The colors and feelings flew around in my head in transcendent whirls. Processing the day yet again, aligning what I knew with my experiences. It was a sweet experience that was disrupted with a bang. It was not enough for me to awake fully, but it brought me closer to the surface, as did yet another flurry of crashes. It sounded distant; my body dismissed it as a non-threat. There were enough immortal bodies between my self and any danger to be bothered by it.
It wasn't long before I felt that electricity forming on my skin. The brilliant lilac shimmer filled my unconsciousness, lulling me further into the comfort of it all. I leaned into it, hard and cold but safe. It seemed to surround me, to box me in, to engulf me in its presence.
It was then that the sobbing broke through to me now. I felt blissful…why would I be crying? As I rose further and further from the depths of my dreams, the sobbing broke into unshakable quivering. My body went ragged with the feeling. Confusion broke the surface first. An overwhelming force of scruple forced its way into me now, unstoppable in its nature.
The closer I came into reality, the faster it came now. I soon realized that it was not myself causing this.
"Jas?" I murmured groggily, still shaking the sleep from my conscious.
The form around me quivered violently, grasping me tightly to it.
Thoughts and anxiety of my own rushed into my mind now. I had never in life or vision seen this type of reaction from him. Never seen more than a huff of frustration escape from him, let alone this…
"Jasper…"I wrapped myself around him now, attempting to turn him over, to leverage a better look, to read his face for any indication of the horror that laid before us now. He retracted slightly, a beautifully broken half smile upon his cold and sorrowful looking face. It didn't match…it didn't make any sense.
"Jasper, what's wrong?" I stammered.
He simply shook his head, eyes fluttering closed before he gave them a gentle squeeze. I swore in that moment I saw a tear fall then. I knew it was impossible for his kind, but I'd be willing to wager it wasn't the only impossibility being broken today.
"What is it baby?" I begged, my own tears flowing freely now.
He reached out and wiped them from my face gently, caressing my cheek in the same instance.
"It's beautiful really," he practically whimpered before he continued. "It's not a promise, but it is a safety, a security that we never thought we had really."
"What is Jasper, you're scaring the shit out of me." I cried between a heavy intake of breath. I felt a sense of calm overwhelm me now, replacing all previous waves of dread that I now knew were not mine.
He shook his head, seemingly searching for the right descriptors for the situation.
"I," he hesitated. "I think that you already know. I think that you know a lot more than you even realize that you do."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean." I pushed away from him now, tired of the games, tired of his influence that only festered under his all-encompassing contact with my body.
"It's you Alice Darlin'…You're you." He stated with knit brows and an incredulous small shake of his head. "Oh baby, how I've missed you."
I pulled the mysterious hood from my head. It swallowed my body in its size, a familiar feeling. I knew it to be his hoodie from the first night. It all rushed around me now. What did any of it mean? Was I safe now? Were we?
I brought my broken eyes to his, begging him for the unspoken answers.
"Carlisle is still processing most of the data, but from what we've seen…I'm not sure how to put it I guess." His face shrunk into a look of frustration as he brought the swell of his lower lip between his teeth roughly. "You're much like Nessie really. I know that you have had limited experience with her, she's off with Jacob somewhere in Canada I think…You're like her, but more like us."
I had never heard or seen him so disheveled. It was wholly unnerving, the unkempt nature of his thoughts and speech.
"It doesn't promise us forever yet, it certainly removes any chance of us making that choice for you. Carlisle thinks that your cells…they are working towards something. An end goal of some sorts. Seems much like Nessie's were, reaching towards a permanent…" the pause broke the dam behind my eyes, tears rushed from them now. "immortality." I finished for him with a whimper as I collided into his chest.
Fear and uncertainty fell away as his arms wrapped around me. The answers…they burned more questions into my soul, but there were fewer now. Only one really now that needed to be answered…How did this happen in the first place?
He must have picked up on the shift of my emotional track, "We don't need to know everything just yet Darlin'. This much is enough for now."
While it seemed I was not the one he was trying to convince, it soothed me all the same.
"We have time." I wept the statement into him, the sleeves of his hoodie gathered and clenched tightly into my fists against his chest.
"We have time Alice; we have all of the time now." His voice boomed in my ears, deep and tainted with the pain from what I could only assume was a product of the time that had elapsed that we did not have this time..
The darkness that was already surrounding me while I hid tightly against him seemed to swirl even darker as the prickly sensation teased at me. I gave into it, desperate for more…desperate for the powers that I had once hated and had grown to cherish in the most recent days.
Music boomed around me, lights flashed, and random figures bounced around me. I could distinguish Rosalie and Bella from a collection of the glimpses provided to me. The scenes slowed to almost slow motion as I panned the room. I landed on no specific images before the vision flew past me now, slippery and undistinguishable now. As I resurfaced again, I could not make any defined impressions of the vision aside from the party that I would be attending with the girls. Was this a return to normalcy? Was this a chance to not be a fragile, broken, and bleeding human; to be enough? It almost felt like another life in the openness to choices and opportunities that were before me now.