This one shot was posted to The Canon Tour (linked on my profile) pre-Twilight round. I didn't win but I did enjoy writing this story and would like to thank everyone that wrote, read, reviewed and voted in the contest. Many thanks to JHorizon77 for betaing this piece and my other entry, Abide With Me. She also gave me the idea for this story so she deserves extra credit!

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My family disappeared last night.

Maybe that's a little melodramatic – I know that I have the capacity to be. Then again, perhaps melodrama is only to be expected when everything I hope for has vanished. Everything I've been searching for now appears to be out of my reach forever.

The individual members of the family are still out there, but something changed last night. They're scattered, individual futures unraveling like a tapestry torn down the middle. The direction of my life is suddenly mapped out onto another, darker path.

I'm losing myself as much as I've lost them.

I'm Alice. Just Alice. I don't have a last name that I'm aware of, but up until last night I thought one day I would be Alice Cullen. I could see the day I become her as clearly as I can see the rotting wooden wall of the shack I'm staying in. It's the one thing that's been with me since I opened my eyes seven years ago, waking from blackness and fire. I want to be able to see the incredulous looks on their faces when they realize how well I know them, when we've never met. I want the baseball games and high school pretences and constant bickering. I've never had a past, but I've always had the future, and it's been keeping me going, fighting against my thirst to be worthy of the family I thought I would be a part of.

My thirst is what scares me most. It's not just the visions of the future that make me different – I'm a demon. A bloodsucker. A vampire, red eyed and ghostly pale, exactly like the monsters in books I don't remember reading. Sometimes my eyes are black, and one day they were supposed to be gold. I was prettier when they were gold. Now, I try to resist the call of human blood, but sometimes my thirst is too strong and my willpower too frayed.

It's why I'm out here in a shack in the middle of nowhere, feeding on animals and keeping myself clean. I'm getting better, but I still make mistakes. Until I gain control, I'm not worthy of my future father. He's a demon like me, yet he's more than that: he's risen above the beast inside to become a person.

If I never find him, and if I know I'll never find him, then I won't be a person. Without the knowledge that he will be there with encouragement and quiet disappointment, my conscience will flounder. Temptation will ruin me. I'll just be a monster, lost to my hungers and lost to the real wonders of the world.

'~*~*~'

The day passes in a disarray of fragmented visions as I wish and pray for the whitewashed houses and cheated board games to return to me. What I see is based on the choices people make. I need to know what decision caused this. I need an anchor in the storm.

I should hunt, but my mind's eye is more compelling. I'm tracking each of them, every future member of the peaceful, vegetarian Cullen clan. Sifting through every possibility, guessing at the outcomes of choices yet to be made to manipulate what I can see, retracing my footsteps when I don't want to go down that road anymore. I just need to see one fleeting shred of hope, one chance that we can get back to where we need to be.

Carlisle, my father-to-be, I see in hospitals and surgeries across the country and the world, working more hours than any man should be allowed to. I know his name because I've see it on his crisp white overcoat; he's the only one I can name. I see his wife – our sometimes-mother, sometimes-sister – with her pretty face and soft curls, rattling around a vast house, trying to fill the hours empty of Carlisle. She doesn't trust herself to make friends; she doesn't have his unwavering self-control. There have been too many incidents that have underscored that fact. They never could bleach the blood from the white rug.

When she doesn't go looking for temptation, it finds her instead, and soon she is hunting in his absence. Time and again she picks off the vulnerable, then gorges on animals to keep the ghastly crimson from her eyes. She spends years hiding it from her mate – an endless cycle of feast and famine, ravaged by the necessity to keep secrets. In his arms she will be the happiest she has ever been, but she'll never truly be happy. Carlisle will sense her hollowness and it will grow in him too. He does the only thing he can, work harder, trying to atone for sins he has never committed. Round and round they will go. Their bond cannot be broken but it will not keep them from despair.

The blonde girl – beautiful, arrogant, not yet hardened and bitter – only has one future. There are no options for her because Carlisle isn't nearby when she dies on the sidewalk, a broken, bloodied thing. Even in death she is striking, her skin as pale as I have always seen her when she a demon like me, but impossibly fragile. Her eyes are blank and reflect the stars in the sky above her. I've never seen her without the fury she was to carry with her. She seems softer without it, and though I have never pitied her before despite knowing how she becomes one of the family, seeing her like this makes my silent heart hurt.

Without my sister, the big one's solitary death is certain. There's no one to rescue him either. All those games we are supposed to play, wiped out.

I find our youngest – though he's not young in this life, just eternally frozen in his youth – haunting the alleys of a city. Several cities, in fact, each as grimy and worn as the last. He spends his days shut away from the human world, pretending it doesn't exist and keeping his scarlet eyes away from those who would panic. When the sky is black he slinks out, using all of his abilities to catch and kill – men, always men. Men in the middle of despicable acts. The last thing they will ever see are those monstrous eyes. He is everything Carlisle feared his son could be.

His future is the one that is the least certain. It wavers, based on decisions that won't need to be made for years, and for the briefest of moments I can see him in our mother's arms again, Carlisle's smile welcoming him back to the fold. Not now, though. He is too determined to turn his back on them, and again and again I see him crossing paths with the Volturi. By the turn of the next century he'll be locked away in Volterra, a treasured slave, never to return to America. Never to meet the distant glimmer of a love that has barely even been hinted at, even to me.

And my love. I'm almost scared to search for him in my visions, worried I might now never find him. I wish I knew his name, but it's never been shown to me, though I've searched in my head for years. I do know his face though, better than any other face on Earth: beautiful despite the scars, eyes wise and captivating whether red or gold or black, hair the brightest thing in my world. If losing my family is painful, losing him – never having him – is unbearable. We're going to be a part of each other, and I can't live without the part of me that is him.

When I finally do search for him, I am relieved to see that we do find each other, in a diner somewhere, some time and place and I can't pinpoint, as it always was. We just won't seek out the Cullens because I know they won't be there. Instead we are nomads, criss-crossing the country, slipping easily from vaguely-attempted vegetarianism to full carnivores, without conscience or consequence.

Until the Volturi find us, too.

I flinch from the vision, refusing to bear witness to this. I don't know what happens, but I emerge alone. A shell. A vessel for blood and blood alone, surrendering to the worst of me because that's all I have left.

That is my path from A to B, from here in the prairie, to the loss of my soul-twin and descent into hell.

I can't face it. I can't face a world without him, even if I have never known him.

Replaying the visions is all I can do, as if by flipping through them enough times will cause their contents to change. If I just get the right combination, I can make it all better.

It doesn't work.

In the end, we are all lost and doomed.

'~*~*~'

I've been weak. So weak.

There is blood on my fingers. Carlisle would be so disappointed. I can't do it again; I must be stronger.

The young one. I saw his rage and frustration. I saw the bitter disagreements with Carlisle. Why didn't I see him decide to leave? It's obvious that he walked away from them, to stumble into this life of hunting and vigilantism. It was his choice to leave our parents that ruined the future, ruined us all. He is the key. If I can make him change his mind, I can fix this.

I need to find him.

'~*~*~'

Finding him is easier decided than done. The only thing I search for now – in reality and in my thoughts - is him, but the grainy images of his immediate future are repetitive and empty of clues. It's impossible to recognize a city from its alleyways and backstreets; there's nothing distinguishing about bricks and shadows. I visit libraries when they are at their quietest and read about architecture, hoping that some minor detail will tell me what corner of the world he is in. Surely the brickwork on that facade across from the alley is particular to one region? Those ornate railings must be something you only find in the old neighborhoods of a certain city?

Without clues I wander, venturing from the wilderness and amongst humans, my control weaker than it has ever been. I move from city to town to metropolis, trying to guess at his location based on the weather. There's no snow where he is, though it is thick on the ground where I am. When he has rain, I am lurking in basements to avoid the sunshine that would tell the people outside I am not as they are. I search for a hint that our paths will cross, but all I see for myself is endless wandering. Frustration is not a good defense against temptation.

'~*~*~'

The year turns twice and I am no closer to finding him. The world around me is draped in snow again, and I am haunting the streets of Boston. It's Christmas. I know what Christmas is, though I have no memory of celebrating it. There's a space inside me where the warmth I'm supposed to feel, remembering a childhood of light and laughter, is meant to be kept. The past is not mine to hold. The future is all I have to fill me.

The streets are quiet and that's good. I can ignore the call of the blood; watch tableaus of families gathered around trees and tables and fireplaces through windows. I let my head rest a while and try to soak up the atmosphere between forays out into the countryside to hunt. The way things are progressing, I may never find him.

In the silence after midnight I see him, even though I'm not searching. Behind my eyes he is there, stalking a street less empty than this, though it's Christmas too – I can see a tree through a window he passes. There's no snow for him, but it's the near future, perhaps only a few hours ahead.

The next flash of him bears a sign over his shoulder. Bourbon Street.

Even I know where that is without having to check. I am out of the snow and running for the railway station before the vision is even over.

'~*~*~'

I have to wait for a train out of Boston, of course, because it is Christmas. It takes several changes and more days before I reach New Orleans. I head straight for the French Quarter, oblivious to the city around me. I catch his scent, but it is stale. He has not been here for a few days. I trudge the length of the city and search through every quarter, until finally I find a trail that is fresher.

Only now do I realize that I don't have a plan. If I walk up to him and tell him that he needs to return to our family, I can already see that won't work. He is consuming human blood, living on rage and a bitterness at the world. He won't listen to me; talking to him will make things worse. He'll run, or he'll fight me, or he'll catch my scent and be gone from the city before I can ever say a word.

More than that, he doesn't need to know I exist. In all the happy visions I have had, when my love and I find the Cullen clan, we are unexpected. He doesn't recognize me. I daren't change even that minor detail, in case I create ripples in a pond that become tidal waves.

When I come up with a plan, it is riddled with holes, but it's the best I can do.

First, a disguise. I need to look not like me, not like the Alice Cullen he will one day know, and I need to smell as human as I can. That means stolen clothing. The smell is not pleasant, and it wouldn't really fool a vampire that was paying attention – our scent is just too sweet and different to a human's – but it means I am less likely to stand out. With my scruffy boy's clothes and my already short hair hidden under a cap, I like look a boy, an urchin.

Now to manipulate his gift with my own.

He's gone to ground, and I don't seek out his hiding place. He'll emerge when he needs to hunt again. He mustn't hear my voice when I think. It takes a lot of work, but I construct what I want him to see, what I need him to hear, playing it over and over again in my mind's eye, like a looped film reel. I have snuck into many a movie theater after dark to gain company from the characters on the screen. I pretend that the future he needs to have is one of those movies, playing over and over until I don't need to hold it there. All my other thoughts are set aside, leaving space for him.

Hoping I am close enough for him to hear the vision I carry in my head, I venture back into the neighborhood where I scented him and sit quietly, letting it play.

I show him his choices. Years of killing, anger and emptiness – an emptiness only killing will make go away. Death upon death, stretching out into meaningless, countless years.

Or he returns to Carlisle and our mother-to-be. They welcome him and Carlisle forgives him, treats it like it was never an issue. They just missed him. He can be around people without the constant urge to kill. He is more than a monster. He has a purpose.

He must have had these thoughts himself. I'm just condensing them, showing him the options clearly, so he can make the right choice.

I'm there like a shadow, never getting close enough for him to really sense me, just close enough that my thoughts are haunting his, always there, niggling away. I stay well away when he hunts, because the spilled blood would be too much, but otherwise I am there.

Make the choice.

'~*~*~'

In the end it is an accident that makes the choice for him, an accident I see coming and choose not to intervene on. The outcome changes so often my sight can't keep up with it. This might be the worst thing I ever do, but I have to take the risk.

He is feeding, having dragged a thief down into the thief's own basement so he can drink in peace. The man dies quietly, and as the young one drops his body to the floor, he hears footsteps upstairs. A child returning.

"Daddy?"

I'm too far away to hear her calling, but I'm already familiar with what may come. This is what it all hinges on; will he stay to kill the girl too, or will this break him?

Until the very last second I don't know, not until he makes the unconscious decision. Finally, both of their futures become clear to me.

The girl will grow up free of her father's tyranny, but her mother will turn to prostitution to make ends meet as they can no longer rely on the money he brought home. There will be times she'll come close to starving, but she'll be free of his beatings. She still might not live out her childhood, and she'll miss her daddy despite his cruelty.

The young one is with Carlisle and his wife.

Maybe it was the little girl's own thoughts that finally triggered his decision to return. The important thing is that I can once more see myself surrounded by the family. There will be shopping trips and chances to see the world, fast cars and a slow, happy eternity. We all survive to find each other. My soulmate is beside me, whole and well.

If only it were as easy to find him.