Lost & Found - Chapter One - My First Memory.
Disclaimer: Everything you see (except for any OC's) all belong to Ms Stephenie Meyer. I'm just borrowing them.
Summery: While watching Jasper hunt Alice looks back over their life together, and their journey to find the Cullens.
Authors Note: This is my first attempt at a Twilight fic, and also the first thing i have written in about a year, so please be gentle with me lol. The non flashback moments are set somewhere between Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, but contains no spoilers as of yet (if this changes i'll let you know.) Everything else takes place pre-Twilight. All canon, and if they were a vampire in the books, they're a vampire in here too. Not much of Jasper in this chapter but bare with me, i promise everyone's favorite empath will have a bigger part in future chapters (that's if anyone wants me to continue this lol.)
"My first memory is of seeing Jasper's face in my future; I always knew that he was where my life was headed." - Eclipse - pg 585.
He stood at the opposite end of the small clearing, his back turned towards me. Though I knew he was entirely focused on the deer he was hunting I didn't doubt that he could feel the waves of pride and love emanating from me as I watched him. It hadn't taken me as long as I'd thought it would this time, to convince him that he needed to hunt. I'd been prepared to badger him about it for days, as I usually had to until he conceded. But this time all I'd had to do was remind him how much it hurt me to see him in pain. And I knew that he was in pain, as he often was whenever he tried to push against his own limits. I often wished he could see that he had nothing to prove to anyone, we all understood how hard he was trying. After all, it wasn't his fault that he hadn't been trying to control his thirst for as long as the rest of us. But, as always he hated to feel weak. 'What a stubborn, silly, beautiful fool he is' I thought to myself while I watched him stalk silently closer to his prey. Though my own throat burned dully, I knew it would be days before I would need to hunt again. For the moment I was content just to watch Jasper. A soft sigh broke from my perfect lips – it could have been mistaken for the fluttering of a butterflies wings – my eyes had not once strayed from his powerful yet somehow graceful form. Maybe one day I would need to remind him to hunt more often. Until that day came I knew I would continue to watch his future more closely than anyone else's, because I worried about him. And I knew I would continue to pester him about hunting, because I loved him.
A small contented smile played across my delicate features with that thought. I loved Jasper Whitlock – or Jasper Hale, as most of the people in the small town of Forks, Washington knew him – with every fiber of my being. I had loved him before I had even met him. I settled myself gracefully on the ground – glad that for once it wasn't raining – and let my mind wander back through half a century of memories until I found what I was searching for, my first memory.
Dark.
So dark.
How long had it been dark for? Days? No, more than days. Weeks, then? Months? No, not even months. Years.
It had been dark for years. Maybe even forever. I was sure of it, though I wasn't sure of anything else. I felt my eyes flutter open slowly. It wasn't dark anymore. There was light. Bright light. Too bright, too strong. I closed my eyes and the light disappeared into the dark again. I liked the dark, it was safe and familiar, for reasons I couldn't remember. It should have bothered me that I couldn't remember, but my mind didn't seem to want to focus on that for too long. In fact, my mind seemed to be running all over the place, in a million directions at once. Why did my throat feel like it was burning? I was sure I'd had a name once, but what was it? And where was I? My mind raced, looking for answers but finding only more questions. I realized that had not been the light that was too strong for my eyes, but my eyes that had been too strong for the light. I wondered for a moment, why that realization didn't shock me. Slowly, carefully, I opened my eyes again, letting them adjust to the daylight. It took me almost the length of a heartbeat to notice that the light was being diffused somewhat by the tall, overgrown trees that surrounded me, giving everything in my sight a subtle green hue. A small part of my mind registered that my own heartbeat seemed to be absent. 'Hmm..I wonder..' I thought to myself, not daring to speak out loud yet. My train of thought soon trailed off again as I examined my surroundings.
I was lying on my side, the right side of my face pressed against the ground. From the light covering of fallen leaves I had acquired it looked as though I'd been here for a few days at the least. I tried to lift my head slowly off the ground and was surprised to find myself suddenly standing upright. How had I moved so quickly? Surely that wasn't normal? Or was it? Maybe everyone could do that. Though I still felt oddly disorientated it was becoming easier to focus my mind on one thing at a time. My ears picked up the sound of a stream bubbling quietly two miles from where I stood. I stood, still as a marble statue and completely fascinated for a moment as my ears also caught the sound of something very small – a rodent, maybe? - scurrying quickly, close to the ground. I don't know how long I stood there, just listening before I decided to follow the sound of the stream I could hear.
The thought of moving my feet had barely formed in my mind when I was already moving, much too fast. It was the strangest sensation, more like flying than running. What had once looked like distinct and individual trees around me had become a blur of green and brown as I moved with fluid grace towards my destination. I was mildly surprised that I didn't hit anything in my haste, though whether that was down to sheer luck or some unknown skill of mine I wasn't quite sure. I came to a sudden stop by the edge of the stream. Oddly, though my throat still felt dry enough to literally catch fire, the sight of the cool clear water didn't fill me with relief, as I was sure it should have. It was quickly becoming more obvious to me by the second that something very strange had happened to me. Hesitantly, I knelt down by the waters edge and leaned over.
My own wide eyed face stared back at me, my reflection looking oddly distorted by the slowly flowing water. Had my eyes always been red? No, surely not. I couldn't stop staring, and my reflection stared right back at me. Suddenly everything around me seemed to fade and blur into the background. My mind was immediately filled with images I didn't recognize. Everything looked blurred and strangely out of focus. And then I saw a face, clear and bright, and in very sharp focus. To say that this face was beautiful just wasn't enough. He was smiling, it was a soft, understated expression that somehow seemed to light up his whole face. The love I could see burning in his eyes – his eyes! They were the deepest, most unusual shade of gold – felt so intense and private that I would have looked away, if that had been possible. The beautiful face in my mind spoke then, his voice deep and musical. "My beautiful, precious Alice. How lost I would be without you, my love." I watched as he reached his pale hand out to gently caress someone's cheek. It took me a moment to understand that it was my cheek his fingers brushed over so softly. It was me who he looked at with so much love. I focused more carefully now, on the vision – if that's what this was – of myself. I looked exactly as I did now, but for one difference. My eyes were not red, they were a deep golden color, a color that matched the eyes belonging to the beautiful face that I couldn't stop myself from looking at. I watched as the image of my own face broke into a breathtaking smile and my hand reached up to hold his pale hand against my face. I listened curiously to my own voice when I responded to his words, my voice ringing like a bell. "My dear, sweet Jasper. You will never be lost, not if I can help it." I watched the strange vision of myself stretch up on my toes at the same time that the beautiful creature in front of me dropped his face to my level so that I could easily press my lips softly to his. "I love you." My vision-self spoke softly before everything blurred and disappeared again.
I didn't have time to take in what I had just seen and heard before my mind was once again filled with images of even more unfamiliar faces, each of them as heartbreakingly beautiful as the last had been. What I saw was clearly a family, that much was obvious from the way the interacted with each other. I noticed again that I was there, a part of this unusual family, along with the beautiful face I'd seen before. I focused on the conversations I could hear in my head, and slowly, I began putting together the pieces of what I had clearly become. The family – three males and two females, not counting myself and the other I had seen – were the Cullens. They were vampires, and evidently so was I. They were different from other vampires, choosing to exist on the blood of animals rather than humans. And one day, I was going to find them and be accepted into their family.
This onslaught of new information should have shocked me, or even terrified me. But it didn't. There was no surprise, no fear. Instead, I felt only relief. Though it was all so far fetched, somehow it all made perfect sense to me. My vivid scarlet eyes, the burning in my throat, my unbeating heart. The strength and speed of my body and mind, and my new found grace of movement. It all pointed to the truth of my situation. I was a vampire. I could not explain why there was a smile suddenly playing on my pretty features. Instead, I thought over the other details I had discovered about myself. Firstly, there was my name. Alice. Knowing I didn't indeed have a name brightened my outlook considerably.
And then there was the reason I had been able to see all of this in the first place. Obviously, I was special in ways above and beyond normal vampires. I could see the future. 'Well..' I thought to myself 'that's certainly an interesting turn of events..' My thoughts turned quickly to the beautiful face I'd seen in my first vision – jasper, was that what I'd called him? - I knew with absolute certainty that I would find him one day. A small, soft sigh slipped from my lips while my thoughts lingered on Jasper's face. As I sucked in a quiet breath I could taste a thousand different scents in the air. One scent in particular was so sweet that it set my throat on fire. In a heartbeat the scent had taken over my mind, and my body. My muscles tensed without needing to be told to do so. I stopped thinking then, giving myself over to my instincts as I coiled and sprang, running towards the delicious scent.