Author's Note: This is a little AU, in that Alice doesn't look into her past after meeting James, or tell Bella about it, like in the books. I hope you enjoy!
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It wasn't hard to find her with the information James left in his tape. After all, Jasper had spent years creating false identities for his family. Snooping around on the Internet and hacking into databases to find a real person only took him a couple weeks. He figured what he needed to find the whole truth was someone willing to break some laws for money. And there was never a shortage of people like that. Once his private detective found the facility's stored medical records, her doctors' detailed session notes, the whole story unraveled page by photographed page, pinged onto his phone in the dead of night.
He never decided what to do with it, but he could tell in her eyes that she knew something had changed when she came to bed that night. It was during that lonely time when they had left Forks behind at Edward's request, and she was too consumed with his problems, and Bella's heartache, to worry about her own history. So they never spoke of it.
Jasper thought they might make trip after Bella and Edward's wedding. Then Bella turned up pregnant, opening up a whole universe of problems for their family and of course, they had to stay and help fix them. Finally, when everything was peaceful again, and the family was celebrating Renesmee's second birthday, Alice turned to him and asked, "Should we go to Mississippi next week?"
Her tone was bright, like it was something she was looking forward to, but the room went silent in response. Edward's face darkened as he saw glimpses of the story in Jasper's head, and Esme leaned over and kissed Nessie's curls to hide the worry on her face.
"Where are we going, Auntie Alice?" Nessie chirped, and Jasper smiled at their niece.
"We're going to take a little vacation by ourselves, but we won't be too long."
"Well, you certainly deserve it, with all the troubles of late." Carlisle sounded placid, as always, but his gaze touched Alice's faces with concern. "I hope it will be restful."
Alice squeezed Jasper's hand when he looped his arm over her shoulder. "It will be. And productive, I'm sure."
They drove down in Alice's vintage Mercedes, a present from Edward and Bella after the confrontation with the Volturi. A car trip allowed time for leisurely hunting and long, peaceful hours with each other. They took turns reading to each other, listening to music. By mutual agreement, they avoided Texas. "A chapter best left closed on this trip," Jasper told her as they sped through Arkansas and she nodded.
The closer they got to Biloxi, the more she stared out the window, watching the scenery. He absorbed her anxiety, her longing to finally see all the pieces put together, and at the same time, her fear of what that picture would be.
They had a reservation at a quaint little B&B. Alice hesitated a little walking up the driveway and Jasper reached his hand out to her without glancing back. She threaded her fingers through his and he wondered if any memories were returning. This hotel was only two blocks from the home she had grown up in. She must have walked past it dozens of times in her human life.
That night, she spent an unprecedented two hours in the bathroom getting dressed. She almost always planned out her clothes the day before, knowing instinctively exactly what she should wear. "Alice?" He knocked on the door. "It's almost nine o'clock."
She swung the door open. She was dressed in black, like he was. He noticed she was wearing the rings he had given her over the years, gold and silver glinting on each finger and her thumbs. Around her neck hung a locket that was a gift from Esme and Carlisle. He brushed his fingers over the rubies glittering at her ears- Rosalie's earrings.
Alice pressed her lips together in a tight smile. "I didn't steal them, I borrowed them. For luck."
"I hope Rosalie believes that," Jasper replied, and bent to her height to kiss her. "Where should we start?"
"A blue house." She has searched through the various possibilities and picked the one that was the least painful.
"All right," he nodded. "That's the beginning."
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This part of town was filled with old, modest homes. The oak trees reached over the street, branches mingling to create a gentle shade that provided relief during the day from the glare of the sun.
Now, in the night, the street lights shone orange on the almost empty street. The couple walking through the night wore dark hooded jackets despite the humidity, sticky and thick even in September. They moved quickly, silently, their arms linked together like a couple out for a Sunday afternoon promenade after church.
"Almost there," he told her and she felt him sending out strength to her.
"Everything we're going to find out happened a long time ago. It's over and done and it doesn't change a thing about you, Alice," he told her on the drive down here. She knew he understood being afraid and ashamed of your past. She knew, too, that the trip would end with her wrapped in his arms and she loved him so much for that. She felt that love surrounding them, reflected back and forth between the two of them. It was the light in their eyes, the touch of their skin.
"Here it is, darlin'," he whispered on the wind and the sound carried them to the sidewalk in front of a narrow blue house on a corner lot. There were azaleas planted in the beds at the front of the house, and two pots overflowing with jasmine on the front steps.
The steps leading up to the porch were cement now. Alice closed her eyes. For a second, she felt the wood of the old steps under her feet. They were so hot in the summer, she had to race up them. "Those used to be wood, those steps," she said slowly as she opened her eyes. They stood there for a long moment and finally she turned to him, squeezing his hand. "All right, you can begin."
"You were born in this house in 1901. Helen and Richard Brandon were your parents-"
The names made her head ring. She heard a man's voice screaming. "Dammit, Helen, you're as crazy as her," he raged, and Alice pressed her hands to her temples, trying to pretend her first memory of her father's voice wasn't ugly and hateful. She stared at this house, where Mary Alice Brandon had been born. There were a few lights on, shining blue on the walls of the living room. The couple inside were watching television. So much was different, but the walls were the same. The anger was still trapped inside.
"No," she whipped her head back and forth, Rosalie's earrings hitting her cheeks. "Tell it to me like a story." Jasper looked down at her, watching her eyes. "Please. Just tell me a story. A story that happened a long time ago."
He signed and turned his gaze back to the house. "Richard Brandon was a jeweler. He bought the pearls that fishermen found here and traveled to North to sell them. He married Helen Brandon in 1900 and their daughter Mary Alice was born on April 4, 1901. They called her Alice. They had a second daughter, Cynthia, in 1910. Richard traveled frequently as his children grew and they spent most of their time with their mother. Helen liked to garden. She grew roses in the backyard."
A rose for my little rose, someone laughs, tickling Alice's nose with a pink rosebud. She wraps her arms around a round, warm body and she smiles, looking up at the woman holding the flower, but she can't make out a face-
Love. She knew what that felt like. It was the most important feeling to remember and she held tight to it. "What did Helen look like? Do you know? Is there a picture?"
"Yes, she was beautiful." Jasper took out his smartphone and clicked some buttons. "The garden club sponsored a walking tour of notable local gardens in 1915. This was Helen and Alice and Cynthia." A small woman in a long dress stood stiffly in the front yard of this house, flanked by a young girl on either side. One was an adolescent, her daringly short dress hemmed to her knees, and the other much younger, drowning in ribbons and lace. All three of them had dark hair and appeared to be smiling. The photo wasn't clear enough to really make out the faces, but Alice saw that Helen was short too, maybe five-foot-one. Once, on a spring day, she had dressed up for photos and held her daughters' hands. Alice felt a palm pressed to her own, as she studied her face in black and white.
"Was Alice happy? Did she have lots of friends?"
Jasper's voice grew more careful as he put his phone away. "From the time she was very young, Alice had an ability to make predictions about events that would happen. She would tell her mother to set an extra place at lunch, and her grandmother would drop by for an unexpected visit. Sometimes her premonitions were wrong, but very often they were right. Some people came to be afraid of Alice, because they thought she was causing these things to happen, rather than seeing what could happen."
"She was only a little girl," Alice snapped, her chest burning. "They thought she was hurting people, but she wasn't, she was trying to warn them. She couldn't make anything happen!"
"Of course not," Jasper soothed her, his voice a whisper against her ear. His eyelashes brushed against her cheek and she breathed in his strength again. "Alice had a sweet, generous heart. She wouldn't hurt anyone." He pressed his hand against her back and guided her down the block, away from the house. "But people in this area were very religious. Traditional. And some of them began to whisper that Alice was a witch."
Alice stared at her black boots as they marched up the street. She wore four inch heels today so she hit Jasper's chest in a slightly different place than normal. "What about her parents? Her mother? Did they-" Her voice went to air and faded away.
"Her mother believed in Alice's abilities. She knew that Alice had a God-given gift because she had seen, more than anyone else, how often Alice's predictions came true." Jasper turned them down a quiet side street, then another. He took a deep breath. "In 1918, Alice got a bad feeling about her mother."
Alice looked down the street and saw where he was taking her. Suddenly the steamy air clogged in her lungs. Her footsteps faltered and she turned away. "Jasper, not yet."
"Yes, all right, here." He pulled her into the side yard of the nearest house, backing up against a tree trunk to shelter them from any cars that might pass by. He hugged her to him, seeing the sadness in her face without looking. "Hold onto me for a while."
It was never easy, knowing people who had loved you were gone. It was the nature of their kind, to witness the aging and death of their human families, but somehow it still surprised Jasper, when he remembered that his brother and sister and even their children and grandchildren were now skeletons in wooden boxes.
Alice had never loved a human before Bella, so she had been saved all that pain. Until now.
"Obviously they're all dead. I shouldn't be upset," she whispered as she leaned her head against his chest. The greatest blessing of her life - that he was always, always there for her to lean on. "Alice's mother loved her so much. When the children at school were mean to Alice, she knew that as soon as she got home and saw her mother's face, her smile, she'd feel better."
"Helen Brandon would be so proud of her daughter, if she could see the woman she became." Jasper lifted her daughter's chin until she met his eyes.
"A little monster?" she teased him, trying to grin with her trembling lips.
He shook his head. "A miracle." She threw her arms around him, her broken cry muffled against his chest, and he rocked her back and forth, wishing, not for the first time, that he could wrap her heart inside his own to save it from breaking. "My miraculous wife."
She held him until the roar of pain faded, until she heard the grasshoppers and nightbirds and frogs again, all the sounds of night that she had grown up hearing out her window. The same sounds he had heard in Texas, several decades prior.
"Tell me about what Alice saw." She leaned back and watched his mouth as he spoke.
"Alice had a feeling that a man was going to break into their home and shoot her mother. The man was a stranger and it appeared to be a robbery."
"A robbery," Alice repeated, biting down on the inside of her cheek. "Helen was murdered."
"No, Alice saved her that time. Alice was so good at that." When she smiled again, more sincerely, Jasper swung her hand in his and they began to walk back up the street again. Back toward the destination Alice had turned away from.
"For months, Helen carried a gun every time she left the house. Alice's feelings never changed. She knew that there was a man coming to hurt her mother."
"But why would this man be so determined?" Alice wondered aloud. "Maybe because her father was a jeweler, the man thought they had valuables at home?"
Jasper continued, "One night Helen went out to visit a friend who was ill. She didn't realize until after she left that she had forgotten her gun. Suddenly, Alice felt a sensation, like being jolted off the road. The shock of falling in the dark. A man in a car would spook her mother's horse. Her buggy would overturn and Helen would be pinned beneath it. And this man, this stranger in the car, he would watch her until she stopped breathing. Then he would climb back in his car and drive away."
His voice was colder than snow, gentle, and quiet, telling this old ghost story as they walked through a small cemetery. The stones were old and most of them were falling down.
"Alice ran out of the house, into the street, desperate to reach her mother, but she was too late. Helen Brandon died at the age of 41." They stopped in front of a crumpled pile of cement and Jasper bent down and lifted a chunk of it. Alice read the beginning of the name.
"Poor Helen. And poor Alice." Alice looked up at the stars for a long moment, standing on top of her mother's grave. "She must have blamed herself."
"I'm sure she did. She was that kind of person. She thought she could fix everything." He gave her a look and she smiled in spite of herself. "But it wasn't her fault. Alice told her father what really happened to her mother that night, but he didn't believe her. Richard Brandon railed at her. He yelled so loud the neighbors heard him. He said he didn't ever want to hear about her fantasy stories again. Her mother's death was an accident, a tragic accident, and nothing more." Jasper gently placed the stone back on the ground, lifted his hand to his mouth, kissed his fingers, and pressed it to Helen's name.
"Her father didn't believe her."
"Her father... Some people have broken brains. They have something twisted in their minds that permits them do bad things and not feel any remorse for the consequences." Jasper had known quite a lot of people like that, in fact. Maybe he had once been headed that way himself, before Maria turned him and allowed him to feel everything - all the remorse and pain and sorrow that pulsed in the air around him. "Alice felt so guilty about her mother, when she had spent months trying to save her. Richard never felt anything at all."
They walked back through the graveyard and out into the street. He led her through wider streets, past bigger lawns bordered by fancy wrought iron fences. "In 1919, Alice's father remarried a woman named Hortensia Dabney. She was much younger, only 23, and she came from a wealthy family in Baltimore. Her father was one of the jewelers that Richard had sold pearls to. He had known Hortensia since she was a teenager."
"What a nightmare, a wicked stepmother named Hortensia."
Jasper laughed, relieved Alice felt enough like herself to joke again. They passed by rows of fancy old houses, elaborate gardens and decorative ponds and fruit trees. "They sold the house Alice and Cynthia were born in and moved to a better part of town. Alice and Cynthia dug up some of their mother's roses and planted them in their new backyard."
He finally stopped in front of a grand white house with huge columns lining the front porch. "Hortensia's father gave Richard money to expand his stores throughout the South - New Orleans, Little Rock, Montgomery. The future looked very bright for Richard Brandon in 1919.
"Except that his daughter Alice never let go of Helen's death. She suspected her stepmother had been involved, that she had loved Richard Brandon for years and had hired a man to murder his wife to get her out of the way. She tried to speak to her father about her suspicions, but he became enraged, locking Alice in her room for days and forbidding her to leave the house or receive callers."
He pointed to a window on the third floor, in the corner of the house. "I believe that was her room, right up there."
"She liked it because she could see people passing," Alice said, the images of these streets filled with old-fashioned cars and horses and buggies springing into her mind, as if from nowhere. "They dressed so fancy on Sundays and they walked up and down the street."
"While she was locked in her room, Alice's feelings only grew stronger. One night, she had a vision of her father speaking with the same man who murdered her mother. They were talking about murdering Alice because she was determined to discover what had happened to Helen Brandon."
Alice could feel the tension in Jasper, the pain hardening his skin, cooling his hand to ice. Her own body felt numb, as far away as those horses and buggies and old ghosts that had once walked these streets. "Oh. So Richard Brandon murdered his wife. Not Hortensia. Or they did it together?"
"Together. Alice, I-"
"I knew I didn't like that woman. Hortensia. I bet she was very cheap and flashy for all she was so rich. Poor Cynthia."
"Cynthia turned out all right," he reassured her. He studied her for a moment, seeing the pain behind the wall she had built to protect herself. "Are you ready for the final piece? We can stop, Alice, if you want to."
"I want to know everything, Jasper. Don't let me stop, even if it scares me, all right? Promise?" She raised her amber eyes to his, so much trust and bravery in them, it took his breath away. She deserved a medal, he thought suddenly. There were no soldiers braver than this beautiful young woman, rubies in her ears and rings on her fingers.
"Darlin'," he bent double, resting his head against hers. "All right, I promise."
"It was all over and done a long time ago, and it doesn't change anything," she reminded him.
"Yes," he whispered back. "That's exactly right."
"And I still have you." Her hands found his lips in the dark and he kissed her fingertips.
"Always," he vowed again. "'Til an hour past eternity, it's you and me."
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They ran down a highway and through the woods, Alice changing their course once when she sensed the police nearby. That would be a little hard to explain, she thought, the two of them all in black going to visit the old insane asylum in the middle of the night.
The Meadowbrooke Asylum for the Enfeebled and Deranged had been deserted since the 1960s. It had been a huge brick building but one wing was destroyed in a hurricane in the 21st century. The woods had begun to grow into the remaining structure, reclaiming the land, and deer and raccoons and wolves could occasionally be found in the halls where patients had once received treatments.
As they walked over the grounds, the tall grasses reaching Jasper's waist and Alice's chest, Alice searched her memory for any hint of recognition of this place. Maybe there's a reason you can't remember, a small voice told her.
Jasper began again, slowly. "Alice's father had her institutionalized, claiming she had been suffering from madness for years and was pushed over the edge by her mother's tragic death. The doctors accepted his daughter and his money and his story. Alice continued to insist that her father and stepmother had murdered her mother and were conspiring to murder her because she had uncovered their plot.
"It's hard to say exactly what day to day life was like in the asylum. There was a typhoid outbreak at the time, so they shaved most of the patients' heads. After a few months, when their therapies couldn't dissuade Alice from her beliefs, the doctors started to give her shock treatments."
They stood in the front entryway, their shadows falling across the cracked tile floor. The stairs to the second floor were still standing, rickety and full of holes, and Alice set her jaw and swung herself on to Jasper's back, knowing he was going to insist on carrying her if she wanted to go up there.
"She would have hated losing her hair," Alice muttered into his neck, rubbing her hand over the short strands that covered her head. "Oh, she would have been miserable here."
The hallway was long and dark and empty, starlight shining in through the holes in the roof. The rooms were filled with shadows and echoes of pain, so much pain and horror and injustice. So many wrong things had been done and they could never be set right. Her hands were shaking and she tucked them into his collar. Jasper turned his head to kiss her wrist and said nothing. Her emotions was so sharp he could feel them, like a blade against the flesh of his tongue. It hurt to tell her, but he had vowed he would, so he did.
"This is where they kept her," he said, stopping in front of a room. "Room 303. The shock treatments erased Alice's memories, so she no longer spoke about her father or her stepmother or even her mother and Cynthia. She still had her visions, but she no longer shared them with most people. One day in November 1920, she disappeared from her room. It was discovered the next morning when they came to take her for another treatment. One of the orderlies, Harry Cooperman, disappeared at the same time, and the staff believed they may have run off together because he was known to treat Alice as a sort of pet. Neither of them were ever seen again.
"In 1921, her father had her declared dead and published an obituary in the newspaper stating she had died in an unnamed hospital after a long illness."
Alice walked into her old cell. Her prison. It was dank and smelled of mildew and rot. There were no windows. "Poor Alice," she whispered. She looked around this small, dark room where she had been tortured for months, so long ago. "She thought she was going to die here. She could see James coming to kill her and she didn't know how she would get free. The future was so limited then."
Her eyes fixed on something that had once been a bed, now a heap of rusted metal against the wall. "They locked her up in the dark, you know? They strapped her to the bed. They strap her legs and arms to this bed and there are rats that run across her in the dark. Sometimes the nice one will let her loose but he's so cold when he touches her. She screams and screams and they turn off the lights and she won't stop screaming. The patients scream and cry all night and the room smells like shit, and the hallways too, and they give us cold baths. They don't feed us. They burn our brain with lightning and it makes us sick. They leave us strapped down and covered in vomit and piss, and we're going to die here and we won't stop screaming-"
Jasper was against her, his arms around her waist, his lips whispering, "Alice, Alice," into her ears, one and then the other.
She was shaking, trembling; it had started in her hands but now she was so cold all over. She smelled disgusting, her chest ached every time she took a breath. She was so hungry and scared. She knew one day the door to the room would swing open and the man would be there and he would kill her. It would almost be a relief, except he wanted to hurt her first. He wanted to climb on top of her and make her bleed. "They take everything away from me. They always lock me up in the dark."
She gagged and began to collapse and Jasper cursed and lifted her up and her mind went dark.
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Jasper carried her for miles through the woods. Her head rested on his shoulder and occasionally she would mutter something about screaming or blood or the dark. Mostly she was quiet, only shaking and clutching at him with her small fingers.
He carried her until the sun came up and then he found a clearing. He didn't smell anyone around for miles, not human or vampire, and he laid her on the soft grass in the sun. He held her in the light, staring into her beautiful face, her eyes twitching beneath her purple lids. He held her until she stopped shaking. It took a day and a night.
On the second morning, she licked her lips and said softly, in a little girl's voice, "Are you Jasper?"
"Yes. I'm Jasper, I'm here." He squeezed her wrists inside his big scarred palms.
She seemed to relax a little bit when he answered. "I waited and waited for you."
He was a little reassured - at least she seemed to know him. He had worried, in the time he held her in that clearing, that she might slip away from him. What would he do if Alice woke up and screamed at the terrifying stranger before her? "You did. And then you found me."
There was two tiny commas of wrinkles between her dark eyebrows. "Am I real, Jasper? Am I a real person?"
"Alice, of course." His whisper sounded like it was scraped up from the bottom of his soul. "Of course you are. Can you feel this?" He pressed his hand hard to her chest, above her heart.
"Mmm... Jasper," she whimpered and buried her head in his chest. "I don't want to be in the dark anymore."
"You're not in the dark, baby. You never have to be in the dark again," he whispered, urgent and absolutely rock-steady certain against her forehead. He kissed her and soothed her like he had an eternity to reassure her because he did. "You're always going to be safe and you're always going to be free. Can you open your eyes, darlin'?" he begged. "Please, for one second, look at the light, look at me, and then you can close them again."
Her eyelids creaked open like rusted old doors and she squinted and blinked. They were both shining in the sun but she would shine anyway, of course she would, because she was Alice.
"Who am I?" she asked him, her voice still little-girl high and soft.
"Alice Cullen. You are Alice Cullen and you have so many people that love you. You have a husband that worships and adores you." Her eyes focused on him then and he could see her try to smile as she breathed in his scent, his comfort. He kissed her and muttered against her lips, in a voice so low it was an idea more than a sound. "And you're mine. You are mine, Alice. Do you see it?"
He leaned back and she stared at his face and he finally felt the remainder of the tension in her body melt away. Her shoulders sunk down and her fingers unfurled against his skin like petals. "I'm yours?" Her voice was hopeful but scared, like it was almost too good to be true.
"Yes. You were always mine. You never belonged to anyone but yourself and to me. You've known that for a long time, haven't you?"
"Uh-huh," she nodded and she let out a breathy laugh. He watched her touch her locket, her earrings, all the rings he had given her, starting with a twisted bit of fork, steadying herself. "But I like it when you tell me."
"You're mine," he kissed her fingers, settling her body against his. They fit together in a familiar way, their bones flow together like the river hugs the shore. "We're safe together. Your heart is always safe with me."
"I'm always going to be yours, aren't I?" She was touching him now, his face, his hair, the back of his neck, his chest, constant brushes like she had never felt him before.
"Always. You will always have me and Carlisle and Esme and Edward and Bella and Rosalie and Emmett and Nessie and even Jacob, for god's sake, and most of all you will always have yourself. Alice, you are your own best thing. You will always find the best future for yourself and no one will ever put you back into the dark."
With a surge of motion and a groan, she wrapped her arms tighter around his shoulders, licking his lips as her nails scratched at his back. "Tell me again, Jasper," she whispered and he punctuated every "mine" with a kiss.
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That night, as they were laying naked on the grass in the middle of the Mississippi woods, Alice stirred against him. "She didn't know how lucky she was, poor Mary Alice Brandon." She propped her head on her arm and stared down at him, her eyes golden in the starlight. "She didn't know one day she would get everything she wanted. She lost so much, but one day she found her paradise."
"Even better," Jasper said thickly, stroking his wide, scarred hand up her arm and pulling her down so he could scrape his teeth over her chin. "You built your own paradise. You brought a ruined old soldier to his knees, and he crawled there after you."
"Well, he belonged to me." She came close and still closer to him, until there was no world outside his eyes, his dear face, his body underneath hers. "So I had to save him. I couldn't have an eternity without him."
She felt his smile against her neck- she loved that sensation, his lips curling and rubbing his happiness into her skin. "Mary Alice. We should get married again, with our real names."
"Mmm," she sighed. "A Whitlock-Brandon wedding. Marry me now," she declared suddenly, pulling a ring off at random and passing it to him. "I don't want to wait another minute."
He pulled back a little and tried to chase the grin off his face. It seemed important to be solemn while he gave his oath, but it was so hard when she was filled with so much joy. "I, Jasper John Whitlock, take you, Mary Alice Brandon, to be my wife," he began, and they promised their hearts to each other again, there in the Mississippi moonlight.