Chapter 9: My Beautiful Stranger (Alice Cullen, 2007)

It was the first thing I saw when I woke up: his face, concern in his pitch-black eyes. The way his face broke into a relieved smile when my eyes finally focused on the beauty and perfection of his face – the face which had hovered constantly in my mind since I was 10 years old. "Jasper…" I breathed, a smile making its way to my lips as he reached his fingers to my face.

"Hey, Lissy," he said softly, affectionately as he traced my face with his fingers, finally pulling me in closer to kiss me. "Welcome back."

"How long was I out?" I asked, faintly recalling the world going black.

"Oh, a few days at least," Jasper murmured, kissing me again. "I thought you were never going to wake up. I thought for sure it was going to kill you…" His voice shook slightly. "Baby, don't ever leave me like that again."

"Every day of forever, Jazz. I meant it in 1949, and I mean it now," I replied with a smile. I wrapped my arms around him happily, snuggling into his chest. I had my Jazz back. Everything else was meaningless.

"Oh, God, Alice, I was so scared," he whispered into my hair. "When you started screaming like that…"

"I was screaming?"

"Screaming bloody murder," he affirmed. "And when you started reacting to the memories as though you were human again, and Carlisle –"

The second he'd spoken the name, it was as though the rickety dam had broken, and all the memories came flooding into my brain at once. All the old memories, all the old visions, all the new visions, all the visions that I'd missed in the days that I'd been unconscious, all the memories of the activities surrounding my motionless body…

"Lissy?" he asked, when I tensed without thinking. Without thinking, because I had no brain capacity left with which to think. Everything was used, overused, overworked… there was too much stuff in my mind. "Lissy, talk to me."

Even the calm, soothing waves he was sending me weren't working.

I could only manage a moan of distress as I closed my eyes and tried to stop them. At least long enough to decode the visions and discard the old, useless ones. They kept coming, never ceasing, never slowing.

"Is it the visions, sweetheart?" he asked gently.

"Too much… too many…" I said with clenched teeth. "Can't… think…"

My father, laughing as he lifted me onto his lap and kissed my forehead. Carlisle watching us from the desk across the room, a smile on his face and a thousand visions struck me at once. So much had been hanging in the balance just then.

Emmett and Rosalie – I recognized them now, Emmett bleeding and losing life as Rosalie cradled him in her arms and raced through the forests back home, back to Carlisle.

Watching Carlisle, and thinking that I knew what he was. He was the demon, but different. An angel in a demon's body.

Feeling my mother strike me across the face when I told her about the demon I'd seen in Jackson.

Fighting against the belts holding me down as the priest prayed again, and finally giving up the fight, whispering the Actus Contritionis because I knew that it was what they wanted me to do.

Crying in my room at night because I'd seen my best friend dying and nobody would listen to me.

Seeing the looks Carlisle would give me, like he knew what I saw was real. Like he was thinking about what he could do to help, and millions of visions bombarded my mind. A pivotal point in my history – in our history.

Hearing my father and mother whisper about the asylum, listening to my father and Carlisle fighting over it in their office.

"Alice…" Jasper whispered again, his voice faint through the memories.

Leaving Biloxi, and trying to make sense of the way the visions kept changing every few minutes. One minute I was at the hospital, the next I was running with Carlisle in a forest, the next crying in pain, the next back at the hospital…

Understanding that he didn't know what to do. That he was fighting with himself.

Seeing Dr Card at the front doors, and understanding that it would happen either way. That my days as a human girl were short. Still hoping that Carlisle would take me with him to Ohio.

"Jasper?" I heard Carlisle's voice from the doorway. "Is she awake?"

"Yeah," Jasper said, still cradling me against his chest, rocking me as though I were a child. "But there's too much information in her mind. All the memories, all the visions, they're all hitting her now. She can't process anything…"

Screaming in pain as my roommate struck me again, drawing blood. Her eyes were wild, her words mad, her strikes powerful. Crying as a nurse pulled me out of the way, taking me to their desk in the middle of the ward. Smiling at my saviour as she sat me up on the desk, dabbing some alcohol gently on my cuts.

Sitting at the nurse's desk with my sketchpad and my pencils, carefully recording every small detail about my beautiful stranger who had smiled at me so lovingly and who had spoken my name with such awed tenderness.

Fire, everywhere. The entire ward, up in flames, and my pictures – my pictures – were there. I had to get my pictures. They were all I had of my family I didn't have yet. I had to have my pictures. Sinking my teeth into Dr Garrity's arm when he pulled me away again. He didn't understand – nobody understood. I had to have my pictures.

"Alice, what's wrong?" Bella asked worriedly.

I moaned again, trusting Jasper to be my mouth. He had never failed me yet.

The chair. The chair where I would scream with pain, and they would just hurt me again. The chair where I lost sight, where I lost my mind's pictures of my family. The fear and the panic as I would scramble to regain those precious, fleeting images when they had dragged me back to my room. Terrified when I would lose more and more every time they put me in that chair. Clinging desperately to the vision of my Jasper walking into that diner on a rainy day.

The horrible day when I finally realized that I had been terribly wrong. That Carlisle wasn't coming back for me. That the other doctors were stopping Dr Card from seeing me. That I was trapped here in this silence and darkness for the rest of my life.

Bearing the chair's jolting pains in silence, letting it steal away my visions. Letting it take away the things that would never be. Because nobody cared about me anymore. Nobody would notice or care if one day my body just stopped.

I heard Edward let out a soft groan as he came in. "Okay, I'm sorry, I can't be here," he said quietly. "God, I'm tuning her out and it's giving me a headache…"

"Edward," Carlisle's voice came, and it was tentative. Maybe even scared. "Can you tell what she's seeing?"

Edward paused for a second, then sighed. "The shock treatments. They would make her blind, make the visions stop for a while. It terrified her, because sometimes the images wouldn't come back. Every time they shocked her, she lost more." He stopped for a second. "She held onto that vision of you walking into the diner, Jasper, with everything she had."

There was silence for a moment, while Jasper's lips pressed kisses against my forehead, whispering the words "… love you…" over and over again in a voice so low, I could barely understand him.

Then Edward spoke again, a tremor in his voice. "You broke your promise."

Carlisle inhaled sharply.

Dr Card came one day, taking me into his arms, taking me away from the darkness and the silence, but I didn't care anymore. There was nothing left to wait for. The visions were dull, muted. I didn't care about them anymore.

Listening to him make promises. Promises that would be broken just like the promises Carlisle had made.

"Tell me what you see," he had said, cold lips at my throat. I didn't know why I'd tried to see. I didn't want to see anymore. It just brought heartache and sorrow.

Fire. Fire everywhere. Hearing him throw that aside, persisting. Insisting on me finding the faces I hadn't seen in years. The faces that the chair had ripped away.

His beautiful face, smiling as his eyes seemed to caress me, gentle hands holding me close. Honey eyes melting into mine, blond hair falling into his face with careless elegance. Lips pressing against my skin, his smooth voice thick with adoration as he said my name.

I couldn't help the smile forming on my lips. "Jasper…"

"He made her tell him what she saw in the future," Edward continued quietly. "Fire. That was all she could see, and he still kept pushing. Sounded practically obsessed." He paused. "And then she saw you again, Jasper."

The fires were there. So close, so strong. Like they were in my own body. Maybe if I just endured this like the shocks, it would all finally be over and I could be free to find my beautiful stranger. And then maybe I would finally live with him, because I knew, I just knew, that my beautiful stranger wouldn't abandon me as Carlisle had. He would stay with me, he would love me and protect me until the end of our days.

"James set fire to the area, to get rid of the doctor's corpse," Edward said with a sudden hiss. "He didn't even bother moving Alice. The flames came within inches of her. She didn't realize, of course, she was in the middle of the transformation by then…" He stopped as the visions began to slow and I started to become a little more aware of my surroundings and my mind's contents. "I hope you realize, Jasper, you are about the only person she thought about at all."

Jasper kissed me again, as I nestled in closer, choosing not to bring myself to attention. "Love you, too, Lissy," he repeated softly. "Every day of forever, baby…"

Finally, I opened my eyes and focused them on Edward's stricken face. "Hi," I said quietly, seeing behind him the rest of our family, anxious looks on their faces.

Emmett was the first to speak, a grin spreading across his face as he sat down on the edge of the bed to say affectionately, "Welcome back to the land of the undead, Allie," and tousled my hair.

"You had us all in a panic, Alice," Bella agreed.

Nessie peeked her adorable little face out from behind Rosalie just then, eyes wide with concern. She fought her way through the tangle of adults and climbed up onto the bed, reaching for me expectantly.

Smiling, squeezing Jasper's knee in reassurance as I felt him stiffen behind me, doubtless concerned that my pain was going to start again if Nessie forced her own thoughts onto me; I let Nessie crawl in close and touch my throat.

She showed me her own interpretations of the last three days. Showed me the image of Jasper next to me, his face twisted in pain and fright. Me, screaming and writhing in pain on the bed while Rosalie, Bella and Esme were trying to keep me from hurting myself, and Edward, Emmett and Carlisle holding back Jasper, whose face was tortured and panicked. The wolves, taking her out to play in the woods for a day so that she didn't have to watch me anymore. She had been scared for me.

"I'm sorry that I scared you, Nessie," I apologized. "I'm sorry that I scared everybody," I added as Nessie smiled at me and flung herself into my arms. She withdrew after a moment, and putting her hand to my throat again, showed me the sight of my eyes and Jasper's – both black as tar – and the concern in her image filtered through. She didn't want us to be so thirsty that it hurt. She thought we should go hunting now. The family would still be here when we got back. "Yes, I think you're right, Nessie," I agreed. She beamed at me and returned to Rosalie, reaching out her arms to be picked up.

"Do you feel up to going on a hunt?" Jasper whispered into my ear, a smile making its way across his face as I nodded.

And as we left the house and disappeared into the woods, I could feel his eyes on me, loving me even from a distance. My beautiful stranger, a stranger no more. My Jasper. For every day of forever.

Just liked he'd promised me.