A/N: 2:30am update, ftw.

Textbooks crushed a water bottle she hadn't opened as she dropped her backpack in a corner of her room. Two seconds later and she had faceplanted onto her bed, lost in some large pillows she'd borrowed from Rosalie.

There was a short series of knocks before the bed dipped.

The clock on the opposite wall ticked.

Alice's words were muffled by a purple pillow. "Yes, Esme?"

"I know that you see the future."

Ticking. Endless ticking and the weird sensation in her gut at the rare instance of Esme sounding hesitant. "But?"

Esme laid her hand on Alice's back. "I know that you see the future, but I want you to know that I have a good feeling."

"About?"

"Don't act like your brother."

Alice hummed into the pillow.

"Sometimes the best things come when you least expect them, sweetheart." She squeezed a small shoulder. "I would know."

Then she was gone, leaving Alice in her wake. Leaving Alice frozen because she'd casually dropped a hint—an approval—of something Alice had hardly allowed herself to even consider. It was a thought best kept to the darkest of nights where she could almost forget she even had family. It was a question locked inside a heart that couldn't betray its existence as it sat unmoving.

Still, regardless of the answer, she needed it like she needed blood.

Time and ash and blood had brought her here.

With no roads left, she could fully embrace this curiosity that had lurked in her soul for...always.

This area of the forest held the small vampire's scent to a degree one could think she lived here. And so Bella had picked this place. Although, initially, she had planned to simply leave the item on a branch and move on.

But she didn't have anywhere to move onto anymore. She didn't have anyone she felt like visiting. Her heart was too tired.

For three days and three nights, she remained there. Crouched in a tree, unmoving even for a passing cloud and its rain, she waited and waited. She'd picked a branch not too far from the ground, but certainly above eye level. The remains of a breeze that had rustled too many leaves touched her hair gently and she sucked in a deep breath, opening her eyes for the first time in a while.

The small vampire arrived long after the sun had risen, erratic and destructive as she flipped to kick a branch from its home. Her hand was fisted in her hair before she landed on her feet and even as she spun in an almost frantic type of search, she was graceful.

Interesting, considering the first time Bella had seen her.

Then she froze, shoulders jerking up. She took in a large breath. Another.

Meanwhile, Bella found her breath still in her chest and something forming in her throat that she couldn't remember feeling before, if she ever did. She couldn't even remember its name.

The soft ground beneath her grew terribly disturbed as she turned without lifting her feet. Gold eyes locked onto Bella.

And they were so different than before. There was history in that gaze. Depth. Ache and curiosity and life and loss.

Bella remained crouched on her branch and she remained standing there.

Seconds dragged into minutes. A small eternity as a harsher wind came to them and swayed branches and pulled leaves from their homes and brought on the squawking of some birds. Motionless, they continued as statues, not bothering to remove the leaves caught on them or, in Bella's case, her hair from her face. The noises of the forest faded to silence, a silence with meaning for the first time in a long time for Bella.

And maybe she still couldn't explain her reasoning for doing this, for being here, but now she knew it was the right choice. As if there had been any other choice when it came down to the soul.

The small statue moved, breathed, but her hand was still stressed in her hair. "You came back." Another slow inhale. "You stayed."

In a way, Bella had been waiting much longer than three days. The thought dragged her gaze to a branch that dipped toward the ground as she refused to consider a reason.

It brought the smaller vampire's along and she took off like a shot to retrieve the item left there. She flipped the ring along her fingers, studying it with a deep line between her eyebrows. Really, it was a plain thing. Silver made up the band and there was a flowing groove around half of it, by accident or design.

"This is...mine. I actually remember it." She slid it onto her right index finger, eyes glued to it as she turned her hand every which way to examine it. "It's hazy, but it's there. I had it when I woke up and lost it sometime before I first saw you, with that other vampire."

Bella hummed.

"You've had it all this time." She looked at Bella then, the question in her eyes clear as day.

And then Bella finally moved. A twitch. A realization as her hand stalled in the air in front of her. Half of a growl built in her chest and she watched herself form a fist.

There wasn't a word for this.

This, when it had stopped being a feeling decades and lifetimes ago.

The branch dipped, making Bella jolt backwards against the tree. She was met by golden eyes lacking fear, but instead holding something like interest and concern as their owner remained still.

She couldn't remember the last time someone looked at her without suspicion or fear.

"What is it?"

Eyes instead on the neighboring tree, Bella cleared her throat and tapped a finger to it.

"What do-Oh! Oh! Oh well that's new. Carlisle's going to have a field day. Really?" She only paused long enough for Bella to begin to nod. A grin lit up her face and her hands flew in front of her.

Bella stared.

The grin turned to a frown that pulled at her eyebrows. "Do you not know ASL?"

Averting her gaze with a cough, Bella waved her hand in a so-so motion.

"I…" Her lips twitched and even her eyes smiled and Bella hadn't known people could actually do that. "That seems incredibly negligent of you."

Bella's huff was postponed by the sad shift in the other vampire and how it even weighed down her shoulders.

"And lonely. Are you out of practice or...?"

She shook her head.

And then Bella suffered emotional whiplash at the broad grin offered to her, complete with a bounce that shook their branch.

"Allow me to sound vain and ask if you only recently started learning so we could talk?" Seeing Bella's gaze travel, she bounced again and clapped her hands together. "Excellent!"

A seed of anxiety sprouted and crawled up Bella's throat under that happy stare and her eyes kept darting around so she eventually signed her name in a bit of a blur.

She was ready to throw herself out of a tree over a smile and she'd killed how many people?

"Bella. Beautiful. I'm Alice, which I perhaps should've started with but that's the past and we're in the future of that here in the present so that's a bit late."

She nodded her agreement.

"Given your at least partial interest in talking to me, would it be safe to guess this is more than you dropping the ring off to me?"

Slowly, Bella raised one of her shoulders and dropped it.

Alice hummed loudly until she dragged the sound to a high pitch and popped her lips. "This is hard, not seeing outcomes. Hard, but fun. Very well. Into the dark we go. Rather, fog." She pointed a finger at Bella's frown, her own expression deathly serious. "Your shield muddles my psychic abilities."

So that made her Alice Cullen, then, for certain. Bella had wondered because of the eye color, but assumptions were a leading cause of death.

"I suppose we should talk. About boring, serious things. Probably with Esme, at least."

Bella felt trapped.

There was no other way to put it, no possible romanticization, and no remedy.

Standing alone in an empty living room, she felt the need to run literally anywhere else.

Nothing was broken down in...this house. She still refused to think of it as hers, or maybe she just couldn't. Some things needed some repairs or replacements, but it was altogether nice. Complete and unmarred by time and troubles.

She felt like an intruder.

It was bare and she couldn't begin to consider buying furniture or anything besides the curtains already on the windows. What even went into a house anymore? What could she need or want? All she could think of was a solitary chair and perhaps a table, but that struck her as no longer practical. Such a minimal setup didn't seem like it would allow Alice to, well, anything. Bella had spent a couple hours in the Cullen house, going over things with Alice and Esme, and there was nothing but luxury there. Luxury that you were welcome to, though, as she had seen the opposite and lived it as well.

She pulled herself from the thought of stone walls and ornate tapestries.

Esme.

Another issue with Bella's chair-and-table preferences.

The other vampire was certainly motherly, certainly caring, and it was honest. So much of the Cullens seemed honest so far. So, so, so honest. Esme, the most honest. She'd been embarrassed that she didn't know ASL and vowed to learn it as soon as she could and apologized when Bella herself wasn't even fluent.

It didn't make sense. And, on some level, Bella knew it was a sad thing that it didn't make sense to her. That kindness without a catch existed and could be extended to her.

How tired was her soul?

She slipped the backpack off her shoulder that she'd meant to set down when she first entered and just let it thud against the white tile. White. She didn't like it. A black scuff followed her foot as she dragged her boot along the floor. So easily altered.

She moved to leave, but had to double back after getting out the door to fish keys from her backpack.

Alice pulled into the driveway beside Bella's new truck. Well, the truck new to her. She hadn't wanted anything made in the last five years and the dark blue, paint-speckled monster looked like it had put in its share of work over the years of its life.

A breeze pulled at her scarf as she went up the creaky stairs to the weathered porch of this house so fortunately removed from the others on this street. Her hand stalled in the air, but she scolded herself and rapped her knuckles on the door. It felt so formal, in a way, knocking on the door of a vampire's home.

There was some advanced joke there somewhere.

The door cracked open, but that was all.

Alice pushed on it and leaned to the side to see Bella kneeling in the far corner of the living room with a tape measure and a face like she held the fate of a country in her hands. She waved into the doorway. "I can't come in without a proper invitation, you know."

It was such a quiet noise Alice nearly missed it. A soft but there exhale and, visually, a twitch of those shoulders. Bella retracted her tape and straightened.

You'd think between Jasper and Edward and Rosalie that Alice could read faces well, but she was being put to the test under this red-eyed stare. "You didn't answer your phone so I came by." Which sounded terribly rude now that she said it aloud.

Crowding a vampire who'd only been in town for three days was as bad an idea as it sounded.

Still, Bella just waved her in.

And Alice practically skipped in. A voice in her head suspiciously like Esme's chastised her as she shut the door. "Maybe you should work on locking it behind you."

She turned to see a jerk of shoulders as Bella scribbled in a notebook she'd balanced on her knee. However, Alice found herself more interested in the extra tiles laid out in the center of the room and stopped next to them. One had a few colors on its uneven surface. The next, a smooth, black stone. After that was a grey one with swirls in it and the last was a dark blue with black variations in it.

"You like blue?"

She looked up just as Bella did. There was a faint pinch of her eyebrows as she became totally still except for her eyes roaming around the room. Then red jumped to gold and she offered a single, serious nod.

"What about green?"

It wasn't that Alice really wanted to know about the color, not at first, but rather about Bella. And so Alice watched that same internal debate go on in Bella's head as she thought about it. She didn't even get up from her crouch.

Her hands twitched and she set down her tape, but her hands just hovered over her knee while her face finally shifted. A frown pulled at her mouth and her eyebrows drew together, but this time from annoyance, from something deeper than that.

"Light," Alice said and signed, "or dark? Shades?"

"Dark shades," was Bella's answer, but her eyes were elsewhere now.

Alice hadn't wanted her to be upset. Far from it. She was simply...curious. Every interaction with Bella had been so, so, so deathly serious up to this point that Alice wasn't sure she knew how to smile. However, Bella's seriousness held such sincere thought to it that even extended to Alice asking about colors. Hopefully she had the patience to match.

A safe hope, considering she'd held onto Alice's ring all these years.

When Bella tilted her head, Alice mimicked her until red eyes flicked down and back to her eyes. She felt her thumb stall in its mindless turning of her ring. "Oh. Just thinking."

"Good? Bad?" Bella's hands paused in the air, an extension of her honesty as she continued to stare. Waiting. Waiting but still asking.

Humming, Alice clasped her own hands in front of herself and let her eyes wander as she crossed the room to Bella's corner. It was so bare. Empty. There was nothing to say someone wanted to stay here. But Bella was planning to redo the floors, so that created enough hope for Alice. She knelt in front of Bella and opened her mouth. Shut it. Scooted back a bit.

"What's wrong?"

Alice blinked at the deep red focused on her. "Nothing," When Bella's eyes rolled, she bounced once in her indignation. "Hey! It's true."

With a shake of her head, Bella went back to her notebook. However, she made the breath freeze in Alice's lungs when she leaned toward her without looking. All she ever did was backtrack. Keep an exact distance from people. She followed instead of leading or walking beside you, never allowing anyone behind her. But now she was actually moving toward someone, toward Alice. Her hand met Alice's shoulder and pushed her back so that she was sitting instead of kneeling.

"Rude."

Red eyes flicked to Alice and back to her notes before a scoff left her. She shook her head again.

Crossing her legs under herself, Alice tilted her head to study Bella, but Bella wasn't paying attention to her. She was adding to her notes. She'd pushed her over.

"Oh!"

Alice's balance was gone. She was off. Without thought, her voice fell. "You're rather observant."

Bella nodded once, not offering anything else. The notebook was the subject of her focus. But she wasn't writing anything and her face was as plain as ever.

"I can be...too much." When Bella finally looked up at her just to flick her wrist, Alice huffed. "No. You don't understand. Rose has literally thrown me out a window. More than once."

Bella's lips twitched then, and it wasn't a smile, or even a smirk, but it was the first real thing that wasn't dead serious from her. It was so small, yet so significant. Alice found herself moving forward onto her knees again and she could feel her jaw working, but she couldn't actually say anything. How do you ask someone to smile?

No, no, no. You can't do that.

But Alice could watch the way Bella watched her come closer without moving away.

Alice bit her lip to keep from saying something ridiculous and inched closer. But only a few inches. Anything else would probably be too greedy, too much. And that proved true as Bella shifted only enough for another vampire to see. A tensing of muscles here, a twitch there.

She was ready to run at a moment's notice. So Alice stayed still, her hands clasped so tightly it almost hurt as she watched red eyes flick to different parts of her, searching for movement. For intentions.

Unblinking, Bella leaned toward her again—falling onto a knee this time—and her hand hovered in the space between them. Hovered, hovered, hovered. Hovered until Alice felt she might shatter. At last, her fingertips came down on Alice's knuckles. Brushed against the cracks beginning to form there.

If Alice was human, she would've bitten through her lip.

Bella tapped her knuckles twice.

But Alice couldn't relax. It was her turn to retreat. She found herself standing over the tiles Bella had selected and left in the center of the room. "Have you picked one?"

Her voice was so high it would've only been fair for some god to strike her down right now to save her.

Bella appeared at her side, shoulder bumping hers as her entire body twitched, a gasp shaking her lungs. She spun to be on the other side of the tiles and didn't look up. Couldn't look up. Red eyes were burning. Alice could feel them piercing her, picking apart her being and looking for the things she kept locked away..

The cracks spread across her knuckles.

Bella had to clear her throat twice for dark eyes to drag their way back to her. "You?"

It took two seconds too long for Alice to realize Bella hadn't meant she'd picked her. She swallowed and let her gaze fall again. "The blue one."

With a single nod, Bella darted away and back again. Her hand flew across a fresh page before she flipped the notebook around to hold it out.

Will you call and place the order for me so I don't have to drive back there yet?

What followed was the store's number, Bella's information, and the items she needed with their quantities.

She looked up just to find red eyes on a wall, and her own eyes strayed to Bella's tense jaw. The notebook folded as she crushed it to her chest. "I'd be happy to."