Summary: Alice remembers...
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: All Twilight characters herein are the property of Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warning(s): Much vaguery and confusion. An unexplained illness and a flawed Edward. Also, implied love between girls. If you don't like even hints of femmeslash in your fic, you won't like this.
Word Count: ~2000
Author's Notes: This has been sitting on my desktop for quite some time, along with an unfinished Harry/Draco story and couple more Alice/Bella fics... Figured I might as well post this one, :) ...
Also, a boy in my school died over the weekend. I didn't know him, but many of my friends did. This story holds more meaning to me than it did just a few days ago. Life is scary and delicate and gone so quickly. Don't waste it, people. If there's someone in your life that you really can't live without, tell them. Don't let them slip away.
The Firefly
It's the 21st again. She walks out of the classroom in a daze, thinking absently that it shouldn't hurt so much so far after the fact. Nevertheless, she drifts through the halls of Riverfront High School – having left Forks years ago – watching all the other students laugh and joke and push, seeing the hallways of another school, the faces of other children, hearing the sound of a voice the world has long since forgotten. She spends the rest of the day lost in memory, mourning a girl – no, a woman – who she has never quite been able to leave behind.
.oOo.
"Bella," asks a worried voice. "Bella, are you okay?"
A groan.
"Bella?"
"Uhn... Wha. What? Was that really three days? I don't feel any different, just sore and ..."
Edward exchanges a glance with Carlisle. He shifts awkwardly.
"Bella, it..." his voice breaks. He looks pleadingly at Carslisle.
"It didn't take, Bella," he explains gravely.
Confusion.
"It didn't..."
"The bite." Edward has found his voice.
Oh.
.oOo.
"C'mon, Alice! We're going to be late!" Bella calls from the door, exasperated.
"I'm coming, I'm coming," Alice calls back, speeding down the stairs and stopping two inches from Bella, "Hold your horses."
Bella raises her eyebrows, "The horses are held, but your brothers aren't going to wait forever. Besides, the show is going to start soon."
"They don't have to wait forever! Just until I'm ready. Which I am," Alice grins, stepping past her and heading towards the car at a human pace. The whole family was getting used to doing things slower lately.
"Hey, wait up!" Bella speeds up her strides to match Alice's. Okay, so sometimes they slip on the speed thing. "Edward, Jasper and Emmett are already out by the road, doing who knows what."
"Which car are we taking?"
" ... The big one?"
Alice shakes her head, but she is grinning. "You're hopeless, Bella."
They walk in silence for a few moments, before Bella says: "So, are we going to walk – which will make us even more late than we already are – or are you going to get over whatever it is that's bugging you lately, pick me up and run?"
Alice frowns. The rest of the family had decided that they needed to act as human as possible so that Bella wouldn't be needlessly reminded of the gap between them. The one that was impossible to fill now. The Cullens didn't want to mess with her future, now that she needed to have one.
Alice didn't bother pointing out that they had changed Bella's future simply by existing, by meeting her, by loving her. She also didn't didn't point out she could never say no to Bella. She went along with what her family said, and when Bella asked, she picked her up, and ran.
.oOo.
"Know what's wrong with Jasper? I've been feeling inexplicably sad for days." Emmett asks, hand on Alice's shoulder. "Ever since you and Bella became roommates, actually."
She tenses. Her face is paler than usual, which is quite a feat. Emmett continues to speak, oblivious.
"Strange, that. I mean, I know she's mad at him, but it's nothing a little, uh, lovin' won't fix, yeah?" He winks.
She throws his hand off and runs out the door. Emmett watches, shrugs, and goes to find Rosalie. Oblivious.
.oOo.
She is sitting on the grass in the front lawn, looking for four leafed clovers when she hears a desperate voice calling, "Bella... Bella!"
She watches as Bella deliberately turns and walks the other way when she sees him. Then she stands and runs to catch up. They walk side by side for a few minutes, silent.
"Isn't it about time you forgave him?"
"He didn't want me here," she says. "Why should I play nice just because he didn't get what he wanted?"
That gave Alice pause. "He was just doing what he thought was right."
She stops walking, then stomps her foot."That doesn't make it right."
"Bella, you can't live in the past. It doesn't matter anymore, now that the choice is out of our hands."
"Considering I'm not going to be living for very long, I can damn well pick how I will live. And it does matter." A pause. "You don't get it! He as good as told me he didn't want..." She turns away, instead choosing to look out over the clearing, over the forest at the setting sun. Another day, gone.
"I know. He didn't mean it."
She turns away, muttering. "But how am I supposed to believe that?"
.oOo.
She watches and looks, and laughs and smiles and thinks and broods, but she doesn't watch him, doesn't laugh or smile with him, doesn't think or brood about him. Jasper knows this, has known this for a while but he never actually realizes he knows until she misses their date. They go out on the last day of each month, running and stargazing and hunting and playing until dawn, until the new day and the new month and new chances arrive. They have done so for decades, and that she has forgotten scares him. He fears he is losing her, that they are drifting apart after so many years together – like the tide of their relationship is going out, and he's being washed away with it. As he's dragged further and further out to sea, he sees someone else swimming for shore. Someone with brown hair and brown eyes and a beautiful smile, and he hates her more than anyone else in that moment – but then he's drowning and he can't hate anything anymore.
.oOo.
Alice is making a sandwich when she notices Bella sitting on the porch, rain soaking her straight through. Bella looks up when she comes to sit beside her, when Alice offers her the sandwich. She stares at it blankly. Alice frowns, but then Bella's face lights up and she smiles and Alice is lost.
"We should go on a picnic!" Bella exclaims.
Alice looks out at the rain plopping onto the already saturated wood, at the droplets falling through the trees and the dark clouds covering the sky. Bella catches her wry smile and smacks Alice's arm. She shivers, cold and wet, but still she shifts to lean against Alice. She smiles.
"What better time?" Bella asks.
"We could wait for it to stop raining." Alice points out.
"We can't wait for anything." She scowls, grabbing Alice's hand. She drags her back into the house and through the kitchen. There, she throws a couple of items into a basket and heads out the door.
Alice notices her hand feels strangely empty. At least it does until Bella takes it in hers once more. Then it feels... complete.
.oOo.
The sunset is barely visible over the trees, but the colours are dazzling and Bella is ensnared. She sits, pensive for a long time, not noticing Edward walking towards her. When he reaches the porch, he stop, hovering.
He asks, "How did it go?" and, "What did they say?" and, "How are you feeling?" but Bella just stares at the sunset with a furrowed brow. She doesn't say a word, simply sighs. Then she turns, and the expression on her face is curiously blank.
"Sunsets are so beautiful here. How can the end of a day be so beautiful?" A tear slips down her cheek and she sniffles.
And Edward thinks he gets the answers to all his questions from simple statement about sunsets. He doesn't have time for regrets or for could have beens. He doesn't have time for questions about love and Alice and what he's really worth to her. He just pulls her close and holds her, hoping he can ease a little bit of her pain. Hoping she'll go out with as much beauty as the sun, dazzling and brilliant and hard to forget.
.oOo.
"Alice?" Bella's voice calls out into the dark, rough and weary. "Alice, are you there?"
She coughs, and it sounds horrible and phlegmy and Alice would do anything to make this easier for her, to make everything right again. It had been right, at one time. It had been adventures and energy and running and smiles that lit up the world for many years. Then, a couple of months ago, Bella had gotten sick. Now it was all coughs and fevers and tired smiles, though the actual sickness came and went. Alice didn't know what to do – she had never had the greatest mothering instincts – and she hated feeling helpless. She wished there was a battle to fight, an enemy to slay, a mall to conquer. Something tangible she could fix. For a time, she had not accepted that Bella would die from this, that it was something that exceeded the limits of superhuman strength and Carlisle's skills.
"Shh, Bella. I'm right here." Alice said, as she moves to sit beside her on the bed. She holds out a hand in silent offering, and Bella takes it, squeezing as hard as she can.
Alice can barely feel it.
"I'm scared, Alice. I don't – I don't want to be, but... I am." Her voice wobbles, and silent tears make their way down pale cheeks.
"Oh, Bella," Alice sighs, "It's okay to be scared. Even I don't know what will happen, and the unknown is frightening beyond belief. Just... go to sleep. It'll all be better in the morning, okay?"
She was trying to be comforting, but Bella began to sob.
"I – I can't! I can't even blink too long! What if... if-"
Alice gathers Bella up in her arms, one hand rubbing her back soothingly, the other pulling blankets around the two of them. When Bella next speaks, her voice is a rough whisper, barely even there.
"If I can't open my eyes again..."
.oOo.
Edward picks the music for the funeral. Rosalie does the flowers, with Jasper's help. Emmett is a pall-bearer while Carlisle and Esme plan the speeches. Alice locks herself in her room. She has seen this a million and one times, and yet had never expected it to come true. Never thought such a beautiful, bright, energetic girl could be erased, just like that, despite being human.
She is struck by the sudden thought that life is fragile. It is so breakable and so human. Time is like an eternal night, and each human life is like a firefly, like a flash of brilliance amidst the black, tiny and fleeting. This particular firefly was a light in Alice's life, a life as long and black as the whole of time. All at once, Alice feels like a child, catching fireflies and holding them and never wanting to let them fly away, getting caught up in the fun and the magic of the moment. But soon enough, the moment is over, the light fades and Alice must make a choice; to keep holding on to a lost cause, to continue wishing and hoping and regretting, or to let go, to move on and leave Bella behind. Whether to live her non-life waiting for something that will never happen, or to live trying to forget. She finds this choice harder than she ever imagined.