I don't own Twilight, the rest, yeah, MINE.
7.
Alice's POV
The clouds out the window levitate in layers and as the sun peaks out in the distance I glance down to watch the rays dance across my skin. Mesmerized by the glittering dust that forms, I think back to Bella's 18th birthday and curse the day I was turned. Jasper turns and takes my hand in his, squeezing softly. Visions have been presenting themselves more often lately, but these are not of the future.
A small hand takes mine, rubbing circles back and forth across the surface. I look up into a pair of gray eyes and my lips curve into a smile. "Hi, Cynthia." My voice doesn't waver - instead high and cheery. Keeping the tears at bay is easy when you have a younger sister.
"Mommy says you're sick, Alice, that's why you have to stay here." I can't argue - what could I say to tell her otherwise? Normal people don't see what I see, they don't understand the things I do. She looks away to the door and then back again. "You're not that sick, right?"
"No of course not, I just need to have the doctor's look at a few things."
"How long will it take?"
"Just a little while, I promise." My voice has lowered to a whisper but it doesn't crack - and suddenly the door is open with my mother walking in. Complete opposites, she's silent and I'm silly.
"Come on, Cynthia. It's time - give your sister a hug." The little girl obeys and I return her hug fiercely. Tears spring from my eyes, one falling silently down my cheek. "I love you," I tell her. "Please, come see me again soon."
As she pulls away, she asks, "You won't stay here will you? You won't forget about us? Mommy said you might forget us."
I gasp, "No honey, I could never forget you."
Her hands fall limply to her sides as our mom calls her again. I wait patiently on the bed while they walk out the door - locking it behind them. Standing, I hop over to look out the tiny window of the white door and watch as they walk down the hallway. A strange feeling of foreboding showers over me, as though I know this is the last time I will see them.
My eyes snap open and I stare into the face of my husband - feelings of his uneasiness wash over me along with the rest of them. Turning, I swallow and peek at the shock I know will be in Edward's face. My sister - I had forgotten. I had forgotten about her for so long. Edward meets my gaze, his eyes glassy with remorse.
"Alice, what did you see?" Jasper asks, panicked again. The rest of them wait for me to say something but the problem is I'm stuck - between a rock and a hard place, unable to give them my memories.
Edward, you have to tell them something, please.
He nods, turning to Carlisle. "She had a memory - not a vision of the future. Something from her human life." His tone is dry, dead - no music in his voice.
"Well you have been researching, Did you just mix it up with something else? Something in the newspaper?" He's anxious, I know he doesn't want to see me hurt.
"No, this was different...I knew this. It was familiar."
And it had been, it had been like walking backwards or rewinding through footsteps in the snow. You find yourself in the middle of a wood only to find that the color of the leaves have changed from that brilliant hue of green into a dull and fading orange.
"Alice," Jasper sighs, pulling me into his lap and rocking us back and forth. My eyes are glazed over with tears that will never fall. I had forgotten my own sister - what's more, I had forgotten Bella too.
I had, Edward had, we all had.
Bella's POV
Thompson warned me about going to bed hours ago. But it's raining. Spinning around, my feet are lathered in grass stains and they look like small fingerprints put there by the hands of children. Grasshoppers ring in the distance - the chant of their fiddle legs blurring in with my delusions.
The bright lights of the city splash colors in the background and I stop wondering if I'm here because car horns honk and blow impatiently along with the backdrop. My neck whips to the sky, asking God for just one more drop of his tears. They come - they come pouring down in silver, whites and grays. The moon sizzles across some giving them the distinct look of pearls.
For just one moment, I can stop caring. The world drops from under me and I fall laughing in the soft grass. There is no illness, there is no sex, there is no reality.
"My name is Edward Cullen."
"I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella."
"That blue looks lovely with your skin. "
"If I could dream at all, it would be about you."
I watch the moon darken under mist and decide that the hallucinations aren't that bad. My mind gave me something beautiful, if only for a while. It might of been a lie, but it was the most wonderful lie I have ever produced.
Suddenly I panic as I hear the sound of footsteps coming near. The face of Confetti is abruptly overhead and I relax. "Whatcha' doing?" He asks.
"Breaking the rules," I smirk and he grins, bumping fists with me.
"Oh yeah? Who's rules?"
"You know whose. Thompson says I'm just a disease."
"This is coming from a guy who killed my wife. Ila, may have been sick but she was human to the bone. And I for one refuse to believe that just because I'm sick that it cancels out my humanity."
Lifting myself up, I smile. " 'What, you think you're crazy or something? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it!'"
"One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." He moves closer to me and says, "You know Immanuel Kant -"
But I cut him off as I hug him for dear life - he's all I have now.
And this time, that's enough.
Alice's POV
"Edward, get it together, dude," Emmett states solemnly. Edward hasn't spoken a word since my recollection. "Bella's in a bad place right now."
The plane is about to land and I haven't seen any vision of her - this bothers me. It's almost as if some jigsaw puzzle piece is misplaced. A flicker comes and goes but I have yet to determine what it means. The signs all seem to spell her forgetting us, or that maybe she's undecided about whether we were ever real to begin with.
Oh God...no.
Edward's attention snaps to me, staring intently as he silently pleads with his eyes for reassurance. For once, I don't have the power to give it to him.
"Carlisle?"
"Yes?" He had called into Seattle before we left to try connecting answers together. What had put Bella in the hospital in the first place?
"What's wrong with her?" Edward demands. "Why would she be in some place that twisted to begin with?" He's shaking and Jasper emits some relaxation.
Carlisle turns, looking at each of us carefully. "I'm going to put this bluntly. Technically, what I have to say is confidential. " He fiddles with some papers in his hands. "I called Chief Swan."
Like so many other times, I fall down the rabbit hole and stumble across it myself - seconds before he utters the words. Sometimes the truth weaves itself and you have to dig a little deeper. Sometimes, the truth is a beast itself.
Paranoid Schizophrenia...
Edward slumps over, biting his hands so he doesn't scream. Emmett sits beside him, glaring up at Carlisle and now me. "Answer the question."
"It's a mental disorder - most of you might know it as Paranoid Schizophrenia."
"She sees things that aren't there?" Jasper asks.
"Essentially yes, but there's a lot more to it than that. The person suffers hallucinations that can be visual or auditory. There are also delusions - sometimes the person can become suspicious of the people around them, hence the first part of the name. Disorganized thoughts are common - the person often can't hold a normal conversation and it can often result in isolation.
"One of the biggest signs are the emotional aspects - anger and aggression as well as apathy. The person stops caring about basically everything, even hygiene. The results of all these things can lead to suicidal thoughts, " he pauses for a second to comfort Esme and then looks back to the rest of us, "This is complicated - if we go in that place and bring Bella home with us, there's no going back - there's always the option of asking them to transfer her to another facility."
Edward's stare is frozen, haunted. "I can't be away from her again - it doesn't matter if she's sick."
"I realize that, son but Bella's going to be different. She might not even be the same as the way we left her, we're going to have to have patience - tons of it. Not just with the illness, she's obviously now been through serious emotional trauma."
A hoarse cry comes from the corner, "Bella's going home with us, Carlisle."
"You know, you're kind of beautiful for a heartless shrew, babe," Emmett says, standing and kissing her on the cheek.
Bella would have loved that. Edward's eyes dart to and from mine before we feel the jiggling of the plane as it plunges toward the runway. "He's really suffering, Alice. More than he lets on," Jasper mutters to me.
I know he is. The agony plunges deeper than being licked through with the fire of venom. Madness isn't a rabbit hole, it's a snake pit. I don't want to drop in because that emotion of being looked down upon with disdain is too familiar. Closing my eyes, my mother's face swims before them.
Bella's POV
"Isabella, you have visitors."
Walking in a daze behind John, I cringe away from the red eyes in the glass windows surrounding me and step over the black seep pooling across the floor. I wonder if Confetti works for the FBI and they're gathering information on me. Pushing that thought out of my head, I sway a bit and continue walking.
Who would be here for me? Charlie won't come, surely. Not after last time. And no one from high school would have came, not even Newton. John steps aside when we reach the visitation area and when I look up, there are seven inhumanly marvelous faces fixed back on mine. Hyperventilating, I gasp and lean over.
"Isabella, we've been through this - there's no such thing as a vampire."
It's all in my head, just a lie.
One that I can't handle being a part of again, no matter how beautiful.
