One of the most compelling gapfiller opportunities in the Twilight saga is Alice's trip down south to research her past while the Cullens were away in New Moon. This one-shot was originally just going to be a short little scene that I've mentioned in my fics before (Jasper revealing his suspicions about Alice's change and how upset she is by that revelation). But I decided to really get into the whole process of how she might have followed her visions and other clues to finally come face to face with human Alice.

A note of caution: this one-shot deals with mental illness and how it was viewed/treated in Alice's day, especially for women. I've tried to come as close as I can to a realistic portrayal of what the treatments, attitudes, and even doctor's notes were like at the time, based on the research I've been doing. The history of psychiatric care is a disturbing tale even when you don't try to blend it with fantasy fiction. Alice doesn't find out very many details here, so I leave a lot to your interpretation, but please proceed with caution if this is a difficult topic for you.

Disclaimer: This contains a direct quote from Twilight and and Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer.


Alice POV

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Her family loved her energy and her smile. As she grew, her parents learned to trust her uncanny way of knowing things. Everyone from miles around knew, and they loved her. She was surrounded by happiness and hugs and bright, swirling colors. She always felt safe because she always knew what to expect. One day, she walked out of town and was never seen again, but she was still happy. She knew that it was time to enter her second life, and she was not afraid. She left a note for her dear family: It's all right, the note said. I am not afraid. I love you all.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She was a princess, adored by the king and queen and everyone in the tiny kingdom that lay hidden in the clouds. Everyone came to seek her wisdom: farmers, midwives, generals, courtiers. Princes came from far-off lands to admire her elfin beauty and sweep her off her feet, but she would always smile and shake her head. She knew all along that someday she would be the one to rescue her prince. One day she put on a silver gown and rode off into the sunset to meet the greatest adventure of her life. Everyone in the kingdom mourned her loss and watched her ride away, but they were sure that she knew what she was doing. They saw that she wasn't afraid.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Her family lived a quiet life, worried that her strange ability would draw unwanted attention. But they loved their strange little girl, and their quiet life was a happy one except for the one prophecy that always worried them: the little girl always knew that she would not live long. "Soon after I am grown," she would say, wrinkling her brow in adorable speculation, "I will become ill and you will lose me. But you must not be sad, because something wonderful is going to happen after. It will not be a regular death." Her parents showered even more love on her for all their worry, for they believed the prophecy and knew the little girl's time was fleeting. Finally the little girl was grown up, and soon after that, she fell ill. Her parents sat with her in the hospital every day and night. The doctors tried everything, but she only grew weaker. And thin, so very thin. One night, she simply disappeared while they were sleeping. Her parents were heartbroken, but they found solace in knowing that she had never been afraid.

That was how all the stories ended. She was not afraid.

Over the years, I had come up with so many of these little stories to explain where I came from. I enjoyed the princess one the most, but I knew something like the hospital one was more likely. I had woken up wearing a hospital gown, after all, and if I had been plagued with visions as a human, my family probably would have wanted to keep it quiet. The whens and wheres didn't really matter, anyway, did they? All that mattered was that I had come from somewhere. That someone had loved me, and I had loved them. And surely, I had known what was going to happen to me. In my heart of hearts, I knew that I had probably been afraid of becoming a vampire in order to fulfill my destiny, but it sounded nicer to believe that I wasn't.

But those stories were gone now. That hideous creature James had given me a new story to believe in.

"When the old one knew I was after her little friend," he had told Bella in that sadistic video he had made, "he stole her from the asylum where he worked—I never will understand the obsession some vampires seem to form with you humans—and as soon as he freed her he made her safe. She didn't even seem to notice the pain, poor little creature. She'd been stuck in that black hole of a cell for so long. A hundred years earlier and she would have been burned at the stake for her visions. In the nineteen-twenties it was the asylum and the shock treatments. When she opened her eyes, strong with her fresh youth, it was like she'd never seen the sun before."

"But James was sadistic and cruel," Carlisle said afterwards when I told him about the video. "And remember, he lied to Bella. I don't see any reason to believe his account. For one thing, it doesn't hold up in terms of historical accuracy. There were no witch hunts in 19th century America, at least not that I am aware of, and the burning of witches at the stake is largely a myth to begin with. And his mention of 'shock treatments' in the 1920s—also suspect. And consider his unlikely account of your awakening. Surely you would have noticed if there were two other vampires present at the time, and you would certainly have been aware of a fight to the death taking place nearby. Put your mind to rest, Alice. I think he would have said anything in order to cause as much pain as possible."

Carlisle was right; a lot of what James had said didn't add up. Edward wasn't even sure that he could confirm whether James had actually recognized me. He had been so focused on Bella's safety at the time, he admitted, that he hadn't been as vigilant as he should have been about James's initial thoughts about me. And Jasper told me later that he had done everything he could to direct the nomad's interest away from me, so there hadn't been much for Edward to hear anyway.

That was the consensus within the family: that James had simply been lying through his teeth about the whole thing. Emmett made few wisecracks about me and asylums, but after a hunting trip alone with Jasper one afternoon, he never mentioned it again. When Esme asked me about it later, I laughed and told her that James's lies meant nothing to me.

But that was a lie, too. The horrid new story sat in the back of my brain, eating away at the fairy tales I had created to fill in the empty space of my past… to ease my loneliness during those long years of waiting.

A few months later, a little paper cut tore a painful gash through our entire family. By the time Edward cut things off with Bella, we were already gone. We tried to treat it like any other move, but we failed miserably. Carlisle buried himself in two jobs instead of one. Esme made a pitiful pretense at renovating the new house, but one day she was in a strange mood and demolished the whole damn thing without any warning. Rosalie and Emmett left North America entirely. For another honeymoon, they said, but I think it was more about the sheer wrongness of Edward not being there.

Jasper, ironically enough, was the only one of us "kids" who felt up to the human charade. He enrolled at Cornell as a second-year philosophy undergrad, determined to prove himself after his failure with Bella. Carlisle and Esme were worried that he was feeling terribly guilty, but as usual they were mistaking him for Edward. Jasper certainly felt bad about what had happened, but spiraling in guilt wasn't his way. He was just angry at himself, at his failure to control himself around the one human that truly mattered to us. And he was afraid what that failure might mean for the future of our family. We all were.

I tried taking some classes too, but my heart just wasn't in it. And besides, Esme was nearly always alone at home. She was already upset about Bella and worried sick about Edward, and now she was worried that Rosalie and Emmett's honeymoon wasn't just a vacation. So I dropped out and focused on working on the new house with Esme.

But my heart wasn't in that either. With hardly any of the family around, no studies, and a certain idiot brother not letting me even watch Bella, my mind kept drifting back to the incongruent account James had given about my transformation. There was one little detail that kept scratching at the back of my brain: the fact that he had known about my visions. How would he have known about my gift if he hadn't known me before, in one way or another? I'd never met him in my vampire life, and neither had any of the others.

"What if he was telling the truth?" I said to Jasper one evening. "About some of it, at least?"

Jasper studied me for a minute. "Well, then, let's look into it."

I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but instead I watched as new visions popped into existence. I saw myself sitting at the computer using search terms like "mental institution Mississippi Arkansas Tennessee 1920." I followed the trail of visions as far as I could. It was just a blurry swirl of maps and computer screens and dark trees, but it felt productive.

"Okay," I announced, opening my eyes.

.

.

.

Jasper stayed in New York to finish out the semester. He'd insisted again and again that he come with me, but I didn't like to leave Esme alone any more than was necessary. I promised to let him know when I was getting close to an answer so he could join me. In any case, my research began at home. I ordered detailed maps of Mississippi and the surrounding states, and while I waited for them to arrive, I zipped through a correspondence course about how to research genealogy. Most of the course material wasn't applicable to my situation, since the humans usually began their search with a full name, but I learned a few tips.

I also found all the information I could about psychiatric treatments in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Modern electroconvulsive therapy hadn't even been invented—officially, at least—until 1938. But in the earlier part of the century, physicians had been trying all sorts of ways to induce fevers or seizures, usually through experimental drugs and even by deliberately infecting patients with malaria. I supposed it was possible that some doctors had been experimenting with some form of electroshock therapy as early as the 1920s, especially if they didn't have much oversight or standardized practice. More barbaric versions of ECT had been studied as far back as the eighteenth century, championed here in the US by none other than Benjamin Franklin himself.

I had never tried to research anything about my past before. I suppose I liked the stories in my head so much that I was reluctant to confirm anything else. And besides, I had never known where to start. The only clues I'd ever had were a blue-and-white checkered rag that, years later, Edward thought looked like a hospital gown in my memories; a first name that I was fairly sure I belonged to; and a nameless stretch of woods that was somewhere east of the Mississippi Delta. Those first days had been so full of fear and confusion that I'd run in all directions before seeing any evidence of where I was.

But now James had given me a horror story that I would very much prefer not to believe, and he had also given me a very specific clue: the possibility that I was in an asylum near where I had woken up. It would, unfortunately, be a lot easier to confirm his story than to disprove it.

So after retracing my newborn steps as much as I could using my maps, I bought a car and drove down to Mississippi. I spent a few days driving and hiking around to various bits of De Soto National Forest, hoping to find a familiar landmark. I slowly made my way further and further south without any luck. The signs weren't any use; they were all from the late '30s or younger. I began to see visions of myself standing on a hill that looked vaguely familiar, so I started paying more attention to the lookout points I was driving by.

Finally, I was rewarded with a hilltop that I was almost positive I had once stood on soon after my awakening. I scaled it to find a familiar view, more or less. And it smelled right, too: pine everywhere, fragrant in the humidity with just a hint of pollution and a salty draft coming in from the Gulf of Mexico. By this time, I was near the southwestern edge of the forest. I smiled sadly when I saw a sign for a little town called Success on my drive out. Surely that was a good omen.

But to be honest, this place was giving me the creeps. The further south I went, the more I recognized. Nothing concrete; just certain hills and bends in the roads and the shifting blend of scents as I went along. The last time I had been here, I had been so confused… so afraid of myself, of what was going to happen to me. This time I was safe, but once again I was afraid, this time of what had happened to me. I refused to let myself dwell on what it might mean if the asylum story were true, but out here in the familiar emptiness, all those daydreams about my loving family seemed hollow and silly. Maybe deep down, I had known all along that they—

All at once, I slammed on the brakes and backed the car up beside an old, forgotten trail head that led away from the main drive. I just sat there, staring down the path. I knew this place; there was a peculiar jumble of rocks just off the path that I remembered clearly.

This was where I had woken up. Just a few hundred feet down that path. I remembered running past the rock and being afraid of what might happen when I found the dirt road a moment later. I opened the car door, but I never got further than that. I didn't see myself actually finding the exact place. I didn't really want to go there… not yet. Not alone.

Next, I drove to Biloxi. The name felt right somehow, and it was the biggest city in the area as well as one of the county seats, so its library and government buildings would probably have the best records. Sure enough, more visions began to unfold as I drove: mostly of myself searching on a computer in a dimly lit office, but I also saw myself in a library at night poring over old newspapers on a microfiche.

"Biloxi?" Jasper said sharply when we spoke on the phone next. "If I'd known you were going that far south…"

He joined me in the library basement in just a few hours. "Overprotective fool," I muttered into his chest, but I was glad. He felt my relief and held me a little tighter. I relaxed into the warm feeling of security that had nothing to do with his gift. It cleared my head, making way for new visions.

"What have you found so far?" he asked.

"Nothing yet," I admitted, "but I'm definitely in the right place. Or near it. I know we'll be doing a lot of night reading in here and in another building I haven't found yet. These computers are awful."

Jasper began to fiddle with the nearest desktop computer. He soon declared it unfit for duty and went back out to the car to bring in the computers he had brought from home. One of them was the master laptop from which we did all our "identity management," as we liked to call it these days. The last time I had seen that one was the day Jasper had gotten it out to show Bella a few of our tricks.

"What's wrong?" he asked, looking up from the mass of Ethernet cord he was trying to untangle.

"Thinking about Bella," I sighed. My gift reached for her without meaning to, rewarding me with a perfectly miserable image of her having a nightmare. Another one.

"You promised," Jasper reminded me.

"Yeah, well…"

"It's for the best."

We'll see about that, I thought. I started to tug at the other end of the cord tangle. I saw Bella more than anyone knew, and it wasn't just when I "accidentally" searched for her future. It was when I searched the mid-distant future for anyone in the family. The probability of Edward crawling back to her was holding steady around 80%, and that suited me just fine. The sooner he buckled, the better. And if you don't like me thinking about it, you can come here and say it to my face! I thought furiously, just in case he happened to be passing through the area.

You never know.

.

.

.

The next few days were nice and rainy. Jasper and I spend our daylight hours poking around local libraries and sightseeing, trying to see if anything might trigger a dormant memory. We tried to focus on old buildings and other landmarks that had been around since my day. I felt a few twinges of vague recognition here and there, mostly around Biloxi, but nothing that I would really call a memory. The strongest feeling hit me, oddly enough, when we passed by a jewelry story that couldn't have been more than ten years old. They were having a sale on pearl necklaces and pearl earrings. That didn't help me in the slightest.

We spent our nights digging through old records at the local chamber of commerce and combing the internet for mentioned of old asylums in the area. Once we had the one-time addresses of four small facilities in the southern part of the state, we went exploring.

They were nowhere to be found. All four of the buildings had either been torn down or converted for another use. I never felt a twinge of recognition at any of the sites, and I had no more visions to go on.

"I guess we'll never know," I said when we had crossed the last name off the list. "Either he was lying or it's long gone."

But Jasper wasn't ready to give up. He seemed oddly energized about the whole thing. "Let's try those last two again," he said. "Even though they aren't asylums anymore, there might be some old records in the basement or something."

As soon as we decided to return to the two buildings that were still standing—one was a hotel now and one was a low-income residence for older humans—my visions extended a bit more. I saw us in a narrow, pinched attic at night, reading through a stack of file folders.

We followed my visions back to the one that was a hotel. It was bigger up close than I'd expected. It was grand, actually, or it had been once. I didn't feel any twinges as we silently climbed the hill on which the lonely building sat, but the place did have a certain… ghostliness to it. And it was definitely the one. My visions became clearer with every step we took.

A crate in the attic. Stacks of papers. One paper in particular, scribbled notes. An old yellowed photograph, torn from the page, nestled in my hands.

"This is the one?" Jasper asked.

All at once I realized I was gripping his hand so hard his skin was beginning to fracture. I let go and smoothed my fingers over the new cracks that had torn open his scars. It was so much easier when he was the one with the messy past. When he was the one in need of rescue. When I was the one who gave the reassurance.

"Alice."

I studied the cracks in his hand in minute detail.

"Alice," he said again, softer this time. I looked up into his worried golden eyes and promptly started to cry, that ugly kind of vampire-crying where your face scrunches up and gets stuck that way and nothing comes out, not even sound, and I felt so stupid, and before I knew it Jasper had scooped me up and carried me into the woods away from that place. I jammed my face in his shoulder and stayed there until it was dark, and then I began to breathe again.

"I want to go home."

"No, you don't."

"Shut up."

I folded myself smaller, tighter into his side. Jasper wrapped his arms tighter around me. I felt the smallest of smiles sneak its way back in, so I scrunched even smaller. He hugged tighter. Smaller. Tighter.

"OkaynowIREALLYcan'tbreehhh," I wheezed out, and we tumbled backwards into a pile of crunchy leaves, whispering our laughter. I watched him, breathing in his scent and listening to his deep, throaty chuckle, and I remembered that I was already home. Our fingers found each other beneath the leaves and tangled together.

"This is the right place," I finally said.

"Do you remember it now?"

"No."

"Oh. Then what made you...?"

I ran my fingers over the cracks I had made. They were all but healed. "I saw a photograph. Of me. We're going to find it here."

He was stunned; I could feel the shock overflowing his gift. "And… your name?"

I shrugged. "Can't see it yet. I don't want to look yet. What if… what if I've been wrong this whole time about everything? What if my name isn't even Alice? What if it's Gertrude or Mildred or Violet or—"

"Alice." Jasper smiled sadly. "Whatever we find out tonight… it doesn't need to change anything if you don't want it to. You'll still be you."

That's what I'm afraid of.

Who am I?

.

.

.

Once most of the humans seemed to be asleep, we broke into one of the gigantic attics through a decaying gable vent.

"That one," I said, pointing to an old crate in the darkest corner. Jasper broke the lock and we opened it to find stacks and stacks of papers: medical forms, utility bills, and other records from the Fairview Asylum. The oldest papers were from 1905 and the most recent were from 1934. We couldn't find any evidence of what had happened after that.

Jasper sat and waited while I read through the papers, handing each one to him when I was finished with it. The patient files were a bit of a mess, but they were roughly organized by year of admission. I started with the first ones in 1905 and made my way slowly forward in time. With each year that passed, I breathed a little easier: another year of freedom, of some kind of childhood at a house instead of a place like this. In fact, I didn't see any admissions for children. 1915. 1916. 1917. 1918. 1919…

"Are you sure about this place?" Jasper asked again. "James made it sound like years, plural…"

"James was a rotten liar," I said, picking up the next paper.

In a flash, the photograph was torn away and nestled in my hands. Staring up at me was the dazed, frightened face of a girl that seemed so, so young. Her dark hair lay draped over one shoulder in a rumpled braid. It did nothing to cover up the bruise that was smeared across her left cheek or the deep, jagged scratches running down her cheeks like tears. There was no mistaking who she was, but… could that really be me?

I felt Jasper's arm wrap around my shoulder, and it brought my attention back to the paper itself. "Mary Alice Brandon," we read aloud together.

Mary Alice Brandon. Mary Alice Brandon. Mary Alice Brandon. Mary Alice Brandon.

"I was right," I whispered. "This whole time, I was right. My name is Alice."

"Alice," Jasper whispered back.

Alice.

"And Brandon," he said thoughtfully. "I don't know why, but that just seems… right for you, somehow."

I drew him closer and we read on. I was born on February 6, 1901 and admitted as a patient here on December 10, 1919.

18 year old white female with suspected schizophrenia characterized by paranoid delusions. She is in great distress but with only mild bursts of violent demeanor. She believes her father has murdered her mother and has now hired an assassin to kill her too. History of milder delusions and brief catatonic episodes for many years but with no discernable pattern. Good physical health, scattered affect w/increased respiration and pulse on examination. Physical restraints required on intake due to attempted elopement and self-harm. Patient is escorted by Mr. Gerald Willoughby, a town official and family friend from Biloxi, who has brought a written letter of permission from her father. The letter and Mr. Willoughby's personal account confirm her history of hallucinations and general delusions.

The rest of the intake form was filled with things I supposed any doctor might write down: blood pressure, respiratory rate, bowel sounds, reflexes, height, weight, and all that. The doctor had written the beginnings of a treatment plan. There were several half-legible phrases about pills and diet, but no mention of anything about electricity. The next few pages were charts on which the workers had kept logs of my temperature and weight. It sounded like the doctor rarely saw me after that first day except to check in and confirm I was still alive, still crazy. The dosages and names of the pills were switched around a few times over the first two months. In the first week of February 1919, I was moved to another room and began "sewing therapy" with some of the other women patients.

In the third month, there was a longer note.

Patient's affect is somewhat stabilized, but conventional treatments have not lessened her delusional state. Length and frequency of catatonic episodes continue to increase. Her sleep and appetite are poor. Beginning protocol B for lateral cerebral diathermia.

The next page was another log with a bunch of dates and numbers in it, and the next was a different log with later dates and numbers that seemed totally unrelated to the first page. It was all a jumble of data and MHz and joules and microamperes that Carlisle would need to decipher for us. But in both sets of data, electricity was definitely involved. Months later, the electric whatever-it-was was discontinued and there were notes about a new medication. The next doctor's note was interesting.

Patient's affect is greatly improved compared to admission. Her earlier distress seems almost completely subdued and she does not mention the earlier delusions about her family. However, there appears to be some memory loss and she occasionally mentions new, milder delusions that she calls "my pictures." Her catatonic episodes often last up to an hour or more now. Inconclusive whether these changes are related to the typhoid outbreak Mar. 10–19 or diathermia trials. She cannot name family members or recall the year upon examination today. Nurses report she rarely speaks at all now.

That was it for that section. The rest of the papers looked like daily nurses' notes. There were notes about my sleep problems, my compliance with taking the pills, treatments given for regular medical problems, and how much I ate. Down at the bottom of the last page, there was a single sentence:

Sept. 9, 1920: Patient eloped sometime before 7 a.m. Custodial staff noted broken window but no other details given.

"Alice, wait," Jasper said suddenly, pointing at the top of the page. "Look."

July 17, 1920: Ate 25% meals. Full compliance w/meds. Rash on L knee is receding w/daily application gentian violet. No sleep disturbances reported. She is speaking more this week, mainly of her "new pictures" about a man named Jasper and says he is going to rescue her, but she is not visibly in distress. Mention of the Jasper hallucination generally improves her mood.

I touched his name on the paper.

"You saw me," he said in wonder. "Even then…" His smile faltered. "I wish I could have known somehow. That I could have rescued you."

How many times had I said those words to him?

"It sounds like you did," I told him. I reached up and touched his faltering smile, teasing it back into place. "I wonder what I saw first, of you and me, and when? I wish I could remember that much. And only that much," I added with a sigh, flipping back to the beginning of the notes. We began to read again. It did seem like the nurses paid close attention; at least that meant that I hadn't been rotting away in the "black hole of a cell" that James had been kind enough to allude to.

But there was also report after report of odd little injuries I had sustained. The injuries were merely noted and, occasionally, treated. Explanations were rarely given. And no one ever mentioned the scratches or the bruise on my face at the beginning. It sounded like I had been physically restrained and isolated fairly often in the beginning, though that hadn't lasted. Moving to the new room and starting the sewing therapy sounded like a reward for good behavior.

"There," I pointed out when we came back around to March. "There's that typhoid outbreak, and the nurses shaved my head afterward because my hair kept falling out. It only had a few months to grow back after that, and I guess some parts didn't even start growing right away." I huffed an indignant sigh. "Finally, the mystery of the bad haircut is solved. Case closed."

Jasper suddenly went very still beside me.

I turned to look at him. His eyes were squeezed shut and he had the oddest smile on his face.

"What?"

He drew in a long breath and let it out, and with it came a shocking flood of relief. His gift was nearly screaming with it. He pulled me into his lap and pawed at my hair, feeling the ragged ends of it like he'd die if he didn't.

"Jasper, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said in a rush. "Nothing. We'll talk about it later."

I tried to squirm against his arms. "Tell me now."

"Later, Alice, really. It's not a big deal. We should—"

"Right now." I shoved my way backwards out of his lap and waited expectantly. "We're sitting in the attic of a lunatic asylum learning about my hideous family and how they shoved me in here because I was crazy. But you suddenly look like you just won the goddamn lottery and I want to know what exactly you think is good about any of this."

He hesitated, looking more uncomfortable by the second. I stabbed at the future impatiently.

You know I tend to look at things differently than the others sometimes. Because of the life I lived.

"You know I tend—"

"Yes, of course you do. And?"

"Well…" He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Alice, look at it from my perspective. You woke up here, this far south. You're powerfully gifted and never had an explanation for how or why you were changed. And your hair. Especially your hair. I thought… I don't know if you ever saw me doing this, but whenever Maria chose a woman to keep for the newborn army, anyone with long hair I mean, we'd cut it when they first started changing. While it was still easy to cut. Appearance didn't matter; we'd just rip a knife through it as close to the scalp as we could and move on to the next one."

I cocked my head. "I never saw you do that. So you thought I…?"

"Nearly every woman I met in the wars had hair like yours, Alice. Maria wasn't the only coven leader who did that. Long hair was a liability in battle, a bad one. So from my perspective, that was the most likely explanation all along."

"Wait a minute. You thought this whole time that I'd lied to you about my change?"

"No! I thought… I wondered if whoever changed you had a gift that could erase memories. I heard all kinds of rumors through the years about things like that. It never seemed too outlandish, especially after meeting you and Edward and hearing about Aro and Jane. Or maybe you were so afraid that you lost your memory from the shock of it. Maybe you lost too much blood and had a stroke while you were changing. I don't know."

"Okay, but if this mystery person wanted me in their army, and I was so valuable, why would they abandon me?"

"It happens. They were attacked, killed, got distracted by unruly newborns. The point is that all these years…" He took a deep breath. "I've always worried that your creator might still be out there. That they might have a way of finding us. That someday they might come looking for you, the way Maria came looking for me."

I was speechless.

"I'm sorry—I know the timing is awful for me to be celebrating something, but I'm so relieved. Even when James cooked up that story, even when we got close to confirming it today… it still didn't mean I could let go of that fear. Not yet. He could have been lying about your change, even if the asylum story were true. But that note about your hair… like you said. Case closed. Maybe it sounds silly, but I can't explain what an incredible relief that is."

He reached for me again, but I slammed the papers back into the crate and darted away. "All these years you…?

"Alice, please, I… that was the wrong time. I didn't mean to—"

"You think I'm upset about your timing? When for fifty-seven years you've been… God, Jasper! What am I supposed to say to that?" I slammed every stack of paper back in the crate, one right after the other, throwing up a cloud of dust. Jasper just sat there watching me. He looked a little sick.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded.

"I should have," he said quickly. "I know I should have. But there was nothing to be done about it, no reason for you to worry too. I had already put you through so much, and anyway, it was just a theory. The least I could do was protect you from having to worry about it."

I folded my arms tight across my belly. "You sounded just like Edward with Bella right there, you know that? How long until you leave me for my own good, too?!"

He clambered to his feet, nearly hitting his head on the rafters. "That's not funny, Alice. You know I could never—"

"No, I don't know, because apparently you keep things like this to yourself, things that have everything to do with both of us, instead of sharing them with me! How am I supposed to know whether you're protecting me over something else? Are you?!"

"Hey!" shouted a slurred voice from downstairs. "Whoever's making all that racket, shut up!"

Jasper caught up to me and hissed in my ear. "I swear, Alice, that was the only thing. And it was only because I didn't want you to be afraid."

"Well I'm afraid now! I'm afraid… I…" And again with the ugly vampire-crying. "I'm afraid that I can't trust you when you say there's nothing else. I'm afraid you didn't tell me because you thought I couldn't handle it or because maybe you already knew there was something wrong with me. I'm afraid that maybe I knew all along what that stupid hospital gown meant, that I had known all along that I probably really was crazy—that maybe all of you have been thinking it, at least since James… It's not like I'm normal even now!"

"Shh, Alice, shh…" Jasper was already crushing me to his chest, rocking us where we stood.

"Oh. The humans," I whispered back and croaked out something that was between a hiccup and a laugh. Vampire crying was the worst. And now I was wiping my eyes like an absolute idiot. Jasper pulled me back out through the broken gable vent and we slipped into the little copse of trees again, and I cried all over again. Jasper hesitated, unsure whether his gift would be welcome since he was in the doghouse, so I finally squeaked out something about needing a little help. I leaned into his gift eagerly like it was a drug, closing my eyes when the warm, familiar heaviness took over. He was giving it everything he had.

"First of all," Jasper said once I was quiet, "I don't think your visions were wrong at all. I think your father really did have your mother killed."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, come on."

"Listen to me." He waited for me to look up at him again. "I made a mistake, and I hurt you today of all days, and I am so sorry. But trust me right now. I'm not holding anything back or telling you this to make you feel better—this is exactly what I'm thinking. If your father did those things, and you already had a... well, a reputation of sorts for saying you saw things, then having you committed was exactly what he would do to get you out of the way. No one would question it, and no one would take you seriously when you kept telling people what you had seen."

"But then why didn't he just have the other man kill me? Like he was already going to?"

Jasper thought for a second. "Maybe you had already told some people about your mother, and it was too risky for you to turn up dead after that. That's probably what happened, because otherwise they never would've told the doctor the specifics up front like that. Easier to go with what people were already saying about your accusations against your father. But I'll tell you one thing. That man is lucky he's long dead, because if he wasn't…" An old, forgotten edge came back into Jasper's voice for a second, a deadness that I had heard and seen in his eyes too many times to count, long ago.

I shivered in his arms.

"And another thing. I don't see any reason to believe that you ever were sick in your mind, like they thought. The more powerfully gifted we are, the more those gifts manifest when we're still human. Maybe it was weaker, less reliable… well, I don't know, but it was your gift already. And Alice, even if it wasn't… even if you were truly sick, murderous father or not, you aren't anymore. No one thinks that."

"Emmett does."

"No, he doesn't. You know him—he just has to make every irreverent wisecrack he can think of. But I had a little talk with him a couple months ago. He's not going to do it again. Ever."

I smirked up at him. "A little talk, huh?"

"Well. I may have beaten him into the ground first. He started it."

"Boys," I sighed, looking up at the stars.

"And also," Jasper said, "even if you really did need help when you were human, you didn't deserve any of those things that happened to you. We don't even know what they did to you while you were in there, not really. All those injuries, and how the doctor never mentioned that bruise someone had given you—your father, probably. And that circles back to the most likely explanation: that he really did the things you saw. Which means, again, you weren't sick. You were gifted."

I shrugged, unable to come up with a good argument. "But those scratches. I think I did that to myself."

"I think so, too. Whatever the cause, you were scared out of your mind. Of course you were."

"Jasper?"

"Hmm?"

"I want to show you something."

We left the car at the bottom of the hill. I ran back up into De Soto with Jasper trailing me, and when I came to the forgotten trail, I marched right in. I could barely stand upright, the trees were tangled together so heavily. Jasper had to walk almost bent over double. It only took me a few minutes to find it: the thicket that opened up suddenly, the ceiling of stars. Those two hills off to the northeast. And the little stream was still there. I stared at it dumbly, listening to the little dips and gurgles as it flowed. It was silly to think its formation hadn't changed in almost a century, but it sounded exactly the same to me.

"Where are we?" Jasper asked.

"This is it." I spread my arms in a flourish like I was showing off a new apartment. "This is where I woke up."

He looked around slowly, taking in every detail.

And then he did something that I had done time and time again with his scars, even with the invisible battle wounds that hadn't left any trace behind. He slowly raised his hand and touched my jaw where the bruise had been. He ran his fingers down my face, ever so lightly, tracing each of the scratches we had seen on the Alice in the picture. He gently kissed each spot, and he kissed the top of my head, fingering the uneven ends of my hair.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into my hair.

"I may have overreacted."

"No, you didn't. I should never have kept that from you. But…" he kissed my hair again. "I'm also sorry for all of it. That any of this ever happened to you. That your family…" He shook his head and looked around the thicket again. "Where, exactly? Where did you wake up?"

"Over there." I pointed just past the far side of the stream.

"Let's do it right this time," he said, and I had a very interesting vision that made me smile.

I followed him over the stream. He held my hand and led me across the stones so I wouldn't get my feet wet, and when we reached the spot, he sat down first, still holding my hand. I lay down with my head in his lap and closed my eyes. It felt so surreal, being here again, and for a minute I was sure I was remembering the pain for the first time. But Jasper never let go of my hand. He sat as still as a statue and waited, and I could see that he would wait as long as I wanted. And so I just lay there, dreaming, focusing on the feel of Jasper holding me, loving me, watching over me.

Tomorrow, we would get back to our research. Now that I had a name, I needed to comb through those old newspapers and city records and learn everything I could about my old life. And we would go back to the asylum, too. I needed to decide what I was going to take with me. And I was going to read every single one of those patient files, cover to cover.

That place was full of the ghosts of people like me. How many of them had been abandoned by their families? Did any of them have a latent gift like me? How many were just regular people who believed something, did something that was frowned upon? Did I have any friends there besides the mystery vampire?

And how might I have ended up otherwise, regardless of whether it was mental illness or powerful visions in a powerless girl? I still knew nothing at all about my creator beyond what James had said. Even with his cruel little story about my never seeing the sun, he had painted a surprisingly tender picture of the person who had changed my life forever, who had saved me. I was more than happy to believe that part of the story—that somewhere along those horrible months in the asylum, I had found a very unlikely friend. That maybe my mother was different from my father. And now I knew that I had also had Jasper with me all along, in a way.

We lay perfectly still for so long that the animal sounds began to return; they were growing used to our presence. I could feel the sun coming up.

I finally opened my eyes. And this time, Jasper was right there to welcome me with a gentle kiss. We stood up together, hand in hand. He already knew the next part of the story.

"Alice," he said softly, and the first rays of dawn found his glistening face. The first face I had ever seen.

And this time, I was not afraid.


The headcanon here re: Alice seeing Jasper even when she was human is borrowed from staringatthesky's wonderful Alice fic, In Waking and Dream. I love this tender story of how Alice may have grown up and found her way despite her many troubles. I also recommend The History of Alice by LyricalTwilight. Both of these fics were written recently enough that the headcanon lines up with the details given in the Official Illustrated Guide.