does on a regular, everyday basis. (Or at least, he doesn’t think it is.) Which means he has to have fed recently. Which means someone has brought him blood. (Probably. He doesn’t think he’s hallucinated his meals.)

It doesn’t even frustrate him that he doesn’t remember. Or that he can’t tell what is real.

But there isn’t a clock in his room.

Sure, it won’t exactly help him orient himself. Knowing whether it is nine AM or six PM makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, but it may help settle him more.

His vision shimmers and blurs slightly. Jasper does what he’s done for days (or weeks or months) now: he stares straight ahead, unable to even brace himself, as the hallucination seizes him.

He doesn’t mind them anymore. After all, he’s been powerless to stop their onslaught. Just in the same way he’s powerless to control anything he does while they take over. It’s a strange feeling. He’s slowly becoming accustomed to the way his mind and body act while the world around him—a world that he’s not entirely sure is real or not—morphs and shifts.

He’s barely aware of the way he screams sometimes. At nothing, at everything.

It’s as if he’s been split in two. He is Jasper. He knows that much. But whatever hold Skye has put on him—whatever sickness she’s afflicted his mind with—has forced him, or the essence of who he is, to retreat far back into the recesses of his mind. When he’s able to think coherent thoughts he wonders if he’ll ever be able to make it back out of the pit he’s dug for himself in his own mind. In the area of his subconsciousness that is still his.

He’s partly aware of how he sees Maria in front of him. She’s dangling something, trying to draw his attention. He focuses on the detached limb she’s waving in front of his face, as if taunting him, and instantaneously he recognizes Alice’s skinny wrist.

He lunges at Maria but when his hands squeeze around her throat suddenly she’s not in his grasp and he’s spinning and hissing and screaming.

“You did so good,” he hears her voice purr as he desperately tries to find her in this room. “You did everything I needed you to.” Her accented voice is as high and clear as it’s ever been. 

The part of his mind that is still sane struggles to be heard. She isn’t here. She’s lying. Alice is fine. Alice is okay. Focus. Ignore it.

But Jasper growls and lunges and yells for so long that eventually it’s been so long since he heard Maria’s voice in his ear that he doesn’t know how long he’s been screaming for.

And there isn’t even a clock in the room.

His body calms down as his mind begins to agonize over the woman he loves.

Alice. He wants to cry out for her. Where are you?

But he’s terrified to even attempt to speak the words out loud. He isn’t confident in his body’s ability to obey an order from the part of his mind that still belongs to him. And even if he could find his tongue and utter that two-syllable name he’s petrified that Maria’s voice will answer in reply.

Dead. She’s dead and you killed her. Those are the words she would say. Those are the words he’s heard her say in his mind for days or weeks or months now. Even before he’d been confined to this room they were the words he’d been haunted with. From the first nightmare Skye gifted him with to the most vivid hallucinations that seize him in this tiny, inescapable room.

He’s not entirely sure where he is. He knows he’s not in the clutches of Maria or her radicals any longer. The only solid memory he’s been able to form in the past few months is of the night his comrades took him back into their custody.

The smell of funeral pyres burning had registered in his senses before his airways had been cut off with a strong arm wrapping around his neck, ready to pluck his head from his shoulders at a moments notice.

He would’ve recognized Emmett’s signature hold anywhere and would have cried with relief if he’d been able to inhale enough air to complete the motion, but he was instead stuck frozen. After an unknown amount of time being subjected to Maria’s manipulation and Skye’s torture, he had nearly forgotten what it felt like to see, and to feel, and to breathe the air around him.

He’d forgotten what it felt like to exist in the real world.

With the way Emmett was holding him, Jasper’s head was stuck upward, staring as smoke filtered it’s way into the sky, the dark gray slowly blending into the blackness and dimming the stars above.

“Maria,” he managed to choke the word out with the little bit of air still left in his lungs. Kill her, he screamed mentally, just in case Edward was nearby.

And he was. Not two seconds later the sound of Edward’s distraught voice carried across the clearing.

“She’s dead,” Edward spoke monotonously, and Jasper couldn’t figure out why he didn’t sound relieved to be saying such a thing. Instead of relief, waves of sorrow and dread rolled over him as Edward continued uttering the words, over and over again, as if in disbelief. “She’s dead.”

He heard Bella crying—of course Bella was nearby, that was probably how they’d momentarily freed his mind from Skye’s hold—and then suddenly the haze was back, and he was lost to the nightmares once more.

Jasper doesn’t know how long ago that was, but it had been far too long.

Perhaps they’re still searching for a more permanent solution to his predicament. After all, Bella can’t linger by his side and shield him for the rest of their eternity. Perhaps there isn’t a solution. Perhaps this is their solution: to keep him locked away.

In all of his past research into Alice’s records, he’d never once given a thought about how a vampire asylum might operate if such a thing existed. But here he is, locked away with his mind wrapped up tight inside a snare, at the mercy to the lunacy that owns him now.

Time passes, because it always does, but Jasper doesn’t have a clock, so Jasper doesn’t know how long it is before suddenly he’s on his knees, inhaling what feels like his first breath of air in years.

He’s caught himself somehow and spends several seconds staring at the backs of his scarred hands. What he’s seeing is real, and he can just barely hear the sound of very muffled voices from beyond the door of wherever it is he’s being kept.

He’s scared to speak but after a few seconds, when the clarity doesn’t subside, he calls out as loudly as he dares. “Hello?”

His voice isn’t raspy but he knows that it isn’t carrying beyond the door. “Hello?” He calls louder this time, and the quiet sounds coming from somewhere outside of this room silence completely.

The lack of noise nearly drives him back into madness instantly.

“Please, don’t go. I need to know what—where am I? What’s going on?” He’s begging before he can control himself. On his hands and knees he pleads to whoever is listening in on his desperation, feeling like the shell of a man. “Please tell me you can fix this,” he raises his voice even louder as he calls out. “Please, I just want to talk to somebody.” Along with the clarity, he realizes something. “Bella? Are you there?”

The intercom clicks on.

“Hey, Jasper. You gotta stand up and back up or I can’t come in.” 

It’s Emmett.

Jasper is so relieved to hear his voice that in a millisecond he’s off of the ground and as far away from the door as he can physically be in the tiny room.

“Now, I don’t want you attacking me or whatever, so you’ve gotta turn around and put your hands on the back of your head. Sorry man.”

Before Emmett’s even apologizing for the request Jasper has already done what has been asked of him. He doesn’t even care—and it makes sense; Jasper isn’t positive that he won’t attack Emmett—he’s so full of hope and relief that he would jump up and down like a fool if it meant he’d be in the company of someone familiar for any measure of time.

Jasper can hear more muffled noises before the intercom clicks on again. There’s a long sigh. “I know,” the first two words aren’t directed at Jasper, but the rest are. “You’re not allowed to turn around while I’m in there, okay?”

“Okay, I won’t.” Jasper quickly assures the man. He’s so antsy to be in Emmett’s presence. He has thousands of questions and he’s praying his comrade—the closest thing to a friend he has in this world—will be able to help him understand what’s happening.

The hiss of the door opening causes a feeling of such pure relief that Jasper knows Emmett feels it the instant he’s in the room. But when Jasper doesn’t feel the door close behind Emmett, he knows something is off.

“Emmett?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Hearing his voice in person brings emotion straight to the surface and suddenly Jasper is afraid he might start to cry. As he struggles to reign in his emotions, he laces his fingers together behind his head and presses his forehead against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut tightly.

“Where is everyone?” Jasper asks. “Bella is here, right? That’s why I can talk to you. I know that much. Is Skye dead? Is that why I can’t break free from whatever is wrong with me?”

“Bella’s around,” Emmett confirms, his words short. “Skye is alive, too.”

“So she can fix this?”

There’s a pause in which Jasper feels his stomach tighten. “We think so.” But Emmett’s words sound strange.

“Alice?” Jasper asks, still afraid that Maria will appear before him and start taunting him again. The fear just drives him to ask again, but louder, and with more urgency. “Is she here? Is she around?”

“Yeah,” Emmett’s voice cracks as he takes a few steps closer.

“I—can I talk to her?” He hates how childish he sounds. At the same time he hardly cares. He needs Alice more than he needs his sanity. Without her, he doesn’t even know what the purpose of fighting his way out of this haze even is.

“Yeah, you can.”

“I—” It only takes Jasper a few seconds to realize he can’t sense Alice in the vicinity; her emotional climate is so distinct that he would be able to sense her anywhere. Perhaps even in a hallucination. But with that thought, he isn’t so sure. “Do you have to call her? Where is she?”

“You can talk to her soon.” Emmett is much closer now, and every one of Jasper’s instincts has begun to alarm. He wants to turn around so badly and face his almost-friend. He wants to see a face that doesn’t belong to a hallucination and he wants more than anything to hold Alice in his arms once more.

“How soon?” Jasper demands, a crazed desperation beginning to take hold as he feels Emmett stop directly behind him. “I have to talk to her. I need to know she’s okay. You were right, Emmett. I love her. I need to tell her; I haven’t even told her yet.”

Emmett has to interrupt his escalating tirade. “You can tell her in a second,” and he hears Emmett shift slightly. With relief Jasper relaxes, anticipating the inevitable phone conversation that will transpire soon. Emmett must be pulling up Alice’s number because there’s a couple of seconds of silence before he speaks again. “You did really good, Jasper. You helped us finish things.”

“The war is over?” Jasper lets more of his weight rest forward and against the wall as Emmett’s words seep into his bones. “Maria is dead?”

“It’s all over buddy. Everything is going to be okay now.”

“And I’ll be able to talk to Alice soon.”

“Yeah,” and as Emmett’s voice cracks again, Jasper feels emotion begin to stir in him, too. “Real, soon, Jasper.”

“Okay,” Jasper whispers, relaxing as he hears Emmett shift his stance once more. “Okay.”

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There is no clock in the room. Jasper Whitlock isn’t given a time of death. But time continues to pass nonetheless. The future comes, unseen. Ashes are intermingled with ashes. Love reunited in death and laid to rest together.

There is no clock in the room. But time does not stop.