AN: watching Glee (how awesome is Sue Sylvester?) Drinking a Malbec, and writing Twilight Fan fiction - Looks like Christmas came early this year!)
Carlisle hadn't let go of Alice since he had picked her up from the dirty, oil-slicked parking lot. He barely spared a thought for the body he had left behind. After all, they hadn't killed him. The vampire who had didn't even drain him, merely snapping his neck, as if he too wanted to minimize his contact with such a monster. Other than ensuring that they had left no evidence of themselves, he only wanted to focus on Alice.
Someone – Rosalie? Esme? Had the foresight to throw a blanket in the car, and he tightly wrapped Alice in it as one would a newborn, both for the psychological comfort it would give her, and to better cushion her from his cold marble skin. It was an old quilt, and he recognized it as one Esme had made when she was first turned – she had needed a hobby to fill up her nights. Alice's eyes were closed but he knew she wasn't sleeping, her breath and pulse still too rapid, her body still too jacked up on the adrenaline flooding her bloodstream. The two of them were in the back seats, Edward and Rosalie up front – oddly quiet – but he couldn't think of them now.
Carlisle dropped a light kiss onto Alice's forehead.
"Sweetheart, we need to talk." He wasn't sure he was doing the right thing, if he should wait. But where there was one vampire there could be others, and he had to make sure Alice understood the dangers they represented.
"Hmmmm?" she muttered.
"Alice- I know you're awake."
Her eyes flickered open at that, meeting his. They looked anxious and worried, and Carlisle didn't miss Edward's gaze in the rear view mirror.
"Not your fault, Alice." Edward's words had a quiet force to them that Carlisle rarely heard from his son. Alice must have thought something back, because Edward twisted in his seat until he could look her in the eye. "Of course we came for you. We will always come for you. Always. I swear to you. Alice – Alice look at me - you did nothing wrong. You are not those things he called you."
Carlisle watched as Edward's face crumpled in pain in reaction to her thoughts. Felt her trembling in his arms. Carlisle could guess what was running through her head. He tightened his grip on her, rocking her softly.
"You're okay," he told her again, trying to make his voice sound like the promise it was. "You're safe."
Alice tried a smile. "I know." She turned her head to bury it back into Carlisle's shoulder but he wouldn't let her.
"Alice- you have to understand what we are. That we would never hurt you, that we will protect you no matter what, but others of our kind will not. Others of our kind could hurt you. Will hurt you. "
Carlisle didn't want to scare her. Didn't want to give her nightmares, didn't want to put the idea in her head that if she got into an argument with one of them during the day that she might die that night– but she had to know. "We're vampires, Alice."
As Carlisle said the words both Rosalie and Edward flinched. He had broken one of the rules.
Alice's gaze was curious but not alarmed.
Edward shook his head. "Not like Spike and Angel, Alice. Not exactly. There is no Hellmouth that we know of – there is no Slayer. It's just us. Some of us are like Angel in that we don't kill humans, and even try to save them like Carlisle does, 'good guys' if you will. But some of us are like Spike was at the beginning. Just wanting to kill and feed on humans. Humans like you. You're part of our family, vampire or not and we love you and would never hurt you. But other vampires are part of other families – they live differently - and they will try to hurt you if they can."
Carlisle watched Alice's face closely as she listened to Edward. He wanted to make sure they got the main point across before she faded altogether.
"Alice – " he tried, "it's important if you ever see someone who looks like us, acts like us, that you immediately find one of us, and if you can't, go where there are lots of other people and call us. Do you understand?"
Alice nodded. "But that other vampire didn't try to hurt me. He saved me."
"We don't know what he was doing, what he wanted. But yes, we are indebted to him."
"Jasper." Alice said. "His name is Jasper. He'll never hurt me. Never."
The word was lost in a giant yawn, and Carlisle felt her tremors subside as her muscles finally relaxed.
"I'm tired," she murmured.
"Then you should go to sleep," he told her with a note of humour, one finger brushing across her forehead in a gesture that in another time and place could be a blessing. This time when her head tucked itself against his shoulder, he let it. He'd no doubt have to continue this conversation, if not completely repeat it later, when she was more aware, but it was a start, and he at least felt better for it.
He waited until he was sure she was completely under, sleeping the deep sleep of an exhausted child, before turning his attention to the other two, wondering how to approach the issues of their behaviour early that night.
"I don't want to talk about it." Rosalie declared. Carlisle's eyebrows rose. Edward was supposed to be the mind-reader. He must be more transparent than he thought.
Edward sounded relieved. "I don't want to talk about it either."
"Well tough –" Carlisle snapped, keeping his voice low. "Because we're not sitting through another family dinner like that again."
"Easy." Rosalie replied. "Stop with the family dinners. Which don't even make sense. We don't eat food – so … unless you want to have an evening blood-feast in front of Alice – well, I tried that and look how well that went over." She put an aggrieved note into the end of her sentence – as if she had been merely trying to polity accommodate different tastes when she had nearly bit that poor rabbit's head off in front of Alice and Esme's horrified eyes. That she was a victim of everyone else's misunderstandings and overreactions - not that she was paying homage to Ozzy Ozborne.
Edward glared at her but held his tongue.
Carlisle pinched his nose. Her tone aside, it was a hard point to argue. They didn't eat dinner. They hunted. But on the other hand there was Esme, and her concerns about Alice's socialization. The child was going to face enough problems adapting into the regular world as it was – she had to learn how to be a human – or else she'd never be able to go to school, get a job, have friends outside the family. It wasn't an easy problem.
"I take it back - I don't want to talk about it." Carlisle decided, rubbing his forehead. Alice stirred at his movement, and Carlisle soothed her, quietly.
If he saw the relieved look Rosalie and Edward exchanged, he let it go. Still there was one more thing. Edward tilted his head as Carlisle shared his thought, then nodded.
"Rosalie," Edward began awkwardly, "what I said earlier – about – "
"I don't want to talk about it."
"But it was –"
"I know." Rosalie emphasized, hazarding a look away from the road to glance at Edward. "I know. It's okay. And I don't want to talk about it."
Let it go Edward, it's okay. Carlisle thought, and Edward subsided with a sigh. And Thank you.
Carlisle couldn't read thoughts, but he didn't miss how Edward's gaze suddenly focused on Rosalie, or how a few seconds later, he laid a gentle hand on Rosalie's shoulder. Instead of threatening to break his fingers the way she usually did, she gave a small smile back.
Somehow, they had worked it out between the two of them, and that was all he needed to know.
Rosalie drove them back at a sedate 60 mph, and it took over 90 minutes before they were pulling into their driveway. Another hour and it would be dawn, Carlisle thought looking towards the east. The Audi had barely come to a halt before the front door of the house was thrown opened, light from the foyer spilling out around Emmett and Esme's shadows.
"Do you have her, is she okay?" Esme voice rang out, high and anxious. They had called home earlier, but clearly Esme wouldn't be satisfied until she seen Alice for herself.
"We have her, she's fine." Edward answered for them all as Carlisle unfolded himself from the tiny back seats as carefully as possible as to not disturb Alice. He needn't have worried. Alice didn't stir as Esme and Emmett fused over her, nor as he carried her into the house and up the stairs, it wasn't until he had tossed back the comforter on her bed, unwrapping the quilt as he put her down, that she murmured something. Esme was there in an instant, leaning over the other side of the bed.
"Yes sweetheart? Do you want something?"
Alice's eyes fluttered open, meeting Esme's concerned golden-eyed gaze for an instant before she mumbled something else, then with a sigh slipped back to sleep.
Esme turned to Carlisle, who seemed to suddenly be under attack from a nasty cough as he finished tucking her in.
"What did she say?"
Carlisle pulled himself together. "She said, uh – Thank – you very much dinner."
Esme pulled her brow together in a little frown of concentration, Carlisle was about to comfort her, but then Esme unexpectedly beamed at him.
"Good manners," she said approvingly. "Always important."
Before Carlisle had a chance to react, Esme bent over Alice, a finger gently brushing an errant lock of hair off her forehead - unknowingly duplicating Carlisle's gesture from earlier.
"My pleasure," Esme whispered into Alice's impossibly delicate sea-shell ear. "And welcome back."
At that moment Carlisle realized exactly how far Alice had managed to wrap them all around her little finger.
Jasper ran through the night, rushing away from his thoughts, from those unnatural vampires, away from feelings that … that human had put into him. It was a trick, it meant nothing, he told himself. He just needed distance.
He couldn't think about her.
He needed to get back to the South, report to his coven. He needed to be back to normal – back to the Jasper he was before he came up North. If he wasn't, if he was in any way flawed in his performance, Maria would know. Maria who knew him so well – inside and out – that she could look into his eyes and then wait as he offered his secrets to her. It was just supposed to be a routine reconnaissance mission – just observe. He had found out a lot that Maria would be happy with – he had intelligence on Edward's powers. But he had also stumbled. Now there was this mess. Maria would not be happy - he had been discovered – discovered as if he was some sloppy inexperienced newborn.
He ran harder, occasionally stopping to feed. He murdered viciously, he murdered innocents – he murdered to feel their panic and terror burning through him. To feed the beast he needed to be, and to destroy whatever that nameless thing was that she had awoken.
Most of all he was running away from the thought that after 150 years, his world had been irrevocably changed in between the heartbeats of a little girl, and the growing fear that no matter how fast or far he travelled – he had changed with it.
AN: Thanks for all the reviewers and alert-people! Don't know when my next update maybe – may take a while. I'm moving continents over the Christmas holidays– and the fun starts Saturday. I'm a skier so chasing the snow from the southern hemisphere to the northern one!
