cowboy like me - Taylor Swift
Please Love Me - BB King
I don't remember when the visions started. Before I could form concrete memories, certainly. He was really my first memory, but I was only granted blurry glimpses into his future. Red eyes, tortured expression, southern drawl, sadness, sadness, sadness. It was continuous. Edward says I used to babble on about a depressed imaginary friend, but that wasn't it. I had just been watching him without knowing who he was, what he was. I clung to the idea of him through a happy, easy childhood, knowing pain and struggle before I even had the vocabulary to describe it.
And then, our parents died, and so went our own happiness. I followed him through my own strife, our paths running parallel. Edward and I were bounced around, separated then thrown back together, and his path was diverging and converging with a struggle I was yet unfamiliar with.
They came more frequently as I grew older, which was a welcomed respite from the hell of living in the care of James and Victoria. He was somewhere in Central America- I could glean that much from the forests and a blurry image of a volcano. By the time we were removed from the house of horrors and separated again, he was slinking through a dark desert, following someone or something.
I don't have many memories of childhood- whether that can be attributed to James hitting me over the head and the ensuing concussion, or just the general focus forward towards the future. That alone is enough to be grateful for. I know that Edward did everything he could to protect me, even when he was too small to really do so. His entire present was dominated by memories of the past, and there seemed to be nothing to look towards.
I don't know how they came. I knew my own future with a stolid certainty, the tall blond man and me would find each other one way or another. Edward's was more wavering. I saw him angry and alone and wasting away, playing piano with lines on his face but a ghost of a smile, there were some of him with some bland woman and a semblance of happiness. But mostly his future was blank, like it was still waiting to be written.
I was still in my temporary foster placement, and Edward in the group home, when someone decided to send us to Forks, or Charlie decided to take us in, and everything changed. I saw her so clearly, almost as clearly as I saw him. She was lovely, thick dark hair and clear golden eyes, and beside her was my brother. He looked different from how I knew him. His skin was pale white and his hair was thicker and longer, but there was something even more astounding. He looked like a light had turned on beneath his skin. He grinned down at her, his whole being glowing with a happiness that was indescribable. Another came right after, of her in a gorgeous white gown, her hand tucked in the crook of Edward's arm. He looked more like himself in that one, tanner skin, face flushed with adoration.
Even once we met her, on our first day of school, I wasn't entirely sure what she was. But I couldn't keep the visions at bay, they came without warning or precedence. I knew we were closer than friends, more like sisters than anything, even if she didn't know it yet. Ever since we met Bella, the visions were more and more frequent to the point that I simply couldn't control them anymore, and I slowly worked out more and more of exactly what was going on, and how some mythology was truer than fiction. Bella was inexplicably the catalyst for my own future, not only Edward's. We would be tied together by something stronger than blood, I just needed to figure out why.
I'll take a lot of the credit for Edward and Bella's relationship. He never would have told her he loved her, and she wouldn't have had the confidence to guess that was the case, if I hadn't forced her to stay behind to eavesdrop on his therapy session where he talked about her. The graduation party I threw for Emmett and Rose was what opened Edward up to other possibilities. At every corner I was there, nudging them together. They were just so frustrating! I wish they could just see what I saw, the way I saw everything with my own future. They were going to be so absolutely happy if they would only get over themselves and get there. I did all that I could, and the clock was still ticking down.
Some visions were lovely, sweet scents and hazy glows, warm lips on mine and soft hair between my fingers, but they were few and far between. Most were horrific, visions tinged red with terror and consumed with gore. They came without warning, in wake and in sleep, so much that I knew no peace. I tried to find something that would numb it or stop them- stupid decisions that Bella was thankfully there to save me from. I tried to lock them away, to pretend like they weren't happening. The pressure in my brain was implosive, and I couldn't make sense of anything anymore except two things- my destiny, and that they wanted to send me away.
Destiny seems like a big, silly word, but there was something there that left me with unwavering confidence that everything would somehow work out if I just focused. I tried to draw every vision, piece them together. I was given some kind of medication to keep me calm but it worked for only a short time, and by the time Edward tiptoed out of my room I was back on the floor with sketches strewn about, hoping to recall some vision that could help.
Even with the distractions, I knew what the plan was. A hospital, a psychiatric hold, and pumping me full of so many medications I could be drooling and mindless. Death was inevitable, it was close behind, dogging at our heels.
And my time was out.
I had to warn them before it was too late.
I could barely keep my thoughts straight but maybe Bella could help me figure out what it all meant. I played at being omniscient, but I was more lost than anyone else. There were shadowy figures in the background with an oppressive presence, silent stone halls that smelled metallic and ancient, our former foster parents with red eyes and sharp teeth. Everything else was nondescript and impossible to see, or maybe I simply just didn't recognise it.
Charlie was downstairs. I think he might have been crying. I was breaking his heart, and that was breaking mine.
I looked around my room, my room. The only place I called home since my parents died, and I had to flee it like a criminal escaping the prospect of a life imprisonment.
But I could see where they were. Baseball in a field, somewhere in the park. My feet led me where my mind didn't know. It wasn't making much sense, though nothing really was anymore. Balls flying off the bats so hard it reverberated in a crack of thunder, Cullens flying over grass and jumping through trees, it seemed inconceivable but was simultaneously the most normal visions I'd ever had. It felt like home, and I followed them until holes wore through the soles of my shoes and branches scratched blisters and drew blood. And then I continued walking.
They were close, I knew it. I just needed to get to Bella so I could tell her, and she would fix everything. The Cullens were so strong, so capable. They could figure anything out and they would make sure everyone was safe and-
The vision came with a vengeance. It screamed of blood, coloured everything a startling crimson. Past and future mingled together and I saw it all simultaneously- James moving over Edward as he cried on the floor, Victoria digging her heel into my abdomen because I spilled water, James digging his teeth into me, Victoria running through strange woods at an impossible speed. I could see teeth ripping through my body, my own blood spilling out, organs exposed. I could feel a searing pain rip through me. I saw Bella looking down at me, Edward crying as he held me. The shadowy figures were still there, like panthers in a dark jungle stalking their prey. Red hair, red eyes, red blood, red red red red.
It was too much to handle.
And then I saw nothing.
Blackness. Dark, cool respite. My mind curled into itself, trying to hide from the terror and bloodshed until it forced its way back and I could recognise the inevitability.
I screamed, and the future I had seen for as long as I could remember became the present.
James swept into the unfamiliar room and ran with me. The speed was dizzying, and when he dropped me I was disoriented. The next thing I knew, his teeth sliced through my neck, and heat burned through my body. I begged and begged, and Bella listened. She bit me and gifted me the future I had been dreaming of for my entire life and the opportunity to seek him out.
It had to happen this way, you see. I didn't realise at first, but it had to happen just so. More visions came when the burning of the change finally subsided, and everything was so clear and obvious. My mind could finally process every vision, all at once. Subtleties I had missed, whispers and implications. It took me only a few weeks to learn everything I needed to follow choices through the future.
The shadowy figures were the leaders of the Volturi, and they were more dangerous than even the Cullens truly realised. They were desperate for Bella. They wanted to possess her, to break her, or to destroy her. It happened before me, the starvation and isolation, visions of her murmuring to herself, vacant eyes devoid of consciousness. I decided to go to Volterra to fetch her, to bring her home to my brother, and found myself down a path of bloodlust and terror, bound to the Volturi and competing with Jane for the spot as Aro's prized pet. The rest of the Cullens knew too much, and had no gifts of worth. They would expose Edward to the Volturi, and end only in destruction. Kate, Irina, and Tanya would fight, but didn't have the diplomatic nature to be able to negotiate with the organisation that killed their mother.
Each decision led to a new future. Paths spun out like casts of string, delicate webs that could be plucked or torn with the slightest inclination.
I wish I could apologise for leaving the way that I did, escaping from Kate at the moment I could see her guard was down. The burning of thirst raged a constant war with the visions that drove me, and there was a window of clarity I had to seize. I tore trees from their roots and flung them far, swam through rivers both up and down stream until the vision came to me that Kate had decided to turn back and fetch everyone else.
I was free in my pursuits at last. My entire life had been left to the control of others, under steadfast supervision and scrutiny. Power surged through my body, channelling destiny like electricity. The long trek of Canada lay before me, open stretches of land ripe for me to run and hunt through it. I baked in the sunlight, I tasted the blood of every creature I could, trying to sate the thirst I would need to have some semblance of control over to meet him properly.
My focus on the future I envisioned waxed and waned, muddled with other options that I didn't want to dwell on. They came anyway. They forced themselves through, and I didn't have the power to stop them. My brother crying, Bella essentially torn from his arms. I saw him in my old room, shadows under his eyes and his ribs in clear definition at his side. There was a foggier vision that came intermittently, of Bella with red eyes and blood smeared across her chin. I ignored them and focused on the immediate goal.
My stomach was uncomfortably full when I was finally unable to skirt around small towns and forced to flit through suburbia. I saw my last chance to swallow a breath without the temptation of humans and took it. The late evening had settled, and the cacophony of heartbeats were slow and steady in slumber. I had to focus, focus, focus. The future was in front of me, and nothing would make me deviate from that, not even the lovely sound of wet, pulsing blood calling like a siren song.
It was a pity I hadn't been able to plan my outfit better. In Denali, the opportunity presented itself after we had already left the house, and after days of running and trudging through forests and rain, I was suddenly self-conscious about my appearance. I knew from the visions of how he looked at me that he wouldn't care, but I cared. I should be in something dreamy and romantic, not a borrowed pair of muddy sneakers, Bella's jeans that I had to roll up to my ankles, and a bulky and unflattering parka. I flipped the hood up and kept my head down. Bella had decided to follow through on her plan and leave to Volterra, and Edward had decided to try to make a clean break with her to protect them both from his doomsday anxieties for the future, the bonehead. Leave the worrying about the future to me.
I wish I could say I felt nervous, but I didn't. I was fortunate that I wasn't breathing, because I was aware that Philadelphia smelled rather a lot like garbage and the diner like stale coffee, and that didn't really feed into my romanticism of the moment. I took a seat while keeping my hood up and my eyes cast down, well aware of their colour and the pulse of the waitress's jugular that would draw me in if I even dared to glance at it. Taking a page out of Bella's book, I ordered a tea with the bit of breath I had reserved, and revelled in its warmth and the distraction of the steam that enveloped my face.
For having only a few weeks to get a grasp on my thirst and these visions, I had truly timed everything perfectly. He had just turned the corner and was about to walk past when I glanced up at him, and he happened to turn and catch my eye.
The world realigned itself. I could feel it stop on its axis, feel the tides halt at the call of the moon and earthquakes rumble deep beneath the sea. Volcanoes erupted and new islands burst forth, stars surged through the sky to birth new constellations that would sing ballads of our existence.
He was more than what the visions had shown. His eyes were black with hunger and pain, his honey-blond hair whispered of silk and sweetness. Our gaze was broken for only a moment when the door to the diner opened, and reconnected as he slowly walked to me.
The mug in my hand had gone cool, the world dark.
"You've kept me waiting long enough," I said, extending my hand to him and trying not to laugh at his startled expression.
He mustered enough composure to take it and bent to gently brush a kiss on my knuckle. His lips were warm, and a shock went through me as visions trickled forth in glorious fractures. This would be the first of many, many.
"My apologies, ma'am." His voice was soft and true, and rang with a melodic twang in accent that straddled the divergence between rough Southern and refined English. "My name is Jasper Hale."
"I'm Alice Masen."
I'll spare the details of the ensuing months, because some things should remain private. I feel a little guilty for them, honestly, because of what was happening outside of our bubble. The visions still came, but they were so easy to ignore when something else was so consuming. And some visions were so lovely that I could wrap myself up in them. Jasper and me in some future, distant or near, reading and studying and climbing and hunting.
When I finally surfaced, the visions connected themselves.
Immeasurable depression. Edward was completely torn up about everything, especially the way he treated Bella- and rightfully so! He wholly retreated into himself, not speaking and only eating when prompted. He took up running, and I had vision after vision of his feet pounding on wet pavement, his breaths coming in painful gasps but he continued to push. Average marks in school, the world simply passing him by. Emmett decided to offer to take him camping again, then decided against it- for the best, Edward would've shaken his head in declination and brushed off any further offer. Esme was cooking for Edward and Charlie every night and leaving a lunch packed in the fridge for the following day, and Charlie would force it onto Edward every morning when he drove him to school. Everything had to be planned and designed for him, like he was incapable of functioning without direction.
And if Edward was bad, Bella was exponentially worse.
It was the visions of Bella that drove me out of my stupor with Jasper. One minute he was talking about a newborn battle with rapturous detail, and the next she was sitting in front of me in absolute clarity. The walls were cold and stone, dark circles hung under her dead eyes as she babbled to herself so quietly I couldn't even make it out. Every once in a while, there was a flash of horror in her future- the body of a child in her hands, blood running down her face, a black cloak fastened at her collarbone. They came with increased frequency the more time went on, and the clock was running out. I had to break us out of our bubble and get Jasper to Italy.
It took some convincing on my part. He kept insisting that Peter would go in his place, he only had to ask. I reminded him that "this Bella person" had centuries of experience abstaining from human blood, that she might be able to help us both in practising our control. He would only be gone for a day or two, if he took a plane. How would he go about acquiring a plane? Oh, I knew of one that was free, and the owners wouldn't miss it if it was gone.
He didn't want to leave me, but as time wound down I grew more insistent. I couldn't tell him anything, and it was eating up at me. My visions had to be kept a secret, and they were one of the most important parts of me. He shared his whole being with me, and I had to keep this a secret. Aro's gift allows him to see everything in a person's memory with a single touch, and if I told Jasper, everything would be ruined. Aro would want me for my gift, would know about the Cullens breaking the law, and that Edward was a human who knew. Once he was there, in that room, Jasper would be able to grasp the gravity of the situation, he would understand the danger Bella was in and provide a calming influence that would allow her escape.
The future solidified itself again when Jasper agreed he would leave, and be back as soon as he could. I told him I would meet him in Ireland to refuel- a lie, Bella would be driven to the edge already and needed the support of our family.
I watched it all play out in my visions, and just in time. Bella was close to a breaking point and wouldn't have made it out of the enclave if Jasper didn't keep her calm, and I saw her stumble out of the city with Jasper dragging her along. She would recover, though. Jasper had been mulling over leaving the second Bella was reunited with our family, and he made the decision to do so much too quickly. I needed to reach him before he left, he deserved an explanation more than anymore. I didn't want him to think I manipulated him, or put him in unnecessary danger. No one else could save Bella, no one. I had the cellphone he left behind, outdated and operating on a prepaid system. The line rang once, and I heard Esme's soft voice answer. Even through the phone, I could feel the tension that hung heavy in the air, could see the anger that was brewing.
"Don't kill me!" I begged immediately.