I don't own Twilight.


Chapter IV"As I Walk"


She collapses with heavy breathing. Early dawn peaks over the forest and I look up from the ground to the starts that will soon disappear. She kisses my chest and I want to respond but these are times where I finally feel tired, though unable to sleep.

The clouds rush in and it starts to rain. Time passes slowly when it doesn't pass for us. I remember being human, vaguely, and it I remember time seeming to fly by. When I was younger it was a dead crawl however once I hit the last days of my schooling, it was already over.

When I turned, time immediately was that slow crawl again. I was alone for so long, with nothing to do but drink and … live as an undead. When I met her, life seemed to seep back into me, even if just a little. But now, it was that way again.

Was this how I was supposed to live forever?

Immortality was something people wanted. Immortality was supposed to give you the key to all knowledge. When people became immortal, they are finally granted what millions hope for but never achieve before they finally sleep.

Forever is something not to be wasted.

As I walk, Forever drags along slowly.


Alice

I think I am dreaming.

I must be dreaming. This kind of situation would never happen if I was awake. If I was awake, William would not be looking at me like this. I wouldn't feel my heart beating so quickly or so loudly if I was awake. I was never this alive.

But in this moment … I am.

I could feel his eyes looking at me in a way that he had never looked before. He was staring at the way the moonlight reflected my dark eyes, the way it showered my skin with its serene light. He watched the way my chest moved up and down as I breathed. I knew because I saw the same thing when I look at him. In the walls of my small room, I see him – all of him.

And he can see me – the real me – too. Finally.

He gently removes his hand from my face. I swallow too loudly and I know he notices; I blush and want to look away, down to the ground – away from him – but I can't. I'm trapped in his eyes, as cliché as that is, and I can't seem to break the hold he has on me.

"You're different," he tells me after a while. His hands are in his lap and I want him to touch my cheek again, hold me like no one has before. I've wanted him for such a long time. Two months may not seem so long for someone who isn't trapped but for me – I've been watching him for years.

"I know," I tell him. "It's the dress." He smiles and pulls his left leg around the bench so he is straddling it. He looks at me with strange eyes, like he's studying me. I finally am able to look away and I look to the bench details: the cracks worn from age and the small impressions of rocks in the cement.

He's still looking at me. He's never looked at me this long. Not without his notebook. Never in my dreams or even my visions. I didn't see this one coming, as strange as that is for me. I am not one to be caught off guard. And here I am … caught off guard.

"Why are you here?" he asks me seriously. Deciding that I want to be familiar with him, I pull up my legs and sit cross legged. He is surprised – as this is unthought-of by most women, but I am not most women. I bite my lip and study his face: the small scar just outside his mouth, the stubble of a long days' work yet unshaven, the impression of dimples on just the right side.

Finally, I answer. "I am here because …" I know he's asking about the reason why I am at the institute at all. We are addressing the problem that keeps me away from normalcy, and ultimately, him. I smile at him and say, "because you asked me if I wanted to go outside."

He rolls his eyes. "Yes but why are you here?"

My smile falls. "Because I was scared," I tell him honestly. Sure, he had asked me the question before in our several sessions but it was always safer to answer untruthfully. What could I say to get me out of here? I always wonder. I become distant, maybe they'll let me out for good behavior – like I was a criminal for being different.

"Scared?"

I look away from dimples, his scar, and to his eyes. They are vast oceans, deadly oceans with storms brewing and winds coming — but I can see the lining of the sunrise. I smile sadly. "When I first saw something in the future, I was scared. I was only seventeen years old, I was still a girl. I saw – see – monsters that attack humans, prey on the weak. What was I supposed to do? Keep that a secret?"

I can feel a wetness on my eyelids.

"I just told my mother," I say quietly. "I just told her what I saw. And she sent me here without so much as an 'I love you' or a 'goodbye.' She was just … gone."

For a long while we sit like that, in perfect silence. I feel tears seep from my eyes and run down the fading laugh lines of childhood. Finally, he reaches up and brushes one of the tears away. He rests both of his palms on my cheeks and brings his face in close.

My first kiss, I think. This is it – this is the moment that will forever be imbedded in my mind. I will never forget this moment. My first kiss; and despite the circumstance, I feel excited, my heart beating stronger than ever before.

He comes in very close. Close enough to feel the breath rushing in and out of me. Close enough to nearly feel the slightest bit of skin touch his. Then, without words, without preparation, without anything, he kisses me tenderly on the mouth.

I keep my eyes wide open as he presses his lips fully into mine. His face scrunches slightly as he presses harder. I don't know how to respond so I gently push back with my lips. Just enough to feel him stiffen and pull back, his eyes opening.

His eyes search mine for something. I see the moonlight across his cheeks and the wind picks up, blowing his long hair. He doesn't move for a long time, his hands still resting on my cheeks. If he pressed harder, it would be like he was greeting a small child. But he isn't greeting a small child.

I am not a child any longer. Not since the day I was sent here.

"William," I say quietly. "I'm sorry." He doesn't respond but instead still looks at me. I feel my cheeks hot under his burning palms. I must have done something wrong, I think. I must have kissed him wrong or kissed him at all. I barely pressed him back! I feel the tears return but I do not let them fall. I am embarrassed and humiliated. Why did I allow myself to think that?

Gently, I feel his hands leave my cheeks. The night air is suddenly cold on my cheeks, like ice on a burn. He breaks his eyes away from mine, looks to the ground, and sighs heavily. I watch him, my hands shaking and my eyes like water.

Then he gets up, leaves me there. He walks fast inside the building. I look away after he's disappeared from my view. I swallow and my mouth hangs open. The tears are back again and falling with more vengeance. I cry out quietly and lay forward on the bench, letting my legs slip over one edge.

What a fool, to think he would love someone like you, I could hear my conscience sneer. I was feeling sorry for myself and it seemed like everything from the past two months were finally reaching me. I cried for my mother, for my first love, for my first kiss.

The moon was bright overhead.

I felt a warm material touch my cold shoulders. I look up to see Grandfather above me. He smiles down at me sadly. His wrinkles, though ageless, seem to deepen as he stares at my miserable expression. He sits next to me, adjusting his jacket, so my shoulders are fully covered.

"I thought," I say very quietly after a long while in silence, "that this would be different. Tonight. I thought he would … be different. The next step in our relationship. But now it's all ruined."

I look up at him. He gaze never leaves mine. "It was different," he says very quietly. "Something has changed in his heart, Granddaughter. He saw the beauty behind the dress, behind the makeup, and behind the patient." He touches my hair that is falling from its beauty.

"He saw you, dear, precious Alice. He saw you and it has scared him."


William

It is cold now.

I could feel it as I stuff my hands down to the deep corridors of my pockets. Inside, I felt a wrapper of a chocolate one of the parents of a patient gave me. It was something they made in their shop and brought me one every week when they came to visit.

They loved their son, though he was deformed and couldn't comprehend anything better than a child of two years. It made me so sad to watch them brush his hair and kiss his cheek and think that he will never be normal for them. And yet they still loved him so much.

Alice's mother shunned her, buried an empty coffin in the ground, and cried at her own misfortune at night, instead of her daughter's. Alice wasn't even one of the worst. She was actually somewhat normal – besides the whole "seeing the future" thing.

I shake my head hard, trying to escape from Alice and her sad past. I don't want to think about how much I must have hurt her this evening. I don't know what came over me. She looked so beautiful in her dress and with the moon and her smile and her past, I just couldn't help myself.

And when she started to push back, to feel something too, I knew I had to pull away. I couldn't have anything with a patient. After all, she is my patient. It's unprofessional not to mention, she is in on the lesser side of society. I would be sent to jail. I would be labeled.

Was I willing to risk it? Hell no.

I couldn't risk my career, my future life on that of Alice Brandon. I couldn't even try to pretend that she is normal. She is far from normal. It is almost scary how un-normal she is. I wipe my face with my palms, breathing deeply and exhaling hard.

But she isn't a crazy, I know. She isn't a nuthouse – she is just a girl of seventeen years. Not really a girl, however, but a young woman. No, not a girl or a young woman: just a woman. She is a woman of feelings and … qualities. She is normal, in her own – special – way.

My house is right up ahead and I run the rest of the way there. I can see a light burning in the window which means my father is home. I trudge of the way and take off my shoes – it was something we always did in our house. My mother hated to clean to floors so, as a way to help lift her burdens we always took off our shoes before entering.

Even after her death, we haven't stopped the tradition.

I open the door and my father looks up from his newspaper. The candle nearly blows from the harsh wind chasing after me but it stays lit. I look at my father and, when my eyes meet his, I can't stand it anymore. I can't stand this life and I can't stand myself. I can't my mother's death, Alice's normality, and my ignorance.

I can't stand the fact that I can't get her away from me.

"Son?" my father says quietly.

I walk over to him sit down across from him. His wrinkled eyes crinkle and I can see his hair turn just a little grayer in the light. His glasses fall to the tip of his nose and he gently pushes them back. "What is wrong, William?" he asks.

I look at him.

And I tell him about Alice Brandon.


Later that night, I lay in my bed, staring at my ceiling. It is pitch black in my room; no moonlight or any other light anywhere. I think about what I had told my father. I told him all about Alice; from my first sight, thinking she was beautiful to finding out she is crazy to finding out that she isn't crazy.

He listened. My father was a fantastic listener.

Then he looked at me and told me, "If you really have feelings for someone, the other things can't matter. And if you really care about this person and they still matter, you need to get to know them a little better." He had winked then and said, "That's only if you really care though."

And I do care for her, I realize. Sure, I don't know her – at all – outside of the twenty minute sessions we have together but I can get to know her better. She was an exception, I figure, to the crazy rule. Because they way she looked tonight in my mother's dress – I have never seen anyone so beautiful besides my mother.

Alice is someone I hadn't ever noticed until tonight. What did that say about me? I wonder, but I don't think anymore on the subject. My mind drifts to the kiss. Surely it was her first kiss; and look what I did to her. I ran out without so much as an explanation and leave her in the cold.

I must have hurt her.

I roll over in my bed and bury my face into the mattress. I don't want to think anymore about anything but my mind has other plans. I have a free day tomorrow since its Saturday and no work on Sunday because of church and family but I have work on Monday.

What am I going to say to her? How will I make this better? What can I do to make her forgive me? How will she respond? Oh, God, what is going to happen?

What can I do … to kiss her again.


A/N — I am TERRIBLE about updating! I'm so sorry for anyone reading! School has been KILLING me; I can't even write at all! Gosh. Anyway, this is the next chapter. I hope everyone enjoyed it! This story is so different from my last one – but I'm having fun. =]

Please review!

-Liz