Title: Darkness
Author: ondragonflywing
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns all things Twilight.
Characters: Alice, James
Warnings: Dark
Summary: Alice remembers something before the blackness, and the man who had brought her to it.
Table/Prompt: Un-Themed Eight-Father

Mary Alice tried to warn them. She'd told her father not to stop at the tavern on the way home. She'd begged and pleaded. She told him to just come home. She wanted him to come home. To actually come home. She didn't want him to die at the hands of the muscled blonde haired man she'd seen in her visions. She didn't want him to get hurt. But when she mentioned her visions, her father had scoffed, told her that he would definitely be stopping on his way home. He was going to prove to her once and for all that these visions were nonsense. That she was imaging things, not seeing the future.

Mary Alice was plagued by the visions all night, subtle details changing, but her father always dying at the hands of a man that she knew now to be named James. He had broken his back as if it were a twig once. Snapped his neck another time. Knife play had been a favorite at one time, licking the blood from the wounds. It had struck Mary Alice as a surprisingly private moment. In the end though, he decided to not waste much time on ceremony. A devastating blow to the head and then he dug his teeth into her father's neck. Mary Alice cried every time she saw her father's death. Begged her mother to go get him. Told her not to worry. She and her sisters would be safe. She knew it. Her mother had struck her. No one could know the future except for God. She wouldn't leave her children alone in the house.

When Mary Alice's father didn't come home, her mother went to the sheriff. Her sister's prayed for him to be okay. Mary Alice frowned at them, shook her head and cried. Then she prayed for his soul. Her mother struck her again. How dare she imply that her father was dead. He was just late. It was just a misunderstanding. He'd be home. And then Mary Alice would see just how silly and fruitless her visions were.

He never came home. They found his body, just where and how Mary Alice had screamed that they would, when she was tired of being ignored.

In reaction her mother had the priest perform an exorcism. She had to be impure. Tainted. The devil had to be working through her. God had forsaken her. She had to be saved from evil. Mary Alice went through ten exorcisms, listening to her mother cry through all of them. She was cursed with the mark of the devil. And he wouldn't take it back. Not for all the praying or preaching. Mary Alice said she believed in God and loved him. She had given her life to Jesus. But it was all to no avail. No matter what the devil continued to work in her. She cried. She didn't think she was cursed or evil. She was no devil. James was. He was a demon. He was a murderer. She had tried to stop it. She had been given the power and knowledge to do so. She began to say that her gift was from God. A way to help. Her mother threw her out, saying that she wouldn't help Mary Alice any longer, if Mary Alice didn't try to help herself. Her mother had cried the whole trip to the asylum. Her darling daughter had freely offered her soul to the devil. There was no saving her. Mary Alice's mother mourned her loss and then handed over her youngest daughter.

Most children dreamed of treasures, and beautiful magical lands. Mary Alice dreamed of the day that her most recurring vision would occur. That she'd come face to face with her demon. Her James. He was going to offer her an escape from the electric pain and the blackness she was surrounded by here. Most children got to play in the sun. Mary Alice got to have treatments and lay in her small locked room, surrounded by nothing but the dark for company. She had eventually made friends with the dark. They said she couldn't leave her room until she made progress, showed signs of being cured. Nothing made the visions go away. So she got comfortable and waited for her savior, her James to appear, and make his offer. She would join him, be like him. She would escape the darkness. That knowledge brought her both comfort and more treatments that ended in more darkness. She believed in herself, in her visions. She wouldn't let go of her rescue. But all it brought her was electric pain.

Years later, her eyes sprang open to find James kneeling next to her bed. He said she'd been what he was after all along. He admitted to the game and the chase. He admitted to waiting to make sure the visions were real. He admitted that he wanted her to be like him. He wanted to use her power. And she had agreed, trading the darkness for a new kind of darkness. She screamed in pain as his teeth sank into her arm, and the venom began to burn its way through her system. She was completely submerged in darkness. And in that moment she almost lost her mind. The burn so intense, the black crowding all her senses. She wasn't sure how long she was lost in this world, how long she had felt cheated by James's lie. His life was worse than hers. But she finally awoke.

She was met with a sense of peace when her eyes opened on her world. She was alone. But she knew that this world was better than the pitch black that she remembered. She could see everything, smell everything, feel everything. Her throat burned. She instinctually hunted and killed. She felt disgusted with herself, controlled by this otherworldly urge. She despaired. She was no longer in blackness. But she felt black, dark, almost hollow. And then she saw it, she would have a family. The Cullens. She would join them, and things would be different. She would no longer be unholy and forgotten.

She smelled him when he came to the baseball field. She didn't know why it seemed vaguely familiar, why his black eyes brought complete fear to her heart. Why it made her want to protect Bella more fiercely. Why his name made her shiver. She felt hatred for him. But she couldn't remember why. All she knew before this was darkness.

When they were in the dance studio. Alice felt like she had to be involved in the vampire's, James's, destruction. She felt betrayal and anger that she didn't understand. And when his lip sneered back and he laughed, something in her snapped. She lunged, jumped on him, took his head off. She felt satisfaction she didn't understand at destroying his life. As her brother and mate ripped his arms off, she was overcome with joy. A frenzy to dismantle and destroy him started and didn't stop until she found herself practically dancing around the fire where he was burning.

James may have saved her, but he'd destroyed her first. The darkness began to recede. She felt sadness over the loss of her father. Jasper held her, not understanding. Alice would've cried tears for Mary Alice if she'd had any left.