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storypaint) wrote2008-07-16 08:08 am
storypaint) wrote2008-07-16 08:08 am
Historic (Alice/Bella)
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femslash100's Around the Clock challenge (this is not an official claim)
Length: 3019 words, divided into 24 short ficlets of various length
Title: Historic
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing: Alice/Bella; Edward/Bella
Rating: PG for vague account of multilation and death
Warnings: angsty
Disclaimer: Twilight is the property of Stephenie Meyer. This fanfic is a derivative of canon material that is not my property. I do not profit from these writings. The opinions and actions expressed in these stories are not necessarily the views and beliefs of the original author or me.
Excerpt: Edward knows. Of course he does. He told Bella once that there were no secrets among the Cullens. He wasn't joking. There could be no secrets unless he was our secret-keeper.
00:00 / beginning
Edward knows.
Of course he does. He told Bella once that there were no secrets among the Cullens. He wasn't joking. There could be no secrets unless he was our secret-keeper.
His face is wounded when he looks at me now and all I can whisper is, "Sorry." I'd like to think, I'd quit loving her for your sake, but he'd know I was lying. Instead I think, I'll never tell. That will have to be enough. It is enough for me to see her happy with him, to see her laugh.
It will not be my lips on her neck that bring the change. Perhaps that is for the best.
*
01:00 / prehistoric
I can't remember the time before my change, the point at which my heart stopped beating, the moment I gave into the pain. It's prehistory to me-- before any time that mattered.
But Bella smiles and I think that I can almost remember what it was like when my blood flowed, when I was young and real. And it isn't that I don't love Jasper still, but he is as dead as I, and something in her calls to me, deeper, under the skin.
I try not to touch her very much nowadays, hating the coldness of my own skin.
02:00 / anniversary
For one year, she has been changed, now. Not that anniversaries matter anymore.
For one year, she has been exactly the same, a living statue, just like the rest of us. Her heart doesn't beat, her blood doesn't flow, doesn't have the same allure as it once did. Her eyes were completely hazel now, sometimes gold, but certainly no longer dull brown.
I don't understand how I can still love her just the same as I did when she was alive, when her breaths made me grin and her heartbeat, infinitely precious, was still steady. She doesn't look the same as she used to, not at all.
I can only be grateful that she didn't gain an ability to read minds. I can only be grateful that Edward hasn't taken her and fled from the pressure of my unspoken love for her.
I cannot be grateful that I still love her, but I cannot stop, so I just do.
A year has passed.
*
03:00 / generational
"Alice, I'm concerned," Carlisle begins earnestly, and for the first time in-- for the first time, ever, really, I feel like a child being reprimanded by her parent. I put my head down, not meeting his eyes, and I resist the urge to kick my feet like a child.
"There seems to be a lot of tension between you and Edward, and he won't tell me why," my 'parent' continues. Carlisle, the peacekeeper, the one who took me in and treated me as family. The one who gave me a family, who changed Edward and Esme and the man that I loved and love (it's just not the same, Jasper, I'm sorry).
"I was thinking about going away on my own for a while," I say, not looking up, not able to stand the hurt look in his eyes. I know it is there, I have Seen it already, several weeks ago, when I was deciding. I don't want to hurt him.
"Okay," he says slowly, and I get down out of the chair and walk away.
*
04:00 / insomnia
"I can't sleep. Go ahead to bed. I'll be all right," I say to him, and he just shrugs.
"You never sleep," he says, and I laugh like he's joking. "Not much," I replied. Not since the nineteenth century, anyway.
"What do you do when you can't sleep?" he says, contemplative. It's an odd time for my roommate to want to talk philosophy. Usually he waits until he has come home drunk and has tried to take advantage of me. (He can't figure out why it is so hard to catch me; I can't figure out what I thought I was doing, rooming with a human. Some part of me thought this would work, even as I Saw it wouldn't.)
"I think about someone," I reply honestly, and after a moment he nods.
"See you in the morning," he says after a long moment, yawning, and he heads to his bedroom. After a minute I go to mine, laying down on a bed that I rarely muss and staring up at the dark ceiling.
And I think about her until the morning comes.
*
05:00 / contemporary
I can See what she's doing now. I don't bother to block it out anymore. I know her "signature," her heart. I can See her.
She is happy mostly, and sometimes she's sad, and sometimes she's frustrated with my brother, just like anyone else would be. She isn't tired of immortality yet, even though she misses her family. The funeral was hard on Charlie.
Sometimes she misses me, and that's what I have been trying to block out, that painful knowledge. But I can't block the Seeing just like Edward can't block his hearing into minds-- for a time, for a little, but not forever.
Sometimes she misses me, and I always miss her, and that helps me feel connected, just a little, and that's all I need for sanity.
*
06:00 / dawn
Sometimes I almost dream. It's not a human sort of night dream, just a daydream, cut down when concentration shifts and real "life" returns.
She has never seen me in the light, seen my skin shimmer as though it is as new as Eve's own flesh, seen how bright my eyes are in reflection. But when I daydream, I imagine that she sees me in all my angelic glory, and that she loves me.
And after the first couple of times that this comes to mind, I move away, even further than before, so he can't hear me. I can't bear to break Edward's heart any further for daydreams that fade with the dawn.
*
07:00 / awakened
My new roommate doesn't tease me about "waking with the dawn," because she does the same. We go out onto the ice and fish for a while as the sun makes it bearable. She speaks very little English, and very little at all; I do not speak her language at all, but it suits us both. It is easier to maintain a small home out here on the fringe with another person to watch your back, to make sure that you double-check each other. The cold doesn't give in, not to humans.
"What are you?" she asks me one day. I've been careful to hunt only at night when she sleeps, careful not to arouse her suspicions, but it seems for naught. She squints at me, her dark eyes questioning.
"Lonely," I say, and she nods, but she knows there's something more, and it worries her enough that when I emerge form my bedroom the next morning, she is gone. I lay on my bed and heard her drive away into the crunching snow at three a.m. last night, hoping that she made it somewhere warm.
My hands are cold and I miss Bella, not that either of these things are revelation. I don't stay here very long.
*
08:00 / heyday
"Don't you have a family?"
"Of course I do. It's just been a while since I've seen them." I stare off into space, not bothering to hide my pain too well. I can already tell that this set of roommates isn't going to work for me. I hadn't realized that they were specifically looking for older children to patronize in their home. Of course, I am better qualified to raise myself than they were.
"Oh? Why is that?" the woman says, kindly and grandmotherly and resting her arms just so in her lap. This is the first time in ages that I have been irritated by such behavior in someone. I usually tend to wonder if my parents, if my grandparents, had behaved thus. But this kindly old woman is poking at old wounds.
"I fell in love with my brother's wife," I say, the words sounding harsh and bitter in the sudden shocked silence, and without waiting for a reply, I get up and leave.
*
09:00 / planned
It would have been stupid of them to stay in Forks for very long, and it is stupid for me to go back, but I go anyway. I tuck my hair underneath a ballcap and go wandering through the Wal*Mart at ridiculous midnight hours.
Sometimes I buy things; it is only fair. They preserve me with fluorescent lights and small talk, so I buy clothes or food or something else I can donate at the Goodwill down the street.
I don't plan to see her ever again, but I see her in Wal*Mart all the time-- in the dark hair of the woman in front of me in line, in the vibrant pulses of the people here. There is a checker who has almost her exact same eyes-- a cousin perhaps, though I never dare to ask.
"Alice? Is that you?"
I whirl-- too fast, too fast, Alice, they'll know-- and look up at Charlie, a man who seems decades older (had I been gone that long really). His mouth is open in shock.
I don't speak, I flee, but damage is done. I have to go.
*
10:00 / wristwatch
For her first birthday after her change, I gave Bella a watch. It was a sweet thing in dark leather, elegant as her slender wrist. She liked it, I knew. She lifted it from the box to show Edward. His hand rested on her back like a promise. He'd been touching her a lot lately, as though he could protect her from the strength of my gaze.
"But Alice," she said sweetly, letting Edward help her put it on, "we have all the time in the world." Oh, how I laughed, the bitterness seeping through into my actions even then.
It has been ten years now. I lay in the hotel room and listen to the clock tick off the minutes, feeling restless.
*
11:00 / punctual
It is the first time I have enrolled in high school without my family around me, and I feel their loss more fiercely every day. I could use Rosalie's gossip and Jasper's good nature and Edward's skill at biology. I miss the opportunity to watch Bella dress for gym and to study the way the wind blows through her hair.
I miss my old life.
I am punctual for school every day. I drive a battered Camry that I bought in a car lot in Washington state for pennies on the dollar.
I don't last a year before I'm on the move again.
*
12:00 / lunchtime
I almost bite her.
I'm in a club at midnight and she's dancing so close to me that her pulse fills me more than the music does. She is taking my blood interest for sexual interest, pressing her full chest against my small one, and she's grinning.
Her name is Carla; we met earlier in the night when the barman didn't want to take my fake ID. She bought me a beer and we started talking and here we are now.
My teeth seem to fill my mouth and I can smell her neck. I stumble like I'm drunk and press my mouth against her shoulder and I just can't do it.
She doesn't smell enough like Bella.
*
13:00 / instantaneous
It has been a while since I've seen her and that's why I stagger, grabbing my head, as the visions come, as sharp and harsh as a sudden knife wound. She is screaming God she's screaming and oh God Edward.
It isn't until my coworker starts shaking me that I realize I'm screaming too. I reach out and put a hand against the wall, and navigate to the door of the warehouse without opening my eyes. All I can see is blood, old blood, and all I can smell is fear and Bella Bella Bella.
I'm running as soon as my feet hit the gravel outside and I run until the daylight makes me glow, and I prowl through the bushes on the side of the interstate for too many hours before I can run again.
*
14:00 / season
I meet the wolves almost two miles out of town. My feet, hands, and face are bare and they glow in the twilight. I stand absolutely still as they circle, trying to figure out what to do. Whatever Jacob is doing to Edward right now, they're guarding him. They won't let me pass without a fight.
I have spent a season away from fighting and from family but the adrenaline in my body makes me stiff enough to snap.
"She needs me," I say to them as they circle. "She needs me."
I take a step forward and one growls. I have no more time for this. I do what I have to. They can't keep me from her.
*
15:00 / unpredictable
I've never ran this fast and I've never felt so lost before but I can't stop going until I know. I can smell wolf everywhere, angry wolf, and it is so disorienting I can hardly figure out where I am headed, but I can't stop.
I feel a sudden sharp pain in one eye and trip, rolling into a tree. It's the worst pain I can remember ever feeling and it's not even mine, it's Edward's. He can't see and now I can hear Bella screaming above anything else.
And then she stops and I hear three thudding sounds in succession and I am there, emerging onto a scene of utter confusion.
And when I see her, everything stops.
*
16:00 / evolution
"Alice?"
She is trying to cry, that sweet porcelain girl I fell in love with. She is cradling Edward's head in her lap and the blood on her hands smells like the blood of the wolf tossed casually against a tree ten yards away from them.
The wolf shudders and both our gazes turn to him and watch him as he evolves back into himself, all copper skin and dead brown eyes.
"Alice?" Bella says again, and I walk slowly over to her and Edward. He is not dead (except in his usual conventional sense), but now I see the source of that pain in my eye. It isn't pretty, but he will probably live.
"Don't cry," I whisper, pressing a hand to her cheek, and she sobs dryly anyway.
*
17:00 / finite
Now that I have seen her again in person, I can See her again, and I return to watching. She and Edward have a small house together, playing at newlyweds again, and I take an apartment a few miles east, in the next town.
I am aware that my time here is finite. Eventually Edward will feel better and he will begin to look at me again. I cannot wish I had not come-- Jacob's wolves would have finished the job their leader could not, and I took care of them.
It would have been easier if I hadn't come, but just for me, and I cannot be that selfish. I love my brother, after all, and he still loves me, though I don't deserve it. I try to visit him as much as I can.
I stay two weeks before I pack. He is nearly well and I am nearly dead for want of love reciprocated.
*
18:00 / afterlife
Her smell is suddenly in my nose, overwhelming (she was intoxicating to you, Edward? even now she smells sweeter than fresh apples), and I turn to see her standing in the doorway.
"Don't go, Alice. Why are you leaving?" she asked, stepping forward into the room. I reel back as though she has a communicable disease, pressing my back to the wall, counting breaths. We are in a closed space and I can nearly touch her, I can imagine tasting her lips and it is too much. I need to go away for ten more years and let her live her afterlife.
Then she is close enough to touch, and I watch myself reach out and rest my fingertips on her arm. I breathe.
"Who told you I was leaving, Bella?"
"Edward did," she replies. "He sounded sad."
I could have dealt with anything but that. I pull my hand back as if burned and turn back to my suitcase.
*
19:00 / outdated
God curse and bless her, but she's taken two steps and hugged me from behind. My body tingles pleasantly and my knees seem unsteady. I can feel her breasts against my back. I can feel her breath on my neck.
"Alice," she says, her voice relieved, as if she has been waiting to touch me for years instead of the other way around.
"You don't need me," I say, my voice low, and this time it is I who am crying with dry eyes. I can't stop, all of the sudden; the tension in my body is trying to release through sobbing and I shudder twice before she has spun me around and taken me in her arms like I really am a child.
"You don't need me," I whisper, captured.
*
20:00 / twilight
We live in the twilight, Bella and Edward and I. There are always people living on the fringe of life-- the people with the strange smiles and odd accents, the kind ones but the ones that never reach. We have everything we need here.
Edward wears an eyepatch now. Bella giggles and says it makes him debonair. He laughs with her, his arm on the small of her back, where it belongs. They tell me where my family has gone-- split up for a while. Carlisle and Esme are in Alaska and he is a doctor for Native Americans there. Emmett is in college on a football scholarship, and Rosalie is his cheerleader. Jasper has gone with Carlisle and Esme, pretending to be their only son.
They don't tell me that everything changed when I left, that family fell to silence and sadness and uncertainty, but I don't have to be a mind-reader to know that. It is funny how they all fought in the beginning, thinking that Bella would change them all too much, when in the end it is my fault.
I laugh when she laughs, anyway.
*
21:00 / mourned
She can't go to Charlie's funeral.
She clutches the announcement clipped from the newspaper like it is her last hold on life (it is, nearly, to be honest). She is a whirlwind of emotions, slipping through the stages of grief like a pro and then backfiring straight through them again.
"Why didn't you See this, Alice?" she pleads with me, and I can only shake my head. Charlie lived far from us and my head is full of her and only her. I wish that I had Seen it for her, but I did not. Her father is gone into an irrevocable death.
Edward is her only comforter and some days I spend all alone in the house, pacing the hallways.
I wish I could go to the funeral too; he was a very kind man. I wish I would have paused to speak with him in Wal*Mart.
Death is full of odd regrets.
*
22:00 / heartbeat
One day she creeps into my room, where I have the curtains pulled. I am listlessly playing solitaire, for lack of better things to do. My shift at the local overnight call center doesn't start for several hours.
"Can I sit with you a while?" she asks.
"Of course," I say, surprised at the hoarseness of my voice. It is from disuse. Edward is in one of his moods where he is most upset about me loving Bella and we have not been talking much lately. I haven't found the strength to leave yet. Perhaps tomorrow.
She sits down beside me and puts her hand on my shoulder, an act to make even an undead heartbeat speed up. I think she is just being friendly until she doesn't let me go. I look up from my cards almost directly into her stare.
"I know," she says. "I know about you."
My undead heartbeat stops.
*
23:00 / endless
She takes advantage of my utter silence, leaning forward to kiss me-- for only a second, surely, but it seems like an eternity. Her kiss is gentle and I think I surely must be dead.
"Bella--" I say, for lack of anything coherent.
"Alice, I... I had no idea why you left, really. I just knew I missed you, I needed you. I didn't know how much. I... loved Edward, you believe me?"
I nodded.
"But Edward loves his idea of me. He loves to protect me, to own me, to be my husband. He doesn't love the real me. And you do."
The joy welling up in my heart was being subdued with guilt. I couldn't do this to Edward-- had left not to do it before.
But this time she has come to me.
Playfully she scatters my game of solitare to scoot closer to me. Our second kiss is just as endless as the first.
For the first time in many years, I am really happy.
femslash100's Around the Clock challenge (this is not an official claim)Length: 3019 words, divided into 24 short ficlets of various length
Title: Historic
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing: Alice/Bella; Edward/Bella
Rating: PG for vague account of multilation and death
Warnings: angsty
Disclaimer: Twilight is the property of Stephenie Meyer. This fanfic is a derivative of canon material that is not my property. I do not profit from these writings. The opinions and actions expressed in these stories are not necessarily the views and beliefs of the original author or me.
Excerpt: Edward knows. Of course he does. He told Bella once that there were no secrets among the Cullens. He wasn't joking. There could be no secrets unless he was our secret-keeper.
00:00 / beginning
Edward knows.
Of course he does. He told Bella once that there were no secrets among the Cullens. He wasn't joking. There could be no secrets unless he was our secret-keeper.
His face is wounded when he looks at me now and all I can whisper is, "Sorry." I'd like to think, I'd quit loving her for your sake, but he'd know I was lying. Instead I think, I'll never tell. That will have to be enough. It is enough for me to see her happy with him, to see her laugh.
It will not be my lips on her neck that bring the change. Perhaps that is for the best.
*
01:00 / prehistoric
I can't remember the time before my change, the point at which my heart stopped beating, the moment I gave into the pain. It's prehistory to me-- before any time that mattered.
But Bella smiles and I think that I can almost remember what it was like when my blood flowed, when I was young and real. And it isn't that I don't love Jasper still, but he is as dead as I, and something in her calls to me, deeper, under the skin.
I try not to touch her very much nowadays, hating the coldness of my own skin.
02:00 / anniversary
For one year, she has been changed, now. Not that anniversaries matter anymore.
For one year, she has been exactly the same, a living statue, just like the rest of us. Her heart doesn't beat, her blood doesn't flow, doesn't have the same allure as it once did. Her eyes were completely hazel now, sometimes gold, but certainly no longer dull brown.
I don't understand how I can still love her just the same as I did when she was alive, when her breaths made me grin and her heartbeat, infinitely precious, was still steady. She doesn't look the same as she used to, not at all.
I can only be grateful that she didn't gain an ability to read minds. I can only be grateful that Edward hasn't taken her and fled from the pressure of my unspoken love for her.
I cannot be grateful that I still love her, but I cannot stop, so I just do.
A year has passed.
*
03:00 / generational
"Alice, I'm concerned," Carlisle begins earnestly, and for the first time in-- for the first time, ever, really, I feel like a child being reprimanded by her parent. I put my head down, not meeting his eyes, and I resist the urge to kick my feet like a child.
"There seems to be a lot of tension between you and Edward, and he won't tell me why," my 'parent' continues. Carlisle, the peacekeeper, the one who took me in and treated me as family. The one who gave me a family, who changed Edward and Esme and the man that I loved and love (it's just not the same, Jasper, I'm sorry).
"I was thinking about going away on my own for a while," I say, not looking up, not able to stand the hurt look in his eyes. I know it is there, I have Seen it already, several weeks ago, when I was deciding. I don't want to hurt him.
"Okay," he says slowly, and I get down out of the chair and walk away.
*
04:00 / insomnia
"I can't sleep. Go ahead to bed. I'll be all right," I say to him, and he just shrugs.
"You never sleep," he says, and I laugh like he's joking. "Not much," I replied. Not since the nineteenth century, anyway.
"What do you do when you can't sleep?" he says, contemplative. It's an odd time for my roommate to want to talk philosophy. Usually he waits until he has come home drunk and has tried to take advantage of me. (He can't figure out why it is so hard to catch me; I can't figure out what I thought I was doing, rooming with a human. Some part of me thought this would work, even as I Saw it wouldn't.)
"I think about someone," I reply honestly, and after a moment he nods.
"See you in the morning," he says after a long moment, yawning, and he heads to his bedroom. After a minute I go to mine, laying down on a bed that I rarely muss and staring up at the dark ceiling.
And I think about her until the morning comes.
*
05:00 / contemporary
I can See what she's doing now. I don't bother to block it out anymore. I know her "signature," her heart. I can See her.
She is happy mostly, and sometimes she's sad, and sometimes she's frustrated with my brother, just like anyone else would be. She isn't tired of immortality yet, even though she misses her family. The funeral was hard on Charlie.
Sometimes she misses me, and that's what I have been trying to block out, that painful knowledge. But I can't block the Seeing just like Edward can't block his hearing into minds-- for a time, for a little, but not forever.
Sometimes she misses me, and I always miss her, and that helps me feel connected, just a little, and that's all I need for sanity.
*
06:00 / dawn
Sometimes I almost dream. It's not a human sort of night dream, just a daydream, cut down when concentration shifts and real "life" returns.
She has never seen me in the light, seen my skin shimmer as though it is as new as Eve's own flesh, seen how bright my eyes are in reflection. But when I daydream, I imagine that she sees me in all my angelic glory, and that she loves me.
And after the first couple of times that this comes to mind, I move away, even further than before, so he can't hear me. I can't bear to break Edward's heart any further for daydreams that fade with the dawn.
*
07:00 / awakened
My new roommate doesn't tease me about "waking with the dawn," because she does the same. We go out onto the ice and fish for a while as the sun makes it bearable. She speaks very little English, and very little at all; I do not speak her language at all, but it suits us both. It is easier to maintain a small home out here on the fringe with another person to watch your back, to make sure that you double-check each other. The cold doesn't give in, not to humans.
"What are you?" she asks me one day. I've been careful to hunt only at night when she sleeps, careful not to arouse her suspicions, but it seems for naught. She squints at me, her dark eyes questioning.
"Lonely," I say, and she nods, but she knows there's something more, and it worries her enough that when I emerge form my bedroom the next morning, she is gone. I lay on my bed and heard her drive away into the crunching snow at three a.m. last night, hoping that she made it somewhere warm.
My hands are cold and I miss Bella, not that either of these things are revelation. I don't stay here very long.
*
08:00 / heyday
"Don't you have a family?"
"Of course I do. It's just been a while since I've seen them." I stare off into space, not bothering to hide my pain too well. I can already tell that this set of roommates isn't going to work for me. I hadn't realized that they were specifically looking for older children to patronize in their home. Of course, I am better qualified to raise myself than they were.
"Oh? Why is that?" the woman says, kindly and grandmotherly and resting her arms just so in her lap. This is the first time in ages that I have been irritated by such behavior in someone. I usually tend to wonder if my parents, if my grandparents, had behaved thus. But this kindly old woman is poking at old wounds.
"I fell in love with my brother's wife," I say, the words sounding harsh and bitter in the sudden shocked silence, and without waiting for a reply, I get up and leave.
*
09:00 / planned
It would have been stupid of them to stay in Forks for very long, and it is stupid for me to go back, but I go anyway. I tuck my hair underneath a ballcap and go wandering through the Wal*Mart at ridiculous midnight hours.
Sometimes I buy things; it is only fair. They preserve me with fluorescent lights and small talk, so I buy clothes or food or something else I can donate at the Goodwill down the street.
I don't plan to see her ever again, but I see her in Wal*Mart all the time-- in the dark hair of the woman in front of me in line, in the vibrant pulses of the people here. There is a checker who has almost her exact same eyes-- a cousin perhaps, though I never dare to ask.
"Alice? Is that you?"
I whirl-- too fast, too fast, Alice, they'll know-- and look up at Charlie, a man who seems decades older (had I been gone that long really). His mouth is open in shock.
I don't speak, I flee, but damage is done. I have to go.
*
10:00 / wristwatch
For her first birthday after her change, I gave Bella a watch. It was a sweet thing in dark leather, elegant as her slender wrist. She liked it, I knew. She lifted it from the box to show Edward. His hand rested on her back like a promise. He'd been touching her a lot lately, as though he could protect her from the strength of my gaze.
"But Alice," she said sweetly, letting Edward help her put it on, "we have all the time in the world." Oh, how I laughed, the bitterness seeping through into my actions even then.
It has been ten years now. I lay in the hotel room and listen to the clock tick off the minutes, feeling restless.
*
11:00 / punctual
It is the first time I have enrolled in high school without my family around me, and I feel their loss more fiercely every day. I could use Rosalie's gossip and Jasper's good nature and Edward's skill at biology. I miss the opportunity to watch Bella dress for gym and to study the way the wind blows through her hair.
I miss my old life.
I am punctual for school every day. I drive a battered Camry that I bought in a car lot in Washington state for pennies on the dollar.
I don't last a year before I'm on the move again.
*
12:00 / lunchtime
I almost bite her.
I'm in a club at midnight and she's dancing so close to me that her pulse fills me more than the music does. She is taking my blood interest for sexual interest, pressing her full chest against my small one, and she's grinning.
Her name is Carla; we met earlier in the night when the barman didn't want to take my fake ID. She bought me a beer and we started talking and here we are now.
My teeth seem to fill my mouth and I can smell her neck. I stumble like I'm drunk and press my mouth against her shoulder and I just can't do it.
She doesn't smell enough like Bella.
*
13:00 / instantaneous
It has been a while since I've seen her and that's why I stagger, grabbing my head, as the visions come, as sharp and harsh as a sudden knife wound. She is screaming God she's screaming and oh God Edward.
It isn't until my coworker starts shaking me that I realize I'm screaming too. I reach out and put a hand against the wall, and navigate to the door of the warehouse without opening my eyes. All I can see is blood, old blood, and all I can smell is fear and Bella Bella Bella.
I'm running as soon as my feet hit the gravel outside and I run until the daylight makes me glow, and I prowl through the bushes on the side of the interstate for too many hours before I can run again.
*
14:00 / season
I meet the wolves almost two miles out of town. My feet, hands, and face are bare and they glow in the twilight. I stand absolutely still as they circle, trying to figure out what to do. Whatever Jacob is doing to Edward right now, they're guarding him. They won't let me pass without a fight.
I have spent a season away from fighting and from family but the adrenaline in my body makes me stiff enough to snap.
"She needs me," I say to them as they circle. "She needs me."
I take a step forward and one growls. I have no more time for this. I do what I have to. They can't keep me from her.
*
15:00 / unpredictable
I've never ran this fast and I've never felt so lost before but I can't stop going until I know. I can smell wolf everywhere, angry wolf, and it is so disorienting I can hardly figure out where I am headed, but I can't stop.
I feel a sudden sharp pain in one eye and trip, rolling into a tree. It's the worst pain I can remember ever feeling and it's not even mine, it's Edward's. He can't see and now I can hear Bella screaming above anything else.
And then she stops and I hear three thudding sounds in succession and I am there, emerging onto a scene of utter confusion.
And when I see her, everything stops.
*
16:00 / evolution
"Alice?"
She is trying to cry, that sweet porcelain girl I fell in love with. She is cradling Edward's head in her lap and the blood on her hands smells like the blood of the wolf tossed casually against a tree ten yards away from them.
The wolf shudders and both our gazes turn to him and watch him as he evolves back into himself, all copper skin and dead brown eyes.
"Alice?" Bella says again, and I walk slowly over to her and Edward. He is not dead (except in his usual conventional sense), but now I see the source of that pain in my eye. It isn't pretty, but he will probably live.
"Don't cry," I whisper, pressing a hand to her cheek, and she sobs dryly anyway.
*
17:00 / finite
Now that I have seen her again in person, I can See her again, and I return to watching. She and Edward have a small house together, playing at newlyweds again, and I take an apartment a few miles east, in the next town.
I am aware that my time here is finite. Eventually Edward will feel better and he will begin to look at me again. I cannot wish I had not come-- Jacob's wolves would have finished the job their leader could not, and I took care of them.
It would have been easier if I hadn't come, but just for me, and I cannot be that selfish. I love my brother, after all, and he still loves me, though I don't deserve it. I try to visit him as much as I can.
I stay two weeks before I pack. He is nearly well and I am nearly dead for want of love reciprocated.
*
18:00 / afterlife
Her smell is suddenly in my nose, overwhelming (she was intoxicating to you, Edward? even now she smells sweeter than fresh apples), and I turn to see her standing in the doorway.
"Don't go, Alice. Why are you leaving?" she asked, stepping forward into the room. I reel back as though she has a communicable disease, pressing my back to the wall, counting breaths. We are in a closed space and I can nearly touch her, I can imagine tasting her lips and it is too much. I need to go away for ten more years and let her live her afterlife.
Then she is close enough to touch, and I watch myself reach out and rest my fingertips on her arm. I breathe.
"Who told you I was leaving, Bella?"
"Edward did," she replies. "He sounded sad."
I could have dealt with anything but that. I pull my hand back as if burned and turn back to my suitcase.
*
19:00 / outdated
God curse and bless her, but she's taken two steps and hugged me from behind. My body tingles pleasantly and my knees seem unsteady. I can feel her breasts against my back. I can feel her breath on my neck.
"Alice," she says, her voice relieved, as if she has been waiting to touch me for years instead of the other way around.
"You don't need me," I say, my voice low, and this time it is I who am crying with dry eyes. I can't stop, all of the sudden; the tension in my body is trying to release through sobbing and I shudder twice before she has spun me around and taken me in her arms like I really am a child.
"You don't need me," I whisper, captured.
*
20:00 / twilight
We live in the twilight, Bella and Edward and I. There are always people living on the fringe of life-- the people with the strange smiles and odd accents, the kind ones but the ones that never reach. We have everything we need here.
Edward wears an eyepatch now. Bella giggles and says it makes him debonair. He laughs with her, his arm on the small of her back, where it belongs. They tell me where my family has gone-- split up for a while. Carlisle and Esme are in Alaska and he is a doctor for Native Americans there. Emmett is in college on a football scholarship, and Rosalie is his cheerleader. Jasper has gone with Carlisle and Esme, pretending to be their only son.
They don't tell me that everything changed when I left, that family fell to silence and sadness and uncertainty, but I don't have to be a mind-reader to know that. It is funny how they all fought in the beginning, thinking that Bella would change them all too much, when in the end it is my fault.
I laugh when she laughs, anyway.
*
21:00 / mourned
She can't go to Charlie's funeral.
She clutches the announcement clipped from the newspaper like it is her last hold on life (it is, nearly, to be honest). She is a whirlwind of emotions, slipping through the stages of grief like a pro and then backfiring straight through them again.
"Why didn't you See this, Alice?" she pleads with me, and I can only shake my head. Charlie lived far from us and my head is full of her and only her. I wish that I had Seen it for her, but I did not. Her father is gone into an irrevocable death.
Edward is her only comforter and some days I spend all alone in the house, pacing the hallways.
I wish I could go to the funeral too; he was a very kind man. I wish I would have paused to speak with him in Wal*Mart.
Death is full of odd regrets.
*
22:00 / heartbeat
One day she creeps into my room, where I have the curtains pulled. I am listlessly playing solitaire, for lack of better things to do. My shift at the local overnight call center doesn't start for several hours.
"Can I sit with you a while?" she asks.
"Of course," I say, surprised at the hoarseness of my voice. It is from disuse. Edward is in one of his moods where he is most upset about me loving Bella and we have not been talking much lately. I haven't found the strength to leave yet. Perhaps tomorrow.
She sits down beside me and puts her hand on my shoulder, an act to make even an undead heartbeat speed up. I think she is just being friendly until she doesn't let me go. I look up from my cards almost directly into her stare.
"I know," she says. "I know about you."
My undead heartbeat stops.
*
23:00 / endless
She takes advantage of my utter silence, leaning forward to kiss me-- for only a second, surely, but it seems like an eternity. Her kiss is gentle and I think I surely must be dead.
"Bella--" I say, for lack of anything coherent.
"Alice, I... I had no idea why you left, really. I just knew I missed you, I needed you. I didn't know how much. I... loved Edward, you believe me?"
I nodded.
"But Edward loves his idea of me. He loves to protect me, to own me, to be my husband. He doesn't love the real me. And you do."
The joy welling up in my heart was being subdued with guilt. I couldn't do this to Edward-- had left not to do it before.
But this time she has come to me.
Playfully she scatters my game of solitare to scoot closer to me. Our second kiss is just as endless as the first.
For the first time in many years, I am really happy.
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It's a feasible situation, really, is what I mean to say. And you've brought life to it.
I love it!
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