This story was supposed to be entered on DarkFest on LiveJournal but the deadline was in the middle of me moving house, so I missed it. Nevertheless, it's been rattling around my brain ever since and today insisted that I sit down and finish it. So voila!
Thank you to Miaokuancha and Diana Wolfskill for some speedy beta/pre-reading.
The prompt: Alice lies just as well as she sees.
Sins of Omission
Everybody thinks that because Edward can read minds we have no secrets from him, that he can see the future as well as I can.
They are wrong.
At first, that might have been true, but decades have passed since I became a Cullen, and if time is useful for anything at all, it's practicing skills. Skills like lying with your mind.
I do it for fun, as much as anything, although I can't do it very often or it would arouse suspicion. So I take my pleasures in small adjustments: the vision I just had showed Rosalie in a blue dress rather than a red one, or the flowers in that one are lilies rather than chrysanthemums. It's fun to watch the expression on Edward's face as he tries to match the vision with reality, when the reality comes to pass, and for him to try and place why it doesn't feel quite right.
Sometimes I will replace a significant vision with a meaningless one that I have created.
There is a purpose to all of this, of course, besides cheap thrills. And that purpose is killing Bella Swan.
I have nothing against the girl, and in another life we would have been friends. The best of friends. The problem is that I have seen the future, and there is a 50/50 chance that she will be responsible for Jasper's death. That's a chance I won't take.
I've watched, and every single decision I make that would keep them both safe makes things worse. Jasper's too weak around exposed blood, and Bella is too prone to spilling blood. Sooner or later, the two will collide.
The first omission that counts comes the day we set off for school, a rainy day indistinguishable from so many others in Forks. And yet I recognize the scene. We're all in shades of blue, the clothes I have picked out for the family, except for Emmett, who is wearing a favorite green sweater instead.
Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. Isn't that the saying? Today is the first day of the end of some of our lives.
I should give warning to Edward, let him know that he is about to face his singer, that he will be tempted to slaughter an entire class of children to get to her blood. I should tell him that he's about to meet his soul mate, the only woman he will ever love, and that there are things we can do that will stop him killing her.
But I don't. If Edward kills her this way, then so be it. It will be easier on all of us.
Outwardly I am calm. Only Jasper can sense my slight agitation. He asks me why without words, with a question in his eyes and a thumb brushed across my hand. I shake my head and he knows I mean to wait until we have some semblance of privacy. When we are at the school, away from our family, I whisper to him that I feel like I am missing something. I mutter unhappily about Emmett's green sweater. Jasper laughs, tightly because he's suffering among all these people, but it is a laugh nonetheless.
His laugh is what I live for.
I keep my visions quiet during the fateful biology lesson. I can send her to her death but I cannot watch Bella Swan – a girl I have seen myself laughing and dancing with – die at Edward's hands. I keep my mind quiet and know by the lack of commotion and sirens that she is alive at the end of the lesson. A vision of her and Edward in the meadow, falling inexorably into love, dances in my head, marched out by the remains of Jasper's body, torn apart by the Cullen males to protect Bella.
One paper cut. One silly, barely-there cut could take him from me forever. One human girl could be the death of him.
I won't let it happen.
When we return from school there is a war council of sorts, where I feign utter ignorance at Bella's existence, my lies so expert that even Jasper believes me. The hardest part of my deception, the least tolerable part of it, is lying to my mate, hiding my emotions from him. I will be happy when we reach the day where I don't have to do it anymore.
Edward leaves for Alaska, and part of me hopes that he will stay there. If he does, Bella will live, and I will not need to coat my hands with her blood, not even metaphorically. It's foolish hoping for him to stay away though. His soul has already recognized Bella and will not be parted from her. I can lie to everyone else but not to myself; his return is inevitable.
Still, he keeps his distance, but no matter how much I wish and pray for a different outcome, their love story will not be denied its existence. To save his pain, I have to end this sooner rather than later.
Opportunity presents itself with the first ice. As I lie in Jasper's arms at night, I see the van careening across the icy parking lot, Bella's bloodied and broken form left in its wake.
I slip away in the morning, and I'm barely gone long enough for anyone to notice me.
We stand across the parking lot from Bella's rusty old truck, and I lead a quiet conversation about a history show that was on the night before, one both Carlisle and Jasper have dismissed for getting the facts wrong. I huddle in my coat, though it's not cold, and give a little fake shiver. Sometimes I wonder if I like pretending too much.
That thought lets the impending future bubble up in my head and it's too late to quash it. Edward glances at me, wide-eyed and horror stricken. He steps away from us, swearing under his breath as he crosses the lot – he intends to engage Bella in conversation and move her away from the truck before the worst can happen.
The future wavers in my head. Bella is safe.
"Oh, no," I whisper, and Jasper has an arm around my waist, sensing my dread.
"Alice?"
I shake my head in response, and all eyes turn to where my stare is locked.
Edward is four cars away from Bella when the screeching of tires causes her to look up and across at Tyler's van, which is sliding over the frozen pavement towards her. Tyler is desperately trying to avert the collision course, relying on snow chains on his tires that aren't there. They should be, but they aren't.
Then Edward does the most stupid thing he could, the only thing that would ruin the future I am holding onto. In front of everyone, he uses his speed to cover the distance and put himself between Bella and the van.
Her life is saved. In the distance, Jasper's life is still in danger.
It is easy to cover what I said, what I saw, what I felt afterwards. Edward assumes that the moment he saw the vision was the same moment I had seen it too. Jasper believes the horror I felt was the potential loss of Bella. I have already told them all that I will love her like a sister. Jasper takes special care of me that night, knowing I have seen Bella's death and believing that to be the source of my melancholia.
For a small part of me, it is. I will never have that kind of friendship with anyone else, not the kind I have seen. In a few month's time I would love and protect her as fiercely as Edward himself. Only my love for Jasper would remain stronger. Without his love, I would be nothing.
I console myself with the knowledge that what I am planning isn't just for my benefit. Jasper's death would rip our family apart, the mated couples isolating themselves. His death would tear me apart too, and I in turn would tear the world apart looking for revenge. I have seen my future without Jasper in it and it's not where I want to be. I am a cold, vicious killer, spurred on by hatred, and I am alone. I kill Bella for her part in Jasper's death, I kill Edward for being the one to kill him, I kill Carlisle for preventing me from taking my revenge, and then I kill anyone I want to, until the Volturi hunt me down and end me.
The world will be a better place if Jasper lives and Bella dies.
The lucky thing is that, as Edward says, trouble follows her around. I just have to wait for the next moment when nature will strive to erase Bella from existence and ensure that Edward will not be around to rescue her again.
I don't have to wait long. Bella will visit Port Angeles soon, with some girls from the school. I won't even have anything to do with this: she will wander into a trap and won't escape from it. Her way out of the world will be brutal, far less quick than being hit by Tyler's van, and the full vision almost makes me change my mind. If Rosalie were to ever find out that I let this happen, she would kill me as soon as look at me.
It seems like the world is doing the work for me, until I notice that every night, Edward leaves us, and he only returns after sunrise. When he comes home, he carries her scent around him, and he is torn between two emotions: peace, of a kind I have never seen on him, and doubt.
Only then do I realize how deeply Edward has fallen, and how quickly.
It is easy to delve into his future and watch him climb into her room at night, with the most innocent of intentions, and watch over her as she sleeps. Beyond that, I see the resolve to protect her, and his last minute rescue on a cold and dark street in Port Angeles.
I have to act now.
"I'm worried," I say to Emmett as we linger by the M3. We have one class together, which has finished early today, so we are waiting for the others at the end of the school day.
"About Edward?"
"About both of them." I don't need to name Bella. It's clear to all of us how he feels about her. "When was the last time Edward fed?"
"It's been a while. You think I should take him? Have you seen anything?"
"No, I haven't seen anything in particular, I just have this feeling. If you can take him hunting I think it would help. I'm just worried about his control, with the amount of time he's spending alone with her."
"I'll speak to him later. Got the munchies myself."
And with that, Edward and Emmett are going away for three days. I dutifully promise to watch over Bella in his absence.
I wait for the rain; I only have one more adjustment to make, and that is to cause reasonable wear to Bella's seatbelt.
For once, the rain isn't fine, constant mist but a healthy barrage from the skies. The roads are slick and visibility is low as Bella drives herself home from school, along a quiet road lined with old trees. She isn't going that fast – the truck isn't capable of it – but I am waiting for her.
She sees me in the middle of the road, appearing between one swish of the wipers and the next, and she stomps on the brake. The truck fishtails on the wet asphalt, the end kicking out a little, and I bat the front so it goes spinning right off the road and into the trees.
The truck survives. Bella would survive, inside the solid cage of metal, if it weren't for my earlier sabotage. She has been thrown against the windscreen, the impact of her skull causing it to shatter, tiny hairline cracks spiraling out like a spider's web. Her eyes are open but her vision is glazed, and a thick stream of blood trickles from her nose.
I pull her free from the truck and lay her out in the moss and grass, cradling her against me. For good measure, I make one attempted call to Carlisle's phone, which goes to voicemail, as it should.
"I'm sorry it had to be this way," I whisper. She looks up at me but what little focus she has is fading. "We were going to be friends, you know. You were going to marry Edward, you were going to have a baby together, and live happily ever after. Now you'll be dead, and he'll never be happy."
She doesn't even struggle for words. I'm not sure she's really there as I make my confession, and soon enough her eyes are blank and her skin is cooling.
I call Edward.
"Edward, oh God, oh God, I'm sorry! I tried – I saw it and I ran but I wasn't fast enough and – " I babble.
He cuts me off. "What are you telling me, Alice?"
"Bella – she – oh God – there was a deer and she swerved and hit her head..."
"Alice." His voice is high with fear. "Alice, what are you saying?"
"Bella's gone," I tell him, and allow a sob to escape. "She's gone."
Edward is there before the police, cradling her to him, rocking her and humming a tune I don't know. Jasper arrives with Carlisle, and he holds me. No one questions my version of events. Then we wait until her father arrives to find that the RTA is his daughter, and she's DOA.
I whisper a silent apology to Charlie Swan. He was going to be a friend of sorts, too. The grief on his face is too much to bear, and for the first time I feel guilt at what I have done. It is not as fleeting as I hoped it would be.
"It's not your fault, Alice," Jasper says, trying to console me. "Sometimes things are just supposed to happen. You seeing them doesn't mean you should or can change them."
My sorrow at her loss isn't entirely feigned, either. All those futures, the ones where I had a best friend, a niece, a family with real laughter and joy in it, are gone. But with Bella's death, the vision of Jasper's demise has been buried too. Having eternity with my love will soothe that sorrow. Still, I hope that there is a heaven and she has made it there.
That may be the only way she will be reunited with Edward. I've seen his future too, and I've done all of this knowing what will become of him. The loneliness will swallow him, until he seeks out the Volturi, provoking them into destroying him.
This is another vision I have to hide from him completely, another lie I have to tell, one I will tell until long after Edward is ash and no one will be around to blame me for it. I will mourn for my brother, but it will not be enough to stop the lies.
Thank you for reading :).