Steam and the sound of running water splattering on ceramic and nylon exuded from underneath the bathroom door, interspersed with shouts of laughter. A man and woman passed each other in the hallway, shared a secret smile…
"Jasper, stop it!" the dark-haired girl giggled and squirmed away from the taller boy.
"You've still got mud in your hair," Jasper insisted, twining his long fingers tightly in her short black locks, undeniably slightly matted with river-mud, as he bent and slid his lips over hers. Alice sighed her consent, running her own fingers through the half-inch stubble on the back of her husband's neck. The icy-cold of his skin pressed up against hers, the hot water volleying down on them both—with enough force and heat to bruise and blister a mortal—was a contradictory sensation, ice-crystals and lava-rock; it felt so good. Forever nineteen did have its perks, Alice mused contentedly. The vast amount of steam in the small bathroom blanked out the mirror, the skylight, made the air around them heavy and thick, pleasing in her lungs that contracted and expanded only out of habit. The hot water beaded on their skins, breaking the light in many facets, dim in the haze. With Jasper, it was so easy to laugh. Alice could not tell at the moment if it was simply her own gut reaction to his presence or his innate license with emotion. But she suspected not. Nearly a century wandering together had not yet worn away the novelty of him. For instance, the yurt up in Denali hadn't had a shower as nice as this; a roaring, icy stream, which, she supposed, in its own way was grand. Streams were all very well, when you got down to it. Today they'd cut last period and taken the long way home: en route a deserted bend of the Calawah river. But this was special. Nature had fine points, yes, she supposed, but modern technology couldn't be all bad...
"Which do you like better?" Alice wondered aloud, leaning into the crook of his embrace, turning her face up to the torrid spray as Jasper scrubbed her hair. "Be honest." she added, catching a glimpse of him avowing he liked whichever she did. In turn, she watched that projection fade to darkness and re-bloom as he changed his mind, and turned her eyes away. Sometimes it was better to wait for time to decide what it would do, and pretend that she didn't have a crutch.
" I like 'em both," Jasper finally concluded, tenderly kissing away the beads of moister collecting on the skin of her neck. "But I like getting muddy," he reflected by her ear, smiling at her laughter, and spun her around to face him again. "'Cause then I get to clean you up afterwards!"
She giggled and flung a handful of soapsuds at him—which he took full in the face, sodding romantically impractical gentleman that he was.
The vision caught her mid-breath, and she staggered in Jasper's embrace, but he tightened his hold around her waist and waited patiently as she stared, blank-eyed, passed the water dripping from her eyelashes.
She saw Carlisle and Edward surrounded by bottles of cleaner and rolls of paper towels and plain cardboard boxes with black bio-hazard stamps all over them. The pale, dead glow of the hospital lights cast their sunken eyes into an even more sickly shadow, the line of their faces etched with razors. Her brother was shaking slightly, and might have been sweating, Alice knew, had he still been mortal. He wanted to be shouting. His black eyes were wide, laced with some desperate emotion. Vulnerable. Edward was afraid. Carlisle nodded wearily, in reassurance, in a sanction, and Edward jumped up almost before the motion ended, disappearing into the woods as the door swung on its hinges behind him.
A pale-faced figure ran crossways to the setting sun, and stars wheeled at inhuman speeds above the trees as pumping legs clove a path through sprawling ferns. Black eyes burned like hidden embers in a pale, carven face. The moon rose, climbed to zenith. She watched an auburn- haired woman embrace the figure before a campsite of tall white yurts. An arctic pre-dawn washed a scrubby landscape in turquoise and sapphire, pooling to the deep black of night on the tundra beneath the diamond-strewn, borderless sky. He fell upon a massive grizzly, wrestling it to submission in seconds, his movements spurred to frenzy, his black eyes writhing with lust and desperation as dark blood gushed from the mighty neck, clotted in the thick fur, stained his mouth black in the darkness. Just this afternoon, at lunch, she'd told Edward 'You look pale,' smiling as he punched her lightly on the arm.
—"What is it?"—
Carlisle sat alone in the kitchen, chin cupped in his hand, staring at the tabletop with empty eyes. Esme, pale, graceful hands on his shoulders, laid her lips against his hair, their amber eyes sober and grim.
"Alice, what did you see?" The edge to Jasper's voice told her how stricken her expression must be. She'd swayed again in his grip, stumbled hard against him on the slick porcelain floor of the bath, but he held them both as her eyes readjusted to real-time light and she began to breathe again. In the split-second it took to recover, she was already pushing against him, even before her balance returned, impelled by a visceral anxiety that she didn't take the time to comprehend. Jasper loosed his arms around her, waiting. She clambered out of the bath, hand slipping slightly on the misted doorknob; she didn't have time to explain, not even to herself. There wasn't time to understand, to rationalize; she'd heard the front door slam. "He's leaving," was all she said, leaving Jasper standing there with a towel half wrapped around his waist and the water still running aimlessly behind him.
She skidded to a half-halt in the hallway, needing to confirm when it would happen. Through the open kitchen door, she watched her mother move behind her father's chair and bend her head to his. Her feet were moving again before they'd even really had time to slow. Halfway to the door, Rosalie called out her name from the upstairs balcony, but she ignored the younger vampire. One of Emmett's university sweatshirts lay across the table by the door; that was probably what was distressing Rose. Alice snatched it up and wrenched open the front door, dragging it down over her head as she leapt over the stepping-stones and into the trees. She knew where he was going. His own confusion and panicky irresolution had hidden him from her most of the day; she hadn't even seen him come home. But Carlisle had helped him find answers and something like solace, and she could follow the wake of his cemented future. If she ran fast enough, she might catch him up. He was her brother, and he was hurting, and she would not be able to let that go. Jasper might make her try, but she couldn't. He'd run off without explanations, without a promise, without goodbye.
"Edward!" she screamed his name into the empty wood as she thrust her arms through the immense sleeves of the black hoodie, falling nearly to her knees. She dodged the lower branches, crashing through the underbrush in a crow-flight path; he wasn't wasting time on a clear route, either, and little time could she afford to lose. Far off on the edge of her sight, she could glimpse him quickening his stride to a blurred frenzy of activity. She lowered her head and shot after him, willing her legs to match his longer tread. It had rained most of the day, and the forest smelled of damp green and earth, the half-dried loam clinging to her damp, bare feet and ankles, quashing between her toes. She was fast, but the adrenal drug fueling him on was made of fear and hunger and shame, and he shot through space and time faster than any creature had right to.
"Edward! Wait!" Alice hurdled a fallen sycamore of enormous girth, stumbled on landing, ramming herself into a hands-and-knees scramble for footing, launching herself after him. Twilight was falling fast now, and she couldn't see Edward anywhere, just the tall cedars and evergreens flashing past, the brushwood and sprawling ferns, the first glimmer of stars. In a few hours, he'd be farther north, feasting, she knew, as the image grew stronger and less than ambiguous behind her eyes. Alice set her jaw and fought the future; she could, she would catch up with him. She heard mountain cats hunting in the miles around, and the swoop of owl-wings was a thunder in her ears; the pounding of a heart nor the gasp of breath were present to masked the night sounds; but she did not need the stock human spores to feed her fear. It was large enough already.
"Edward!" She didn't spare a glance for the landscape around her, glowing brilliant silver in the light of a rising quarter moon, a forest whose beauty would be lost in the haze of mortal eyes. Maybe miles ago she had lost him; it was his trail, his scent, that she was following, because—she wasn't sure how long ago—Edward had outdistanced her; left her behind. When she saw Edward pushing back the banded canvass flap of the tent that had belonged to their family once before, she had to force herself to give it up. She might chase him to the border and think little of it, but all the way to Denali was a little far. If he needed to outrun her—her and their family, everything here in Forks—so badly, she would just have to let him.
She called out his name once more anyway, an ineffectual, rhetorical gesture, as she let her momentum dwindle down, until it eventually petered out all together and she stood, an infinitesimal speck in the twilit wood. Her arms dangled lamely by her sides, the empty sleeves of her borrowed shirt hanging below her knees, her bare legs and face pale and shining in the dark. Alice did not know whether or not she would be crying, had she still been able. She stood alone in the darkness, breathing the wet, musty scent of the night and gauging how far she'd have to run to get back and apologize to Jasper before he came looking. If she waited long enough, she might as well just stay out all night. She wasn't thirsty, but she could tell them she had been, and meet Jasper at school in the morning. Or not even that. She could wander, until Edward came back, wait for Jasper to find her and wait for Ed to come back and tell her he was all right. She could just wait here in the wilderness until the world made sense.
When the soft patter of supernatural footsteps in the dark reached her ears, she wasn't entirely surprised. On the edges of the thoughts she wasn't acknowledging, she had known one of them would come for her. The family always knew each other, no matter where they were, and she stood unafraid. Alice stared into the dark between the bare trunks of trees ahead, unblinking, because her eyes hadn't burned in nearly one hundred years.
Carlisle's broad, capable hand laid itself on her should, just before she felt him step into the wind beside her. For a few long moments, they both stood there, staring at the empty night. He shook her slightly, and she looked up at his deep, tawny eyes, crinkled slightly at the edges in the hint of a smile. Carlisle—despite being caught fast just past the teetering edge of youth, eternally twenty-three—had always seemed incredibly old to her. Old, and strong, and wise, and perpetually calm, capable of coping with anything: anything like Edward.
Her father answered the question before she could ask it, furling an arm around her narrow shoulders. "It is Edward's difficulty to deal with. He would appreciate that choice."
Alice sighed. "It's not a choice he should be making alone."
"No," Carlisle agreed softly, drum-rolling his fingers on her arm. He turned and she followed, falling into his step as they began walking slowly home. "But we are his family, and we understand. We respect his choices."
"Even when they're rash and idiotic and obtuse beyond belief?" Alice asked on the end of a half-voiced laugh.
"Yes. Even then." She heard the smile in the corner of her father's mouth despite his deadpan tone. She slipped an arm around his waist, twining her slim, small fingers into his own on her shoulder, leaning her head against his chest as they walked the first few miles in the deepening darkness.