#anathema alice has a few unpleasant truths coming her way

[goldeneyedgirl]

@sonyawixI am so so sorry about your earring. If it's a pair or you have a photo, I know there are people on etsy who can recreate one for you!

However, let me see what I can do...

divorced jalice.

He braces himself on the deck railing as he stares out into the night. He looks haunted, honestly, and she almost feels bad for him. 

“That wasn’t how I wanted you to find out,” she begins gently, and he just shakes his head. 

“How long?” His voice is hoarse and for a moment she wonders if he’s fighting back tears. “How long has this been going on?”

“Six and a half years.” She moves closer slowly, like he’s a wild animal, too easily spooked. “My doctor is great, I’m doing well. I just wanted Carlisle’s opinion on if I needed to bump up an appointment, it isn’t a big deal.”

He still hasn’t looked at her. 

“When did you find out?” He’s so tense, she’s surprised he hasn’t hit something yet. 

“Six and a half years ago,” she replies. Don’t get specific, Jasper, you’ll just upset yourself. Please.

“Before or… after?”

That’s when he looks at her, and the raw pain in his eyes cuts her. She wants to lie to him, offer him some comfort, but she can’t and she won’t. She’s been protecting him from the full picture for so long, has let him live with the easy reality that she gave up on him and on them because he was an addict and a cheater.

She moves closer to him. “Why does that matter?”

He shakes his head. “Because the fact that you were… you were that fucking sick and I didn’t notice? That you had to walk away from everything… god, I know Rose and Bella cut you out. I know they blamed you for months until Rose worked out that I was having an affair, and then we couldn’t fucking find you. You could have been dead and I wouldn’t have known…”

“You were still my next of kin, you would have been told,” she offers lamely, and he just stares at her again. 

“You had no one, Alice. You didn’t even have your own home,” he says through gritted teeth. “When did you know?”

“Before the divorce was finalised.” The words she says are firm, determined and they both know that she’s dancing around the truth, and he feels so sick. 

“It was why you left, wasn’t it?”

She closes her eyes to steel herself for what she says next. “I… I knew that nothing was going to change between us until you knew you had a problem. Maria hurt my ego, but the drugs Jas… They changed you. And I could manage that better when I was healthy but when I found out that it was serious, I realised that I needed to … to put on my own life vest first. How ugly do you think it would have gotten if I had stayed? My recovery was long, Jasper. It would have been a disaster. I made the best choice I could with what I had.”

He nods once but he looks so miserable, she wants to hold him.

“Why didn’t you tell everyone the truth? About everything?” He finally asks. “You know Esme and Carlisle would have taken care of you, and Bella, and…”

“Because they were your family and you needed them. My family came through for me when I needed them to.”

“With money. Health insurance. Have you actually seen them in person?” His voice is laced with anger and she feels tired. She didn’t want this conversation to happen like this. She had it planned out, had it prepared in nice, easy pieces so that it didn’t have to hurt like this. 

The best laid plans. 

“No, Mom and I email each other. I think she sent flowers once? Maybe she just talked about it. But I didn’t want to see them, Jasper. If healthcare in this country wasn’t so awful, I wouldn’t have spoken to them at all.”

“So you were alone.”

“Jasper, I honestly wasn’t well enough to care or notice for most of it. You’re making this a much bigger deal than it is.” That’s when she reaches out to touch his arm, but he pulls away. 

“I need to go,” he says suddenly, straightening. He still isn’t looking at her. “I just… need to go.”

“No.” She’s shaking her head and turning back to go inside, for the whole Cullen family to look at her with pity and curiosity in their eyes. “I’ll go. You stay here with your family, and you call Peter, okay? I’ll call an Uber and we’ll talk in a couple of days. I don’t want to be the reason you break your sobriety, okay?”

--

deaf mary-alice.

Seeing Jasper again is like... it's like the world is back in colour. It's a cliche, thinking like that, but she can't help it - she missed him so bad it was like someone had taken off a limb. She just kind of... adapted. It was easier knowing that he was safe and he was healing; she could watch her and see him getting better, and she convinced herself that it was selfish to want anything more than his safety and happiness. That it was enough to keep her going.

How many times had Maria and the other older soldiers reminded her that no one had any use for a defective vampire? That she would make any coven vulnerable and they'd turn her away, and that she was safer with Maria?

(The last night was supposed to be special but it all went wrong. They only got a little while to sit and talk before it was over. She regretted that. She wanted to send him off with the memory of her touch, with her kiss. That he would remember that he was treasured. Instead... well, sometimes the future changes and she just has to live with that.)

She lives in a quiet world with everyone gone. Maria still talks to her, but mostly she's expected to lip-read and that's all orders and stuff. No one wants a conversation, so she just stops bothering. Maria lets her keep the Major's quarters and his books. At lot of them are hard to understand, and slow to read, but she tries. She draws a lot, when there's chalk and paper. She fights and trains and hunts. It's a small life, a quiet life, but it's hers. The future doesn't show her ever having anything more, so she just appreciates what she has.

What she had.

It's been decades by the time that Peter and Charlotte just... show up. She's never been so pleased to see them before, talking to Maria like they didn't flee in terror. She cannot help herself, the way she half-tackles them, hugging them so tightly. They look wonderful and Peter laughs at her, fumbles through what he remembers of her language, and Charlotte seems a little sad at her excitement.

(Charlotte's wearing a top that has little flowers on it, it's clean, and she smells so nice. Even shoes! And fancy little pins for her hair!)

She's not paying attention to Maria's conversation with Peter until Maria taps her shoulder and signs the words.

You can go North with Peter and Charlotte, Mary-Alice. You've done well.

It's the biggest compliment that Maria has ever given her and the words take a moment to settle her brain. North? 

Charlotte smiles at her and tells her, she can go and see the Major. 

And that was terrifying. North to see the Major. 

She'd nearly asked to stay with Maria. 

What if... what if the Major didn't want her? What if he'd forgotten her?

What if he had a mate? She hadn't checked on him in a while - sometimes it was hard - and maybe the Cullens had found him some pretty girl who could talk and hear and sing.

Her stomach had been in knots and it had taken every ounce of her bravery to agree to go North. Something new, something different.

(She couldn't bring herself to Look because she was terrified about what she would find.)

And then she got there, arrived at him home, and he remembered her. 

He remembered her and he was happy to see her. He had missed her, he still cared. 

(He still knew their words, still smelt the same, and held her so tight like he was making sure she couldn't get away. It was like the world had flipped the right way up.)

She presses herself so close to him, holds him so tight, only lets go to speak. “Maria sent me, said I could come be with you now. You went north and I was lonely. No one spoke to me like you.”

She doesn't even care about the Cullens watching them, watching her tell him she missed him and loved him, watching his hands fall into the old words. 

(The Cullens are... nice. She remembers them from her early visions, and what she knows of them, they are no threat. She can lipread some of what they say; she can see their eyes follow how she holds onto Jasper, how eagerly she speaks with him. But they smile and welcome her into the house, into the home, and maybe something is finally going right for her. Maybe the world just got a little bit bigger).

--

anathema.

We sat together on the couch, talking about superficial topics at first - he went by Jasper Hale, not Cullen, as part of their cover story of adopted and fostered children. He had drawn the short straw, and had to attend Forks as a sophomore this year - luckily, the school year was more than half over. He was originally from Texas, but the Cullens’ most recent residence was Alaska. 

“That night in the field when you fainted,” Jasper began. “You mentioned something… you have some kind of gift?”

I nodded. “I sometimes get knowledge of things that might happen,” I said, twisting to face him on the couch, crossing my legs. “I might wake up with the absolute certainty that a client is going to smash a vase, or that Charlie Swan is going to have a flat tire. It very, very rarely happens when I’m awake.”

“But it did the other night?” Jasper looked so serious. “It caused a seizure.”

I looked at my lap. “When decisions change rapidly, my mind just shuts down,” I explained. “I kind of just… shut down. It’s happened before, but that was kind of an extreme episode. I’m fine.”

He watches me with this look on his face that I cannot decipher; almost affectionate. He reaches out to gently take my hand. 

“As long as you’re okay.” 

—

The Cullens come over to speak with Freddie on Friday night, and I am buzzing -  I can’t stop moving and fussing and asking questions, and Dulcie is going to strangle me when I am too nervous to eat dinner. 

I break two plates washing the dishes, and Freddie is quick to redeploy me to drying up before we run out of flatware.

“You’ll stay up here for the meeting, Alice,” he informs me with a sternness that is alien to me, when he catches me watching the clock. 

“What?” I promptly drop a mug, and Dulcie plucks the dishcloth out of my hands. “But…”

“No buts. This discussion does not involve you,” he says. “Go and study, make sure that you make a convincing high school student.” He’s sour tonight, grim, and I am reminded of the days after Jeanie’s death. 

I am desperate to see Jasper again, but I don’t want to push my uncle too far. I don’t want this to hurt him more than it already is. 

“Can I call Cynthia?” I ask, as I pause to get myself a soda out of the fridge - more habitual than anything else. 

“Tomorrow,” Dulcie says kindly, and nods for me to leave.

My room seems small and stale now that I am virtually trapped in it for the evening. I have the little drawing Jasper did of me on the scrap of paper taped to my mirror, and the flowers he brought me that have wilted. Nothing Freddie would notice as out of place. Dulcie tells me my bedroom reminds her of a thrift store - so many little treasures cluttering up the surfaces. It’s a good way to hide things in plain sight. 

I could watch a movie in the living room, but that holds less appeal than my room. Instead, I pick up the books Dulcie bought me, left stacked neatly on my desk. They don’t hold my interest for more than a casual flip through - I was never taught Spanish or Algebra, and I have little patience for History, or for Chemistry, especially when I handle chemicals every day of my life. I should be working my way through the reading list Sue brought over, but it’s dull work and almost enough to convince me not to bother with high school at all. 

But Jasper…

I am making my way bravely through Romeo and Juliet when Dulcie brings me in a slice of cake, her hand running through my curls gently. “He worries so much about you,” she said kindly. “He’s just nervous.”

I nod, taking a bite of the cake before I reply. “I know, it’s just… different. I know with my whole heart that Jasper would burn this town to the ground before he hurt me. I am never more safe than I am when I’m with him.”

—

Dulcie is officially my partner in crime; the door isn’t latched, so there’s no sound as I creep out of the apartment and down to the landing. 

I crouch on the landing of the stairs; with the lights off, Freddie and Jeanie couldn’t spot me but the Cullens do and Carlisle winks at me. I probably look like a child, with my hair in curly pigtails and in a giant pink sweater. 

“Alice is a child,” Freddie insisted, looking older than I had ever seen him. “She might not look like it but…”

“How old is Alice?” Carlisle asked gently, and Freddie looked at the ground. 

“You need to tell them the truth, Fred,” Dulcie said gently. “If nothing else, they can protect her when we can’t.”

“Protect her from what?” Edward asks, and I want to echo that question. 

Freddie takes a shuddering breath. “Her mother… Alice’s father was a vampire that stalked and raped her mother. Lilian did not survive the birth, and Alice was… not a normal child.”

“That’s impossible.” The blonde, Rosalie, snaps but Carlisle holds his hand up. 

“Please, Mr Brandon, continue.”

“She grew so fast - by her first birthday, she looked like a perfectly healthy three year old. We brought her here to Forks because Jeanne had a family home out near Noah Bay. When she was born, she was… she was aware of us. Does that make sense? She reached for her mother, but Lillian was dead by then. 

“She didn’t eat for weeks because she … she wanted blood. That was our line in the sand, we couldn’t do that for her. I have no idea how Jeanne managed to get her to take milk and human food, but we got past it. Jeanne always wondered if Alice was so small because we accidentally stunted her growth.”

My hands were shaking.

No one had ever told me any of this before.