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Mary Alice feels blank. Like unwritten letters or unspoken words or sections of the alpine forest where no one cared enough to walk through the snow. Maybe Tibetan deserts swept by the winds.
She’s been emptied of herself but full of color and light, that which is not of her own making. She’s an amalgam, void of falsities yet vacant in truth. She knows not herself, yet she’s wholly aware of the world, its sad fate, its suffering at the hands of uncertainty.
She’s the cure to her own disease.
*
“I wouldn’t go home tonight,” she whispers to the man. He isn’t her doctor, her butcher, which is why she’s filled with enough compassion to warn him. “The flames. They’re- they’re too hot. Much too hot.”
His eyes flicker hatred, like many before him faced with things he doesn’t understand.
“Now Mary. Do we need another round of therapy today?”
Her shudder is enough to drop the subject and the next day her conscience fights a smirk at the nurses whispering about the terrible tragedy.
*
“No. No, please don’t make me go.”
The words are common enough at the mouth of this place. But the speaker’s utter lack of conviction, desolate even before the great beast has swallowed her, is enough to peak her curiosity.
“It’s for the best Isabella. You might not see it now, but…”
The unfamiliar mother’s firm pity is predictable enough. She’ll think this choice is the right one for now, and when the girl slips further into insanity they’ll blame it all on her preexisting state.
It’s good that you brought her when you did. It could have been much worse.
Lies.
“I promise, Mommy, I’ll be better. It’ll be like nothing even happened.”
Their voices are approaching the doorway and her eyes flicker to the empty bed beside her. Her bed is closest to the door, always has been, and she’s seen each doomed woman enter. No one ever leaves unless they’re cold and pale with death.
“It’s just until you’re better, sweetheart.”
One set of footsteps begin to shuffle, dragging her feet against a guided elbow, until they disappear entirely. Desperation is evident in the girl’s voice as she’s carried inside.
“But what if he comes back? How will he know how to find me? Don’t make me!”
There’s scuffling until she’s dropped into the room, and the door is closed before she has a chance to right herself. The footsteps are fading but her fists land with a rapid torment against the steal door.
“He loved me. He did! He needs to be able to find me. He-“
There’s a sick squeal as she slides to the floor, pressed against the door, her skirts a muffin top under the sharp angles of her limbs. The girl doesn’t seem surprised that she’s being watched, nor does her mood change at all. She merely turns her wide, panicked eyes on Alice.
“He did love me once. I’m sure of it.”
And because her tone seems so certain, so ready to die for anyone who says otherwise-
“Of course dear.”
Isabella nods.
“Of course he did.”
*
“What did you do?”
The girl hasn’t spoken a word in a week and Alice is starting to think she’d imagined her screams, her sobs and deflated anger. Isabella’s fists are crumpled up by her sides; the only part of her that’s tense in her otherwise blank appearance.
“Has Miss. Muffett gone mute? Be a dear and satisfy the poor spider’s curiosity, won’t you?”
Her tongue is red with bite marks but she breathes, trading oxygen for speech.
“There was a boy.”
“Isn’t that how it always starts.”
She says it like she knows about such things, like her heart isn’t as virginal as the rest of her.
“I loved him more than-“ she swallows. “There was a sickness in the city and my mother took us away before I could send word or check on him. I wrote letters but… nothing. I wouldn’t speak to anyone. Couldn’t live like everything was the same. There wasn’t any point anymore.” Her fingers finally relax their hold on her palm and she extends them out against the sheets, one by one, each a defiantly stretching ally cat. “My mother has always been a selfish woman.”
“Our mothers have something in common then.”
Alice fights against the onslaught of memories, beating them back with a stick. She hasn’t decided whether to remember the woman with floral dresses and diligent smiles or as the banshee who sent her away, locked her up. Indecision is her antidote to pain.
“I’m not-“ There’s pink in her cheeks, for no reason in particular, and maybe nonsensical blushes were a part of the reason why she ended up here. “I’m not crazy.”
Alice’s smile isn’t soft.
“Not yet.”
*
Alice rolls over in her half-sleep, her eyelids slightly fluttering, absorbing a flicker of reality into her dream before-
“No. Don’t- please don’t leave.”
Her eyelids snap open, searching out Isabella’s voice in the dark. Her gaze hovers over the other girl’s face in the bed beside hers, her skin paled even further in the moonlight.
“You don’t love me?”
Isabella’s soft, sad intonation splits her in half and Alice slips quietly from between her sheets, setting herself down on Isabella’s bed with a meager squeak. Her cold, bare feet curl under the folds of her nightgown; she presses them flush against her warmed thigh as she lays a gentle hand on Isabella’s hair.
“Stay. Please stay with me.”
Alice knows the girl isn’t talking to her, but to some boy long gone, probably dead. Yet she lays herself down beside her, curling an arm around her waist and hugging her against her chest.
“I’ll never leave you. Promise.”
*
The sunlight slants in through the barred windows, catching Isabella’s features at an odd angle. Her eyes seem hollow and her nose appears crooked, the pleasant pucker of her bottom lip lost entirely to the shadows.
“What’s it like here?”
Isabella tilts her head, studiously picking at the frayed edge of her blanket.
“Sometimes it’s not so bad,” Mary Alice half-fibs, the lilt of hope in her voice manufactured and carefully applied. This isn’t right. She should be preparing her for the eventual onslaught, not pillowing the blow. “But sometimes…”
Her long brown hair ripples as her head jerks up quickly, her eyes narrowing.
“Sometimes what?”
Her voice lowers to a whisper and she ducks her head, cuing Isabella to lean in closer to hear her muted words.
“If you’re bad they take you to the dark place,” her knees curl up to her chest, as if she can make herself heavy enough to sink through the floor to the earth and bury herself inside. “I don’t like it there.”
Isabella’s hand fearfully clutches at her own, her eyes wide and innocently terrified, the way a child is instinctively scared of evils she cannot comprehend.
She will understand soon enough.
*
“Are you insane?”
The question is stuttered, partially hidden inside the folds of Isabella’s nervousness and the whispered nature of it. The lights have been extinguished and the only sound in the entire place rings through echoes, nurses’ fluctuating footsteps and haunted moans. They can’t be caught awake.
“Well… are you?”
There’s the tightening of anticipation in her vocal cords, breathless for a response yet terrified that the answer will be a resounding yes.
Mary Alice giggles to herself. She tries to hide the amused sound inside her blankets, but a note of cheerfulness escapes and Isabella squints in perplexity.
“No. Not really.” Before Isabella can question the stipulation, she continues. “I see things. Things that haven’t happened yet.”
Isabella’s eyebrows furrow, then smooth quickly, hiding the reaction under layers of indifferent acceptance. Mary Alice snorts again.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to believe me. No one does.”
She sighs unhappily, the bitter darkness forming ominous weather behind her eyes.
“No, I do. Believe you, that is.”
A smile spreads across her face like melted butter, lighting up her face and causing her tiny body to bounce excitedly under the blankets.
*
Mary Alice swishes a metal spoon through the congealing soup, every so often scooping a mouthful up and examining it with disdain.
“How does it work?” Isabella’s voice is pure hushed curiosity, too distracted to notice that the bread in her mouth passed the category of stale about a week ago.
She shrugs, tipping the spoon into her mouth and swallowing down the disgusted face. It’s all a matter of illusion.
“I don’t really know. Sometimes I just know things that no one does. That no one should.”
Isabella nods in rapt fascination, kicking her feet out under the table.
So young.
*
“I don’t like to say his name.” Isabella quantifies warily, eying the braided feathering of her heart line on her palm like it had broken her, betrayed her, at some point in the past.
”When was the last time you saw him?” Mary Alice pushes, leaning forward on her hands.
“Three years ago, the day before the sickness hit. There’d been reports of families in the slums taking ill, some isolated deaths. We didn’t know it was going to be so bad…” she trails off, her mind everywhere but here. “He was worried though. He was always worried about me.” Isabella sighs, tucking her folded hands behind her head. “The moment the newspapers started using the word ‘epidemic’, my mother packed everything she could fit into a little suitcase and bought two train tickets as far away as we could afford. I didn’t want to go, of course. He lived just three blocks away from one of the outbreaks and I had this terrible feeling…” She swallows. “She dragged me by my hair to the train station.”
“Do you think he’s alive?” she probes gently.
“I hope so. Even if it means he didn’t love me enough to find me afterwards. Even if it means he never loved me. I’d rather he were alive.” Isabella’s eyes are fierce, then suddenly resigned. “Even if he’s forgotten.”
That wouldn’t be unusual here. This is the place were forgotten things go when the mind can no longer recall them. They live in the blank cavern of a failed psyche.
*
Her eyes shift to the unfamiliar face of the man mopping up the vacant hallway, averting her gaze when he glances up. He’s standing a step away before she has a chance to look back at him. She gasps.
“My my, little lady.” His touch is ice cold when he reaches for her hand and kisses the underside of her wrist, his lips the same freezing temperature. “Aren’t you a pretty thing.”
Mary Alice is flattered, yes, but there’s a shiver of fear that runs up her spine instinctively at his voice, his hands, his scent. Sticky like the adhesive on a spider web.
“Pleased to meet you.” She replies with a squeak, eyes darting quickly to the bathroom she was headed to when he caught her eye. The man dips his head, his hair falling further into the crease where his eyes should be but only shadow remains, then cocks it to the side. She catches a glimpse of his deep red irises before they return to black.
Her curiosity is stoked.
*
“I don’t like it.” Isabella shakes her head sternly, her lips a tight line. Mary Alice rolls her eyes, resisting the urge to tell her to stick her nose back into her own affairs.
“He’s nice to me.”
“There’s something… not right about him, Mary.” She ducks her head, her voice descending as well. “He scares me.”
She flips her hand, dismissing her concerns. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Isabella’s shoulders tense, her hands coiling into fists.
“Fine. I’m sure you’d know if something bad was going to come from this.” She arches her eyebrow pointedly, sarcasm, condescension and mockery coloring her words a sickly green.
Mary Alice bristles.
“You’re just jealous because someone is finally paying attention to me and not you!”
She regrets the words even before she notices the pink prick of tears in Isabella’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Isabella. I didn’t mean it.”
She’d only said it to cover up her own uncertainty. She does fear him. Yet, she’s deadly curious more than anything else.
The other girl nods, but her jaw remains locked and her words remain clipped.
*
A bone-chilling gust sways Isabella toward the brick wall. She clutches her moth-eaten sweater tight to her chest, unprepared for the desolating cold this early in autumn. She keeps one ear on the ranting girl throwing pebbles at the dirt, never sure when her rage will turn outward, and another on the eerie creak of the swing set. The old woman who never speaks twists the two ropes suspending the wooden plank, before letting them go and watching it spin apathetically.
Peering around the corner, she frowns when she notices that man is talking to Mary Alice again. It’s something instinctual that curdles her blood like month-old milk when he looks at her. That man is- no. Not a man. Something other. She shudders to meet the expectation of insane ramblings, but there’s something about him that isn’t human. Something-
She stops dead in her tracks. A pair of blood red eyes pierces through the trees just beyond the high fence, on a bough far too high for any person to have climbed un-aided. They focus on her briefly, flicker to Mary Alice, then disappear into the darkness.
*
Mary Alice glances at her curiously across the scratched table.
“What’s the matter?”
Isabella’s head jerks up from her childlike drawing. She hadn’t even realized that the paper was spotted with red irises glowing from shadowy faces, indistinct shapes of hypothetical monsters.
“No. Nothing. Why?”
Her eyes dart around wildly, suspiciously, before settling back on her.
“You seem…” Mary voice trails off into a whisper of unspoken worries. Her unsure expression settles on a dimmed smile, darkened with concern. “Never mind.”
Isabella nods jerkily.
Under the table her knees are still quaking.
*
The twilight is still, the cold fogging Isabella’s breath in the absence of the setting sun.
“Hello.”
It’s so innocuous, the monster’s greeting, that she almost smiles, almost welcomes him in kind. But her instincts know better and her body locks down, exhaust puffing quickly from her mouth like from a locomotive off schedule.
This is like déjà vu. Only now the dreamless creature can yank her into the nightmare and hold her captive. Because it’s real this time.
He sweeps the hair over her trembling shoulder, inhaling the concentrated perfume in the crook of her neck. His eyes rove backward, his nostrils flaring. He pulls away slightly, just enough for her to see his red eyes. She’s still frozen.
“You have the most appetizing scent.”
She fills her lungs with air…
“The name’s James.”
… and she screams. She screams when he smiles condescendingly. She screams when he tells her he’ll be back for her. She screams after he disappears. She screams as the nurses come running, and she definitely screams as they haul her inside. Her brain is in alarm mode, a constant beacon of trauma.
They drag her into a small, dank room with no windows, latching the doors behind them. The restraints fit snugly over her slight body, holding her in place like vicious vines. The doctor enters with a syringe and suddenly she’s screaming for another reason entirely. If she’s paralyzed, how will she fight the demon away? She thinks she whispers something to that affect. The nurses shake their heads.
Her mind slips into a panic as the needle slips into her arm and this is her only thought:
The monster is going to get me, and no one will ever know. Not Alice. Not even Edward.
*
Mary’s feet tap lightly against the floor beside the boy that makes no sound. Her boy.
“I’m worried about Isabella. She’s scared.” She doesn’t mention the other fear, Isabella’s fear for Mary Alice herself. An imagined but persuasive whisper tells her not to. “Something is scaring her.”
He turns to watch her with deceptively soft eyes, fierceness playing just below the surface.
“Have you ever thought that maybe she’s just crazy?”
Mary stops dead, her expression suddenly furious.
“Is that what you think of us?”
“You know that isn’t true.”
His hands are cool, like he’d been holding a glass of iced milk for hours, as he captures her cheek in a comforting gesture. It stirs some long-forgotten hope inside of her. Like maybe she could be wanted. Like maybe someone could accept the unexplained truths she holds and not fear the arcane knowledge held within her.
“But it’s more than that. I can feel it. A storm is coming.”
Something flashes in his eyes – fear? – before he nods, confirming her suspicions.
“There is a man who watches this place… and I can’t protect you here, not really. We might have to leave so you can be safe.”
“No!” Alice whispers loudly, stepping quickly away from his touch. “Not without Isabella. I can’t leave without-“
His hand over her mouth silences her protests and before she can object to the forceful interruption his eyes are concentrating far away, down the hall.
“He’s here.”
Alice’s eyes widen.
“Stay here,” he demands harshly, settling his hands briefly on her shoulders as if that will be enough to solder her to the spot. She nods weakly, her mind already made up, and he sprints down the corridor in another of his too fast movements. Toward Isabella.
She waits five seconds before she follows.
*
There’s a living shadow by the door. It solidifies in a second, seeps into the cracks between the floorboards, blooms on the wall like dark mold. James tilts his head and suddenly the shadow takes possession of limbs and teeth, a candle by the bed glinting off deadly enamel.
“I suppose I’ve always had a partiality for helpless little girls,” he whispers as he glides closer. James picks up her hand, tracing her vein over the crease in her palm, then raised and blue down her wrist. He touches his tongue her pulse, venom already pooling in his mouth to think of the rhythm fading from her chest to coat his throat. His teeth sink in.
And the disgusting taste of the sedative makes him pause just seconds before another body slams into his.
*
Mary Alice clutches the doorway in fear, barely acknowledging the door bent and broken on the opposite side of the room, or the twisted hinges clutching at air.
The candle flickers off bundles of pale flesh. A growl.
“Come to poach my territory?”
Another whirlwind. Mary Alice’s wonderful, horrible boy is thrown into the corner, and a man with long, thick hair and devil eyes turns back to Isabella, raising her arm to his mouth. But he hisses, throwing her limb from his grasp and spinning back to the other man.
“Now see what you’ve done?”
A blur of color. Stone clattering against brick. A muffled shout. Isabella’s scream.
Isabella. Have to save Isabella.
Mary Alice flies to her without thinking, struggling with the restraints. There’s something terribly wrong, more than the suddenly faded bite mark on her arm or the single trickle of blood down her pale skin. Her breath comes in gasps and her numbed face twitches sporadically. Pain. She’s in pain. She’s barely aware of the fighting going on around her, and only thinks absently what the doctors will think when they discover this.
But suddenly there’s a cold hand around her neck, yanking her back from Isabella and dangling her tiny feet above the ground.
“This is one you want, isn’t it?”
She shudders as his nose brushes along the slope of her throat.
“I can see why. Her scent is impeccable.” Then the growl returns to his voice, “Just as mine was. But she’s no use to me like that.” Mary Alice’s gaze flickers to Isabella’s prone body, lying helpless on the bed.
He releases her roughly, shoving her across the room into the stone body of her boy.
“I will be back for her.” He jabs a thumb at Mary Alice. “You take something of mine, I take something of yours.” With one longing-turned-disgusted look at Isabella, the man disappears.
His hands slip over her hips and she shudders at the reminder of his cool skin.
“Mary Alice, can you do something for me?”
She nods unthinkingly.
“Close your eyes. And don’t scream.”
It’s then that she feels his teeth at her neck.
-
The pain is bafflingly blinding. Their vision is seared by nothingness, or perhaps a something that they can’t comprehend, shielding them from a change they couldn’t understand even if they wanted to. Something shifts inside of them. Hearts pucker and whirr, chugging along, trying to keep in tune with devil’s music.
Mary Alice’s hand finds Isabella’s, wandering across valleys and mountains of incomprehensible space, oceans of time, fingers finally winding together. A reminder.
Reality is real. Earth is solid. Time is forever.
Mary Alice’s heart shudders to a stop.
She’s in the darkness no longer.
-
The first thing Isabella sees is Mary’s bright smile.
“What-“
“I’m not scared anymore.”
Isabella studies the girl with awe, noticing details about her face that she’d never been privy to before… before the end.
“Are we dead?”
She remembers death. It had been more painful than she’d expected.
Mary laughs like the tinkling of bells on the ankles of dancers, laying her head into her lap.
“Don’t you see, Isa? We’ve changed! I can see everything so clearly now. Before the visions were jumbled and clouded, like trying to peer through mud. And now…”
She trails off, looking skeptical for the first time.
“I’m not sure how to explain this. Or even if I can. But I’ve seen-“
But she doesn’t have to continue, because Isabella sees it too.
Her mouth at the jugular of a deer, sweetness gulped down her throat to dull the thirst burning inside of her.
A blonde man with a Southern drawl, dripping with spring rain in a restaurant with glass walls and strange music emanating from boxes on the tables.
A family that will someday be theirs.
She can’t see faces, only a collage of features, disjointed and muffled.
Soft honey curls over soft, round shoulders; a crisp white collar against a shiny stethoscope; burly arms on the trunk of a man; long blonde hair with long pale legs; a haystack of copper that looks oddly familiar.
“We’re vampires. And we’ll eat animals, because that’s what’s right. There’s a boy waiting for you, a boy that will be lost until you find him and show him the map. We’ll be a part of a family.”
Mary gasps.
“How did you- you have the visions too?”
Isabella shakes her head grudgingly.
“No, that’s not it exactly. I think it’s more like… I’m your mirror. I see what you see.”
She takes note of their surroundings; a small clearing in the woods, pale flowers speckling the tall, dense grass in a ring around them. And their skin: sparkling.
“What do we do now?”
Mary Alice grins, all her teeth on display like piano keys. Her tongue clicks.
“Anything we want.”
-
Mary Alice fits in perfectly on the streets of New York City among the flapper girls, with her cropped hair and boyish figure. She flutters approvingly over the tassels on the dresses in vogue.
But of course that isn’t her name anymore.
“We’re new people; we should have new names.”
Isabella had grumbled, shook her head and stomped her foot until she kicked clear through the floor. Mary Alice stood fast and unyielding.
“You seem more like… a Bella. Beautiful Bella. It fits, no? And not so different that we won’t remember. Though it seems to me that we can’t forget anything these days.”
She wanted to say no. To protest and destroy more home furnishings. But she liked the idea that she could be (or at least become) someone different. A new slate.
“Alright… Alice.”
“Alice…” she mulls it over, bouncing the two solitary syllables against the roof of her mouth with her tongue. “I’ve always hated Mary anyway.”
-
The stock market crashes.
They don’t need money, or the kind of food you’d stand in lines to eat, but Alice still pouts sympathetically as they watch the humans suffer.
Alice doesn’t think she should be saying this, but she’s never looked so forward to war. Besides, she claims; Germany has it coming.
-
Bella’s starting to forget. It used to be that she could remember her old street address, the scent of her grandmother’s cooking, the way her mother wrongly rounded improper vowels.
Now she struggles to recall the woman’s name. She’d cry if she could.
“Maybe… maybe it’s for the best.”
If she was being completely honest, not dulling the thought behind her words, Alice would tell her that she’s being naïve to grieve for the loss of a woman who had caused her so much pain. Alice can’t remember a single detail about her own mother beyond the fact that she had existed, and she’s grateful for the amnesia. But she does understand, in her own way. Most people need to love their own flesh and blood.
“She wasn’t all bad,” Bella defends, knees curled up to her chest.
They don’t talk about the other love she’s lost. Bella’s already run over every detail of him in her mind, terrified to lose a single moment.
-
“He’s coming.”
Bella taps her fingers impatiently on the counter.
“Really, he is. I’ve seen it. Hell, you’ve seen it.”
And she’s right; not even the rain streaking the tall windows of the diner can hide his silhouette as he ambles up to the door. The bell above the door sings in mockery in time with the water dripping from his tangled blonde mop, sticking to his scarred forehead and twisting into his hungry black eyes.
He appears far more dangerous in person than he did in the vision. Damn Alice and her rosy, optimistic glasses. She watches helplessly as her companion dances up to the man and he eyes her warily.
“You’ve kept me waiting a long time.”
-
Bella thinks there’s always a part of Alice that will be pulling away from her. A part that knows she can never be enough.
Because she sees how this man, this Jasper, lights up like a lantern whenever Alice is around. Whenever she speaks. Whenever she blinks. Whenever she… anything. And the worst part is that she notices the same horribly wonderful signs of life in Alice.
This is her Romeo. Or at least the immortal equivalent.
But she’s always been a terrible liar.
“I love her.” Jasper says to her one day while Alice is out hunting and they’re wasting time. Their new family in Washington is within running distance, but they prefer to drive. One more human faculty to hold onto.
Bella glances up from her book, confused and subtly irritated.
“Me too. But you already know that, don’t you?”
It annoys her more than a little bit that her emotions are suddenly privy to the tampering of others. She hasn’t mastered the skill it would take to return the gesture.
He chuckles.
“Yes, but I don’t need to be empathic to see the devotion you two share.”
This conversation isn’t going as she’d expected.
“Which is also how I know that you’re jealous.”
She scoffs a bit over-enthusiastically, and if she were still human she might have choked.
“I’m not-“ but she is. Not of him, or even of her. Of that spark. That glint that tells you exactly who they belong to. Who lights them up inside. “I don’t want to be,” she amends.
Jasper nods, resting a hand somewhere in the vicinity of her out-stretched legs, because they don’t know each other well enough quite yet for anything more.
“I know. And don’t worry; I also don’t need Alice’s gift to know you’ll have it someday too. Lord knows you deserve it far more than I did.”
It’s then she decides that her and Jasper will be great friends.
After all, she’s scarred in her own right.
-
It’s raining the day they arrive in Forks. From what Bella’s heard, this isn’t unusual weather and she surprises herself by being excited at the prospect of living here. Hiding inside from the daylight grows tiresome; she misses the sun, even if judging from her pale skin the feeling isn’t mutual.
Of course all this is assuming the Cullens don’t kill them for trespassing before they can explain the situation. They don’t seem like the type, humanitarian vegetarians and all, but the vampire world is fickle, they’ve discovered. Fickle and suspicious. And the apprehension rolling off Jasper in tsunami-sized waves certainly doesn’t help her nerves. They’re not going in totally blind, not with Alice’s precognition and Jasper’s emotional x-ray, but their visions have been vague, dreamlike. If Bella hadn’t seen them herself she might have thought Alice imagined them.
The branches of a wet tree branch whip past her shoulder, and she can already see the faint glow of the Cullen house in the distance through the trees. Though she can see in the dark, the cloudiness and the setting sun provide a tensely eerie backdrop for their arrival.
Bella scoffs at herself. A vampire spooked by ghost light.
Jasper runs ahead, no doubt trying to be the gentleman protective of his lady companions, and she giggles at the thought. He looks back at her strangely as if to say is this really the time?, but she shrugs. Her eyes say isn’t it always?
Alice grumbles beside them. She hates it when they talk without speaking.
Someone shuffles within the house just in front and the three of them turn their attention toward the residence, all glass on one side and isolated from town. She listens carefully; Bella counts three. The other two must be off hunting.
Alice holds up a hand, halting their movements, but she herself continues into the man-made clearing. It makes logical sense; the Cullens are less likely to feel threatened by Alice’s tiny form than Jasper’s menacing one, or by both Bella and Alice. But still. It feels wrong to watch her advance alone, like a sacrifice, and Jasper twitches beside her in agreement.
There’s a hushed murmur inside, something about wait here and I’ll be careful. Bella tenses.
Carlisle Cullen appears by the back door, hair pale just like in Alice’s visions and his patient expression the same. He studies them one by one. How strange they must look; the scarred cowboy, his dancing pixie and the demon-haired angel with a face paler than bone. Bella finds herself squaring her shoulders, an odd instinct to meet his approval bubbling within her chest.
She feels Jasper tense beside her, takes note of his edginess by reflecting his gift. She places a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Calm, Jasper.”
The doctor takes a step forward, composed but cautious.
“Hello. My name is Carlisle Cullen and this is my home. My family and I maintain a permanent residence here.”
Bella’s hit with a stronger, clearer vision from Alice, still of the Cullens but this time with names, faces, a loose timeline. She sees the shorter girl flit forward just a moment before she actually does. Jasper hisses her name in a panic, but his wariness doesn’t stop her. Alice wraps her arms around Carlisle, pulling him into an enthusiastic hug and sighing in contentment. She’s never really had a father, not that Bella remembers much of her own before the night he was shot on duty, and she smiles to think of Alice finding something else she’s been missing.
“Oh Carlisle. I’m so happy to finally be here! I can’t wait for Edward and Emmett to get back from hunting- Rosalie and Esme are inside, right? I’ve only seen in visions… but oh! We’ll all get along splendidly.”
Jasper’s form transitions from being rigid with fear to that of shock when Carlisle merely responds with amusement.
“I’d have to say I think you’re quite right in that assessment. Alice, is it?” She nods cheerily, and Carlisle directs his voice to the house, “Esme? Rosalie? Why don’t you join us? There’s no danger here.”
Bella is surprised by how quickly he accepts that they mean no harm, and by the twinkle in his eyes when he looks upon Alice, almost as if he already regards her as a daughter. Bella shifts impatiently in the shadows and his eyes fall upon the two of them.
“And who might you be?”
She steps forward into the clearing, her gaze finding Alice’s. She gives her a reassuring smile. Bella isn’t quite sure why she’d be nervous; it had seemed that her shyness had died along with her heartbeat, but maybe that’s because this is the first time in thirty years that she’s actually cared about what someone thought.
“I’m Bella,” she takes his hand, shooting Alice a pointed look speaking volumes about appropriate first time exchanges, and the yard twinkles with laughter. Esme and Rosalie have joined them and while the blonde looks upon her with assessment, she feels only warmth from Esme. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Alice darts to Jasper’s side, nearly her whole body wrapped around his long arm, coaxing him forward.
“Jasper.” He acknowledges gruffly. Not rudely just… still wary. Carlisle nods, evaluating his still-red eyes with curiosity, not admonishment.
“Jasper’s newest to our way of life. But he’s learning.” Alice speaks with pride, and Jasper’s glare protesting the fact that she’s speaking for him is watery weak. Boy can’t hardly hold his own around her, and he certainly can’t hold a grudge.
“Well, I suppose we should head inside. Will you be staying or-“
“Oh yes,” Alice nods, bulleting inside before poking her head out of the door, “Jasper, darling, help me with Edward’s things, will you?” At Carlisle’s upturned eyebrow her expression turns sheepish, but only for a moment before it returns to her devious smirk, “He’ll be cross, but only for a short while. We’ll be moving soon.”
Her tiny, bobbed head disappears inside again and Jasper follows her with a apologetic smile.
“Well,” Carlisle begins, “I suppose she’s right if our numbers are up to eight-“ he turns to face Bella questioningly and she nods, “then a new residence should be in order. Esme?”
The maternal woman beams, placing a hand on his arm, “I agree. No need to be squished like sardines when we were discussing a move anyway.”
A commotion can be heard from the garage; it seems this other brother Edward’s belongings have found a new home for the meantime.
Bella swallows at the name. She knows it’s a coincidence. Fate is cruel enough to saddle her with a family that includes a man that goes by the same name as the love she’s lost.
She settles herself into the grass, her skirt fanning out around her. Esme kisses her once on the forehead, seeming to sense she needs some time to herself.
She knows this ironic cruelty is fact. Maybe someday she’ll be able to say the name without seeing his face, without thinking of the things he used to whisper in her ear. Without feeling the ghost of his ring she never got to wear on her finger.
The rose sprouting from the garden before her lures her forward, and she probes her nose into the flower, inhaling its sweet scent.
Maybe she can finally forget. Maybe someday she can truly be Bella instead of-
“Isabella?”
Her body locks down in surprise. Pain rips like a fault line down the center of her chest and the rose turns to pulp in her hands.
Her gaze wallows at the spot where earth meets unidentifiable shoes before rising to his beautiful unchanged face. It’s strange because whenever she thinks of him, she sees the boy who’d loved her all those years ago. And here he is, simply the same, but she almost doesn’t recognize him. He’s all stone and modern clothes and it hurts that his eyes aren’t green anymore.
“You’re- you’re supposed to be dead.”
Edward looks at her blankly, surprise washing over any other hint of emotion. The night washes his skin in a purple glow and maybe this is a dream. But then he steps forward and she scurries back and no. This would be a nightmare.
“I counted on you to be…” she swallows. “I thought you loved me. I could have sworn it.”
And this is when she realizes just how much she’d been banking on the pure constancy of that love. No matter what she’d professed all those years ago, she’d hoped he’d died in that plague, because it meant that he hadn’t really left her by choice. But it had been a lie. All of it.
And suddenly her mind explodes into a thousand facets, thoughts and phrases and memories she can’t place. Others that she remembers but that are skewed, from a different angle. The world sinks and she can feel it at her knees, her elbows, clutching her head between her hands.
But one thought pierces through her skull again and again like a hammer and nail:
I’ve always loved you. Never doubt that. I love you. Don’t dare doubt it.
“Stop!” she screams. She falls forward, bracing herself on her hands, dry heaving into the grass. She thinks he touches her; that or she was just struck by lightning. She shakes off the distraction.
Slowly she gains purchase on her own mind, pushing the flood back, receding to a dull whisper on the horizon.
“Just… try not to think so loud,” Bella commands shakily.
He lets out a sound that’s somewhere close to a disgruntled whinny and she’d laugh if she wasn’t in so much pain.
“I can’t hear you.” She manages to look confused amongst the shock, “Your thoughts. I can’t…” he sighs and it’s a mournful sound. He folds himself up on the ground a few feet from her and she tenses. He pretends not to notice.
“It’s Bella now.”
Edward’s lips part in either an argument or a question, but he thinks better of it and switches to a more pressing topic.
“How did you-“
“An older vampire turned both me and Alice in 1924. We were both-“ but she stops. Partially because he hasn’t earned to right to hear that story and partially because she feels shamed to have been in such a place. He might think her truly insane and she isn’t sure he’d be wrong. “We were all each other had for a very long time.”
Edward nods but that’s all she knows; she still can’t bear to look at his face.
From her experience thoughts don’t lie. But she can’t bear to hope-
“Carlisle changed me in 1918 when I was dying of Spanish Influenza,” he doesn’t stop at her sharp intake of breath, “I wanted to find you, to know for sure that you were alright, that you’d survived. But I had no idea where your mother had taken you, and even if I could have found out…” and she can complete that thought on her own. They’d struggled through building up their self control tirelessly for ten years before they could spend any length of time in a closed room with a human. It wouldn’t have been safe.
And here it is. Decades of suffering explained, laid to rest, dismissed. So sorry. All’s well that ends well. And yet, all that’s left in the space inside her where doubt and anger had been before is this immeasurable pool of… sadness. The loss that had plagued her since she was human turns out to be nothing more than bad luck and misunderstanding and all she can do is mourn.
“I believe Bella needs some time to think,” a voice suggests from the stoop of the house and Edward hesitates, his head turning in Bella’s direction. She nods.
“Please.”
He’s gone in a second, but not into the house. She can hear his racing footsteps treading a path far into the woods; she guesses he has some things to mull over as well.
There’s a whoosh of air and then suddenly Alice’s arms are around her, clinging to her shoulders.
“Oh Bella! I’m so sorry I didn’t see this earlier. I caught a flicker of something between the two of you a few minutes ago, but I’d never met your Edward and I only saw this Edward, though I guess they are the same person, technically, or actually, so I ignored it and I should have come out here but I thought you wanted some space and I-“
“Alice.”
“Yes?”
“Can you be quiet for a minute?”
“Of course.”
And there’s silence between them. Birds whistle and hoot tentatively and the insects of summer are faint in the backdrop; it’s only April and everything is just beginning.
But then Bella is talking. She’s talking about influenza and patched leather suitcases and badly written love poetry and how he’d promised to marry her when they were only sixteen. How she’d been young enough to believe him without any doubts.
She talks about how remaining mute had almost made it seems like time was standing still, how the sound of the asylum’s door closing behind her had seemed so loud, so final, in comparison. How the venom had felt eating away at her.
How she’d memorized every detail of his face, even the imperfections, in her first days as a vampire; the meadow they used to visit in the country outside of Chicago, too; the way he’d whisper her name. And how it hadn’t really done any good because he was here now and he was perfect and that she didn’t know if he remembered all the things she did. How it made her sad to consider the possibility that he didn’t, how it made her feel even more alone. How she wasn’t sure if she could forgive him, even if she didn’t know exactly what she’d be forgiving him for.
For once Bella talks and Alice listens.
The sun rises to a cloudless, colorless sky and Bella thinks that it’s to match her mood.
Blank.
Uncertain.
But hopeful.
They can hear him coming from a mile away, but he slows to a comparative walk, no doubt to give her time to gather her thoughts. Or to hide. Both seem equally tempting.
“What do I say?” she flutters, wearing a curved path around Alice’s cross-legged and amused form. It makes her feel like a girl again, giggling nervously to her best friend about the boy she met at the market named Edward, and the thought makes her smile.
Alice rises fluidly, skipping over to the back door before spinning sharply and smirking.
“I don’t know. Whatever you want.”
Bella soaks the notion into her pores, through her ears, under her fingernails. She’s unwritten and the calligraphy is all up to her.
Bella grins over her nervousness and turns to face her unknown pastpresentfuture.