Disclaimer : Stephenie Meyer owns the Twilight franchise, and I am not she. The title of this fic is from the song 'I see the light" from the movie Tangled.
Black.
Unyielding, undiluted and complete.
The colour is the universe, and I have known nothing else.
Nothing else…The thought brings consciousness, an awareness of self.
I. I exist.
Awareness, that I am not a part of the colour, an atom of this unmoving hue which makes up my world.
Awareness, that I am not shapeless and unstructured, but possess a form, a body.
Awareness, of not being alone.
Alone. The word reverberates in the endless night that is my mind, and I am jarred out of my oblivion. For the first time, in… in forever… I am not alone.
The world is still black, but there is a new … something… a new sense?
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Sound. I discover that I can hear.
With that intrusion, I detect other sensations.
Something moving over my form - soft, ephemeral,cool.
Air. I discover that I can feel.
A sweet, old, dry aroma – oak, willow, ebony.
Scent. I learn that I can smell.
A burning, arid ache in… in my throat.
Pain.I become conscious of my body.
Me. Who am I?!
Fear. I become aware of my mind.
The crunching sound approaches me, loud in the darkness of my world. Footsteps.
'Here she is..!'
'Are you sure –'
'Yes,yes… she seems to be unconscious…Mary Alice!'
'Do you think she's dea-'
Fire. A dry fire which commands. A scent overpoweringly tempting. Delicious. Compulsory.
I don't realise I'm moving. A frightened cry – cut off with a gurgle. A sweet taste explodes in my mouth, the liquid putting out the burning fire.
Awareness again. There is a change…the sounds have been cut off, the fire in my throat, banked. Simmering still, but subdued.
And I sense something foreign… a sensation pressing against my… eyelids.
I open my eyes.
Light. I discover that I can see.
I blink once, twice, rapidly. How long have I been in the dark? I can't remember.
This is a new universe – sight and sound and smell and movement.
New. Overwhelming. Unfamiliar.
I realize that the harsh breathing I hear is my own. I'm panicking.
I look around. A dense undergrowth, trees, the ground strewn with dry leaves. Every object that my eyes encounter is new – a faraway, dim memory of things seen in the far past and forgotten.
I look down, and recoil backwards. A hiss rips out of my throat, and I blanch at the sound.
Two bodies lie at my feet. A man and a woman. Middle aged, perhaps. Their clothes are an identical blue – a uniform. From the asylum, my mind says.
Dead, their throats torn.
I sense the taste on my tongue. Blood?
No,no,no… I'm unaware of the scared, whimpering litany for a long time, till I tear my eyes away from the corpses and the fear running in my mind, to look down at myself and realise it's coming out of me.
Two hands, two feet. A face with two eyes, two ears and a nose. My body matches theirs in structure. But... killed. By…me?
Am I an animal, then? Who am I? What am I?
I flinch away from the questions, and notice something else – a splashing sound nearby. A stream.
I follow the sound of water and look down at my reflection. I don't recognize it.
Cropped black hair. A small face. Red eyes. Red?
The world is filled with colour, but my mind is still black.
I don't remember. I can't understand. I don't know.
Mary Alice, they said. Is that me? Is this how I look?
My eyes flit around – here, there, the sound of my rough breath filling my ears, the scent of blood in my mouth, my mind - a roiling mass of fear.
Fear of the strange, foreign world I seem to be a part of.
Fear of myself, of the… the monster that I seem to be.
Fear of being alone in this new forever.
My eyes are fixed on the reflection in the water, trying to recollect, to recognize.
Time passes – moments, days, a century? I have lost the ability to sense change. My world has been nothing but sameness for too long.
Then suddenly, the scene around me disappears. A face fills my vision.
Honey blond hair. Red eyes, like mine. Hundreds of tiny marks, silver and crescent-moon like, on the jaws and neck.
Scars, my mind tells me.
But I don't listen. For the first time in forever, I feel at peace.
That face is… more familiar to me than my own.
My heart… and I discover anew, that it no longer beats, but the realisation pales away, insignificant before this new knowledge.
Him… Jasper, my mind tells me.
'Jasper.', I whisper, drinking in the sight of his face.
The world is unknown, my past is unknown, my own self is unknown, but I cling to this new knowledge that is rock solid, this truth that is now the center of my universe.
Jasper. Jazz. My love.
A/N : Thoughts? Please R&R!