we bloom like flowers without petals, part ii (alice, bella) pg13
title: we bloom like flowers without petals (2/2)
fandom: twilight
character(s)/pairing(s): alice, bella, carlisle, esme, edward || alice/jasper, bella/edward
rating: pg13
word count: 3776
spoilers: none
author's note: this is the last half of this fic. hope you enjoy it!
summary: pre-series au. after escaping the influenza epidemic of 1918 but leaving her where-abouts-unknown love behind, isabella is sent to a mental institution in biloxi. there she meets mary alice, a not-quite-yet crazy girl with startlingly accurate predictions of the future. with only their freindship to keep them sane, together they face living in a mad house while not being exactly crazy themselves, jealousy, and the mysterious attentions of a suspicious new worker at the institution.
part i
part ii:
-
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.