A/N: This chapter has been completely re-written. I realize I posted CH 9 a few days ago, but the two are entirely different. I went in a different direction... in my opinion, a better one. Please go back and re-read at lease the last bit of Chapter Eight before continuing on if you read my earlier post. If not... enjoy.

Also, I'm sorely lacking in reviews on Twilighted. I'm getting an impressive amount of hits, so I know people are reading, but I can't seem to get people to review. If you're feeling charitable, please head over there and help me generate at least a little bit of buzz. I'm disgustingly dependent on reader feedback... without it, I feel like I'm shouting into the wind.

Chapter Nine

"I don't remember anything of my childhood, Bella. Did you know that?" Alice asked me quietly her beautiful eyes filled with so much loss, so much pain, that it took my breath away.

I shook my head. I waited for her to continue. I did not have to wait long.

"It's... difficult... waking up one day and not knowing anything of yourself. Not knowing who you are, where you are... why you are. It was painful at first, and terrifying. I was by myself, in the middle of nowhere, with no one to guide me, to explain..."

She trailed off, her gaze distant, clearly remembering. Beside me, Edward shuddered subtly, his hands curling into fists in his lap, his eyes squeezed shut against something.

"What had happened to you?" I prompted quietly.

"I had been changed. Reborn, I guess you can say. When I closed my eyes, I was one person, and when I opened them again, I had become someone else, someone with no memory, no past to guide her. Just a bracelet on my wrist... 'Alice Brandon', it said," and her eyes wandered down to her left hand, where a watch now sat. She toyed with the leather strap for a moment, lost in the past again. "Alice Brandon."

"How did you... what happened?" I asked softly, trying to reign in my curiosity for the sake of my friend. My friend who looked so broken at that moment, seated across from me on the floor of our hotel room. My friend who needed me for the first time since we'd met...

"I was lucky, Isabella," she replied, smiling softly, lifting her chin to look up at me. "I woke up by myself, but I wasn't alone."

Puzzled, I dropped her gaze after a moment, looking to Edward, wondering where this was going. Because Edward and Alice were siblings. Twins, if I recalled that explanation from the lunchroom correctly. And if something had happened to Alice, where had Edward been? Had he been hurt, too? Had they been abandoned in some way?

"I'm afraid I don't understand," I admitted quietly, finally looking back to the source of my confusion.

"It's simple, Bella. I was by myself, but not alone. In fact, I can safely say that, since that day, I've never been alone. Not once."

And I guess my frustration and confusion was showing on my face, because, with a tinkling laugh, Alice reached across the space between us and took my hand between her two smaller ones.

"It was you, Isabella. I was never alone because I had you."

"I don't understand," I repeated, shaking my head. "We've only just met."

"I know it seems that way to you, Isabella, but I've known you much longer. Since the day I opened my eyes, in fact. Since the first time I truly saw the world."

"Alice, quit being obtuse," Edward interjected, resting a hand on my shoulder. "She doesn't understand what you mean."

"Is that right, Isabella? You don't understand?"

I shook my head, cringing at how childish the gesture felt.

"I'm sorry," she murmured with a small smile. "I just assumed... how do I explain this properly? I never saw this part..."

I waited again as she drifted off for a moment, shifting my legs slightly on the floor and wincing when my spine made an unappealing popping sound, ringing out unnaturally loudly through the silence of the room.

"Let's get you off this floor," Edward said to me with a smirk, rising gracefully to his feet and drawing my hands away from Alice's absent-minded grip, bringing me up with him. He turned towards the bed once he ensured I was settled on my feet, and quickly arranged pillows against the headboard, guiding me backwards across the bedspread until I was resting comfortably at the head.

"There now," he almost whispered, gently pushing a lock of hair away from my face. "Isn't that better?"

The look in his eyes was mesmerizing, as was his proximity to me, his arms positioned on either side of my torso, supporting his weight as he leaned over me and rendering me speechless as I took in the ropey muscles of his forearms, the silk over marble of his skin.

"Bella."

I thought I heard something but I was too lost to be certain... swimming in the glowing amber of his irises, reveling in the cool freshness of his breath as it washed over me...

"Bella."

And there it was again, but what did it matter when his copper hair was close enough to touch, when his sweater clung to his chest in such delicious ways...

"Bella!"

Oh.

Alice.

"Edward, get off of her. There'll be plenty of time for that later," Alice harped, her tone bossy but her eyes belying her mirth.

Unfortunately, her directive seemed to work. Edward offered me an apologetic smile before drawing away from me, moving to sit at the end of my bed. Unwilling to have him so far away, I scrambled to move myself more upright, resting my back fully on the mountain of pillows he had created for me and drawing my legs towards my chest, offering him the space right next to me.

"Now, now, Isabella, I'm not going anywhere," he admonished, settling into my proffered seat and raking a long-fingered hand through his hair. "Not unless you want me to."

His expression changed with the last statement, spoken so quietly that I was certain he had not meant for me to hear it. But I did.

"Now, then, if we could get back to the matter at hand, Isabella," Alice prompted, laughing. I looked over to find that she had risen from her spot on the floor as well, and was now perched on the side of her bed, hands folded primly in her lap.

"Sorry," I muttered, embarrassment flooding my face as I realized how singularly focused I had been on her brother just moments before.

"No you're not," she teased, winking at me before continuing. "Anyway, I think the best way for you to understand how I saw you is for you to tell me how you saw Edward."

"You mean, like... in school?" I asked, confused for the millionth time that night.

"I mean in Phoenix."

"Oh."

"I know you told me about it once, but it was just in passing... and I'd like it if you could really focus on it this time. Try to remember what you felt just as much as what you saw."

Edward tensed, causing the bed to shift slightly, but I tried not to notice it. This was hard enough without thinking about his rather conspicuous presence.

"I don't... I never said it was him," I said after an age.

"You didn't have to," was her reply, before the room was silent once more, expectation thick in the air.

"It was... sunny. And warm. And the light was coming through the trees, filtering down through the branches... it was so beautiful," I breathed out, suddenly remembering, feeling as though I were there again. "And all around me, there was grass and flowers and trees and light and... it was the most perfect place I'd ever seen."

I was transported, feeling the tall grass as it tickled my arms, inhaling the scent of the wildflowers and the damp earth of the forest, watching mesmerized as shafts of sunlight tore through the surrounding canopy, breaking up the lush green like light through a kaleidoscope. It was amazing.

"And then I saw him... Edward. But I didn't know him then. Not his name, anyway. But his face, his voice... they were like coming home. And he was so beautiful, so perfect, so attuned with everything around him... he made it all right. And he was talking to me... about his family, I think. I can't remember his words. Just his voice. God, his voice," I shuddered, remembering how it had effected me the first time, how it still effected me.

"How did it feel? Your dream?" Alice asked, bringing me back to the hotel room and the conversation. Back to Edward and his rather stiff posture at my side.

"I don't... I don't know how to describe it. I don't have words."

"Try," Edward requested quietly, looking up at me with imploring eyes. "Please try."

All I could do was nod. And sink back into my memories.

"It felt like I had been waiting for it," I said after an age, struggling to find the right way to explain it. "Like a culmination of everything that had happened in my life up till that point... like... like I had been put on this earth to dream about him. To know him."

And while externally, I don't think my expression changed, internally, I was everywhere at once... because I had said it right. I had inadvertently found an apt label for what I had been feeling since that night back in Phoenix, since that day at school when I had first laid eyes on him...

I had been waiting for it, for him. Since birth.

And that made me his.

It was a heady and terrifying realization.

One I needed some time with.

And some space...

"I'd like to go to bed now," I whispered, glancing up at Alice, avoiding Edward's eyes.

"It's late," she agreed, rising from her bed and tugging me out of my own. "Why don't you sleep in Edward's room? He and I can share this room tonight."

"Sure," I agreed, too distracted to question her suggestion.

She led me out of the room and into the hall, moving one door down before stopping and unlocking the door, pressing the keycard into the palm of my hand and walking me inside.

Distractedly, I glanced around, noting that the two rooms were nearly identical, but for the large, king sized bed that took up the space where our two smaller queens were next door.

"This is nice," I muttered, sinking down onto the mattress and waiting for Alice to tell me whatever it was she had gotten me alone to say.

"It is," she agreed quietly, studying my face. "Will you be alright here?"

"Sure," I responded with a shrug. "It's not like I've never been in a hotel before."

"True," she smiled wryly before turning on her heel and moving back towards the door.

"Alice," I called, just as her fingers gripped the handle. "How did I help you? When you woke up? You never did explain."

"Oh, but I didn't have to," she said with a soft smile, turning to face me again. "You explained it for me."

"At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, I don't understand."

"Think of over everything I've told you, Bella. Every admittedly tiny bit of information I've shared. And know that, in the way that you saw Edward before you met him... in the way that you saw him and knew that he was meant to be a part of you... that is how we first came to be friends, Bella. How we first met."

"Alice," I began, but she interrupted me.

"It wasn't romantic, Isabella, if that's what you're thinking. Get your mind out of the gutter."

I dropped her gaze and began a thorough examination of the carpet, trying to hide my blush behind my hair.

"It was just... I saw you. I knew that I would have you in my life, that I would find you," she explained, haltingly for someone who was usually so loquacious. "You weren't the only one that I saw. Later, I saw my Jasper. Later, I saw my family... but you were the first. For a while, you were all that I had."

She walked back towards the bed and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, drawing me into her for a rather tight hug.

"You saved me from myself, from the monster I could have been... and I will always be grateful for that, Isabella Swan. I will always be grateful."

And, after placing a soft, cool kiss on my forehead, she was gone, dancing from the room in typical Alice fashion, leaving only the click of the lock in her wake.