Foreword: Here's a chapter dedicated to Alice and how her visions upon waking as a vampire conditioned her actions and led her to Jasper, and then to the Cullen family. Enjoy reading :)
Come what may! [1]
«If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them…they could perceive what they have made of us.» Betwixt and Between – Albert Camus
Alice felt happier than ever. She could have skipped with joy all week because she felt so light. Her visions had finally come true; Jasper and she had found the Cullen family, and they had been accepted among them. Truly.
Her first vision when she woke up had been Jasper.
She was in the center of the forest, sitting on an old tree stump, leaning towards a small stream, trying to see her reflection in the flowing water. She had just drained the blood of two men camping in the woods. It had eased the horrendous burning that had not left her throat since she opened her eyes in this strange world. She didn't know who she was or what she was, but she guessed she was some kind of monster. Even though she remembered nothing about her life before waking up in this place, she had a vague memory of the rules governing the universe. She remembered the names and existence of most things around her and even many others not in sight. She had plenty of words and "concepts" in her head: clothes, carriage, dance, jelwery, tobacco, home, family, love, Good, Evil, money, solitude, hospital, madness, normality [2].
For example, something told her that what she had just done was not normal. Not moral. That killing people to drink their blood was not something Good and not what a human was supposed to do. She had tried to eat food, fruits found in the bushes and shrubs, but it tasted moldy and turned to ash between her lips. She couldn't feel her heart beating, and as she looked at herself in the water, she could distinguish the features of her face. It seemed she was pretty, but her eyes of a too strange color - a vermilion shade - made her feel like some kind of monster. She didn't want to be a monster, but she didn't know how not to be one. She didn't know what to do or where to go. She knew nothing, and she didn't want to be alone.
Alice was in her melancholic thoughts when the vision of a man's face imposed itself on her.
His face struck by the rays of the sun and by fine raindrops. A summer rain. His eyes and golden hair had the ochre hue of molten gold, the patches of skin touched by the light seemed covered in sparkling stars, and the curious marks on his throat, chin, and left eyebrow had the silvery gleam of the moon. It was like observing the glow of the stars at dusk. He was beautiful, there, smiling in the drizzle. And he definitely wasn't human either. Apart from the fleeting glimpse she had of her own reflection and the image of the two men she had just killed, she had no other face in mind. But she couldn't imagine that somewhere in the world someone more beautiful existed.
She was in the dark, without a past, without an idea of what to do with her present. Without any future to imagine or hope for. And he appeared, brighter than the sun, more serene than the stars and the moon, uttering words meant only for her and piercing her soul, engraving them forever. He was smiling, and there was such warmth in his eyes, his voice was so soft and lingering that it made her shiver. And he said her name: Alice Cullen [3]. She didn't know how she was so sure, but she was. Sure that he wasn't a figment of her mind, sure that she was the one named Alice Cullen to whom he said all these wonderful things that made her feel so... she couldn't even describe that emotion.
It was as if her entire universe and future were contained in this promise he was making to her. It saved her from despair. Because even though she was terribly alone for now, it didn't matter when she was certain that this fascinating man whose name she didn't yet know would find her and love her wildly. Because even though she had no past, she now knew precisely what her future was.
So, Alice waited for him. A long time. Continuing to obey her hunger and kill humans venturing into the forest, with the unspeakable feeling that it wasn't the right thing to do. A dull guilt and intense sadness invading her every time she regained consciousness and looked at the bodies of her victims. Days and weeks passed, lonely and murderous. Tired of observing the surrounding nature, she tried to concentrate to see the man from her vision again. Many other spontaneous images appeared: the handsome stranger, red-eyed this time, apparently at war and doing atrocious things that would undoubtedly have given her nightmares if she could sleep.
He too was a monster. Maybe a monster worse than her. But, no matter how many people she saw him kill, no matter how terrifying and mad he seemed during the battles she saw him lead, it didn't change Alice's certainty that he wasn't a bad person. He was the most important person in the world, and they had to meet. She had no doubt about what she felt for him: he was the One [4]. The one she would wait for forever if necessary. And she couldn't bring herself to be afraid of him, to despise him, or to hate him, even for a single moment. Not when he seemed so sad and tired. Not when she could remember the tenderness and fervent adoration in his golden eyes. Not when she could now read so much shame and weariness in the scarlet eyes as she saw him silently, until dawn, watching the bonfires engulfing the bodies of the enemies with the expression of someone contemplating jumping in.
And Alice was terrified, not by him but for him. She had to help him. She didn't know who he was, where he was, or why he was doing all these things that made him so unhappy, but it wasn't his place. He shouldn't stay in this horrible place. She had begged the universe to give her a clue on how to help him, and an image appeared.
Carlisle and Edward, in the midst of a tumultuous and recurring, as Alice would later realize, conversation.
"Carlisle, I struggle to understand your view on the soul. From a theological standpoint, the soul is the seat of the internal struggle between good and evil for each man. It is the transcendent part of him that will be subject to divine judgment upon his death. Now, we vampires are already dead and have been left on earth wandering with no other purpose in existence than to play predators. Either God's judgment regarding us has already been passed, and we have been condemned to damnation, or we have not been judged and can never be, because we are no longer human, and what is not human cannot claim to have a soul or submit to God's judgment. Immortality and the inability to evolve make our existence aberrant!"
"And yet, you feel the need to argue with me to assert your point of view or for me to finally find an argument that proves you have a soul? What are these discussions for, Edward: to make me admit that we have no soul, or, on the contrary, to find an argument that proves you have one? If vampires are predators with no other purpose in existence than to feed, what's the point of our debates? What's the point of respecting human lives and drinking animal blood? What's the point for monsters to philosophize and ponder morality questions? I believe that anyone conscious of the weight of their actions and trying to act for the Good has a soul. Our ability to fight our instincts as predators to try to do what is right is, for me, what signs the persistence of our soul. The ability to feel emotions such as joy, sadness, fear is what makes us still, in my opinion, fundamentally human and able to evolve."
They were very beautiful and pale too, too beautiful to be human, but they didn't have red eyes. Their eyes had the same warm gold color as the ones of her unknown man in her first vision. Vampires, they had said. Creatures from old legends and children's tales. It seemed to Alice that vampires weren't supposed to exist, but after all, monsters weren't either, and she was evidently one. Did they all belong to the same species? Was she a vampire? The named Carlisle said they fed on animal blood, respected human life, and that's what made them not soulless monsters. Was that the solution? Was that what she was supposed to do?
Alice quickly grabbed a white rabbit [5] and drained it of its blood. Awful. Earthy. There wasn't even enough for two sips, and she now looked at the small, furry, broken body in her hands in a dazed manner. Maybe a larger animal? She found a coyote and pounced on it; the animal resisted, but Alice's instincts carried her, and she managed to kill it as easily as all the unlucky humans who had crossed her path in recent weeks. The blood wasn't good. The taste was acrid, and she didn't feel the ecstasy and warmth that invaded her when the first sips of human blood passed through her lips. And yet... the burning sensation in her throat had greatly diminished, and she didn't feel the shame and disgust of herself that she usually felt after feeding. It worked; drinking animal blood wasn't quite satisfying, but it quenched the thirst. She wasn't forced to be a monster. And the sad, handsome man from her visions neither: she had to find him and tell him.
The realization made her want to dance with joy and sing. And she did, alone under the stars, holding onto the shreds of a future that belonged to her.
Months passed, but despite all her efforts, the visions didn't come as regularly as she would have liked, and even if she managed to provoke them more and more often, they didn't necessarily give her the information she desired. She had learned the man's name... Jasper Whitlock. Jasper. It was a beautiful name. There was a beautiful woman who recurred in her visions of Jasper, she was small and slender but had a fierceness in her gaze and an aura of authority such that Alice had never seen: her name was Maria. She seemed to be the true leader of the strange army of vampires that Jasper commanded. Alice had several "excerpts" featuring both of them that she wished she could escape by vomiting or crying. She didn't even know what made her sicker: seeing Maria "discipline" Jasper severely wounded because he had apparently made a mistake on the battlefield; watching him, acting with deference towards her and letting her mistreat him without flinching or ever protesting; or seeing Maria touch and kiss him passionately and then use him - and Alice didn't want to think of it in any other way - for her sexual entertainment. Alice didn't understand anything about the relationship between these two, but it was clear that the cruel little woman treated him more like a slave than a lover or subordinate. And it made Alice miserable to see Jasper accept everything with a dull detachment and a vacant look.
Alice had nevertheless obtained some useful information; she now knew that Jasper was fighting somewhere in South America, probably in Mexico. All the conversations she had witnessed took place in a language she didn't know; she guessed it was Spanish. However, she still had no idea of the exact city where he was or how to reach him. She had ventured out of the forest to find out where she was. She was near the Mississippi, in Biloxi County. She didn't know exactly how far Mexico was from the city, but it seemed like quite a distance. Too far for a penniless, poorly dressed girl, covered in blood and mud, to walk without attracting unwanted attention. Especially since she could only travel at night or during rainy weather since she had to hide from the sun: she had had a clear view of herself in several of her visions and now knew that her skin sparkled when exposed to sunlight, and it was not a good thing to encounter humans when she glittered as if covered in stardust.
Alice tried to avoid meeting humans using her power, although she was still not sure how it worked. She decided to go in a direction, making the wish not to encounter anyone, and waited to see if a flash came to her mind to know if she was doing the right thing. However, it was not foolproof. She had firmly decided not to kill anyone else since she had learned there was another way, but she had just slaughtered two humans. An elderly couple: they thought she was injured and lost and tried to convince her to follow them to the hospital. She tried to argue that she was fine, but they insisted, and the old man held her physically while the woman said something about her possibly escaping from the asylum a few kilometers away. Something snapped inside her, and she brutally shot them before she could give it a second thought. Never since her awakening had she felt such remorse and intense despair: killing when she believed she had no choice and obeyed her instincts was one thing, but doing it now just out of anger and rage was... it was a sign that she was evil and chose knowingly to be a monster.
She didn't even know exactly what had triggered her anger to this extent. The mention of the asylum gave her the feeling that a stone was falling into her stomach, then the distressing feeling turned into a strange rage. Asylums were places for the insane, and she knew she wasn't crazy. She wasn't crazy.
She was a monster, but she wasn't crazy.
Alice repeated it to herself like a mantra and had been agitated by dry sobs for hours following her murderous frenzy. She then realized that no matter how sad she was, she was physically incapable of shedding tears. Like after some of her visions of Jasper, a strange liquid filled her eyes, stinging unpleasantly, but it never flowed: another sign of inhumanity? She then remembered the conversation of certain individuals named Edward and Carlisle. Who were they? The one called Carlisle seemed to know a lot about vampires and what was left or not of their humanity... maybe she should try to focus her visions on him, and he could teach her more about how to be a "good vampire."
Almost instantly after having this thought, a new vision of Carlisle appeared to Alice: he had a sad face, and some orange traces stood out in his golden eyes. He was sitting at the bedside of a very beautiful woman with long curly chestnut hair. She was curled up on a bed, her face sweet but her eyes vividly red, and she was trembling violently. The entire bed frame shaking under the force of the spasms that shook her as she begged Carlisle with the energy of despair. She begged him with the ravaged expression of someone who already knows that they will not be able to get what they desire most in the world.
"It's impossible, I'm truly sorry, Miss Platt."
"Why, Dr. Cullen? You said you transformed me to bring me back to life; I am very grateful to you, but I want my son. Please, bring him back to life too. I don't have much money, but I will give you everything I have. I..."
"Miss Platt... Esmée, the dead cannot come back to life. Your son has been dead for more than a week. To transform someone into a vampire, their heart must still beat. And, I'm truly sorry, but even if his heart had beaten, I couldn't have done anything. You cannot turn a child into a vampire."
The vision stopped suddenly, leaving Alice more puzzled than ever. The distraught woman, Miss Platt, Esmée, had called Carlisle Dr. Cullen... if she had indeed been right about her first vision of Jasper, his last name was Cullen. Were they related? Was he part of her family? If he was indeed her family, she had to join him quickly. Perhaps he could tell her who she was and help her find Jasper.
As soon as she decided to find out if Dr. Carlisle Cullen was part of her family and could help her remember who she was, another flash appeared.
Extremely blurry as if she saw it through thick fog. She was talking to Carlisle, Jasper was standing next to her. He wasn't smiling, but his eyes were golden again, he was terribly tall—unless she was tiny—and their fingers were intertwined. A few steps from Carlisle, there was Esmée Platt, Edward, a huge man, even taller than Jasper and twice as massive, and a tall blonde girl with breathtaking beauty and a pinched expression. They all had gold-colored eyes. Alice too.
"I knew I should wait for him in a Philadelphia restaurant on a stormy night, and then we should look for you together to meet you in Minnesota in 1950. I've had these visions since 1920, but it's only in 1948 that I could meet Jasper..."
It was her own voice that Alice heard, but it seemed weak, echoing at the bottom of a tunnel. She desperately tried to hold onto her vision, wanting to learn more, but it vanished as abruptly as it had come.
Philadelphia on a stormy night in 1948... Minnesota in 1950...
Alice blinked as she came back to her senses. She was still in the forest, alone, facing the holes she had dug in the ground to bury her last two victims. She still had more questions than answers but now had the confirmation that she would manage to join Jasper in the future, and then they would find Carlisle Cullen and the other beautiful vampires with golden eyes accompanying him. She still didn't know who she was and wasn't sure what this future meant, but she knew she wanted it more than anything in the world.
The only thing left was that 1948 was far away. She had no desire to wait for so long. She thought she had awakened less than a year ago, and already she felt horribly alone, pacing in this forest without being able to risk any contact that didn't end in murder. She couldn't wait almost thirty years to meet Jasper or find Carlisle Cullen and the others. She had tried to force other visions, deciding not to care about the sun or her appearance and go directly to Mexico to see Jasper or to Minnesota to try to find Dr. Cullen. The flashes followed, blurry but terrifying, all having a tragic outcome.
Alice could see herself dying or being imprisoned on the way to Mexico in a dozen different ways without even getting close to where Jasper was: torn into pieces or burned alive by strangers with red eyes. In some visions, she saw herself massacring dozens of humans in crowded places, or she saw them fleeing from her strange and glittering appearance as she tried to explain to them that she meant no harm... then she saw vampires with long gray cloaks arrive, kneel her, and behead her as she tried to escape. She could see another vampire with rough features and a cruel smile grabbing her, hurting her for fun and calling her Mary Alice [6]. This last vision made her tremble. As for Minnesota, it was as if there was nothing there. No matter how hard she focused, she saw only emptiness. The void. Well. She wouldn't go to Minnesota alone, and she would never, under any circumstances, get close to Mexico. Never. A restaurant in Philadelphia in 1948 on a stormy night. She would wait. A new flash welcomed her decision.
Jasper was sitting at a restaurant table, back straight. Frozen in an incredibly rigid posture, his long honey-colored hair soaked, so wet that it had taken on a dark shade. His eyes had a scarlet edge but were surprisingly black too. He was hungry. She approached him with a skipping step, smiling at him, and he gave her a wary look.
"You are late ! You kept me waiting long enought."
He looked at her uncertainly for a moment but seemed to relax. He politely nodded, a strange smile, almost shy, playing on his lips. His soft voice and drawling accent resonated distantly, drowned out by the sounds of the downpour and gusts of wind.
"My apologies, ma'am. I hadn't realized there was a place where I was expected." [7]
Yes. Definitely, Philadelphia in 1948. It would be worth the wait.
So, Alice had remained alone for a very long time, mastering her thirst for blood and letting her gift guide her to make forays into the human world and get closer to Pennsylvania. Traveling across the entire Northeast of the United States and crossing Alabama, the Carolinas, Virginia, then finally reaching Philadelphia in 1930, hanging around the area, knowing she was very early.
Alice had continued to glimpse into Jasper's future and that of the Cullens, witnessing snippets of their lives when she shouldn't have been allowed. She had seen Esmée's joy-filled face as Carlisle proposed to her; the move to Wisconsin and the elk hunting; Edward's "runaway" and his bloody odyssey when he decided to embrace his predator instincts to play the righteous; Carlisle's devastation and Esmée's deep sadness; Edward's return, his eyes still showing reddish glints, filled with shame as Esmée and Carlisle hugged him, as the son he was; the composition of various sonatas and confessions about the three years of absence; the night of atrocities leading to Rosalie's transformation; Rosalie carrying a still human Emmett and almost disemboweled to Carlisle, pleading him to save him; Emmett flashing an ecstatic smile at his future wife, whose eyes were shining with joy for the first time; Peter's transformation and the strange development of his friendship with Jasper; Charlotte's awakening; Rosalie and Emmett's world travels during their imposed long honeymoon; Charlotte reaching her expiration date, the violent argument with Peter, and the series of events that followed Jasper's compassionate act; the visit to Alaska to Carlisle's vegetarian friends; Edward observing Carlisle and Emmett waltzing with their companions, with a gentle smile somewhat sad; Edward and Rosalie embarking on university studies again as Emmett began for the first time to follow them; Maria changing her mind every week, constantly postponing her decision to end the existence of her second in command; Peter's brief return to Monterrey and Jasper's desertion, and so on...
So many crucial moments that the seer had captured as a mere spectator. Burning with love and trembling with terror for these strangers. Unable to help them in any way while visions of their future unfolded, revealing some moments of happiness but also their worst dramas. And Alice felt like she had known them all forever but was afraid, despite all her affirmations, of what the real meeting would bring. She now had enough practice with her gift to know that the future was always uncertain and that the slightest decision made could change everything.
When she finally met Jasper after all those years of solitude, and he chose to stay with her rather than flee, she felt like her heart could start beating again. He was everything she had been waiting for since her awakening, everything she had hoped for, and he was much more than her visions had revealed.
Now that they had found the Cullens, Alice knew they were exactly where they were meant to be. Home. Everything was falling into place.
The seer couldn't be happier than being stuck between Rosalie and Esmée on the way to a new store in pursuit of their shopping afternoon. She couldn't be happier... until she was assailed by a vision of Jasper and Emmett violently fighting in what seemed to be a fight to the death.
She hadn't seen it coming.
Notes : *The title is a mix between "In Search of Lost Time" by Proust and a reference to "the White Rabbit" from Alice in Wonderland.
There are many fanfics that highlight Jasper's insincerity in his adherence to the vegetarian diet and portray him as sacrificing for Alice by staying with the Cullens even though he struggles to abstain from consuming human blood. I have never understood this perspective. If we set aside the moral argument, Jasper is the only vampire in the saga with a genuine internal motivation to adhere to Carlisle's diet, no matter how difficult. So, to me, the opposite hypothesis would be more plausible regarding who "needs" to be a member of the Cullen family. Alice wouldn't truly need it, except for Jasper: she managed to become a vegetarian on her own by following Carlisle's guidance through her visions (and abstained from consuming human blood since the 1920s). Alice tells Bella in New Moon, "My first vision was Jasper's face saying my name in the future; I always knew that no matter where my life took me, he would be there." I hypothesize that the name Jasper uttered in this first vision wasn't "Alice" but "Alice Cullen," and it's because she seeks to make this future a reality that she eventually comes across Carlisle and the others while searching through her future. Alice's visions are based on decisions: upon awakening, I think she is lost and wants to find someone so as not to be alone... destiny having a strong grip in the Twilight saga and vampire companions being considered as soulmates, poof, it brings Jasper with golden eyes (probably because the only version of the future in which he could be "happy" with her is one where he doesn't feed on humans). The subsequent visions would directly result from the decisions she makes to try to bring about this specific future.
[1] As usual, Alice is two steps ahead of the others, the phrase "Come what may" is the one that will close chapter 9.
[2] Words are not chosen innocently. A little reminder about Alice's –and forgotten– human life: Mary-Alice Brandon came from a wealthy family in Mississippi, her father was a jeweler, and her mother was the heiress of a family owning a small tobacco farm; she had visions of the future since childhood and was considered insane by part of her family (the rest saw her as a witch). Her father murdered her mother when Alice was eighteen (Alice unsuccessfully tried to prevent the murder by warning her mother of "her vision") by hitting her with a car, so he could marry his mistress. Alice is then confined to an asylum in Biloxi until her death as a human and subjected to a kind of electroshock therapy (in 1920 electroshock therapy was not yet patented, so let's presume she received a vintage variant), which completely alters her memory.
[3] For an incurable romantic like me, the story of Alice and Jasper's meeting is incredibly inspiring. The fact that it was Jasper who gave her her name through a vision when Alice was a "tabula rasa" and knew nothing of her past is something I find rather brilliant.
[4] A small reference to my overarching theme around Camus: Camus called Maria Casares the Unique woman.
[5] Given her size and without indication of what she was supposed to feed on, I found it amusing to make the first animal Alice consumes blood from a rabbit, and since Lewis Carroll's "the White Rabbit" is "always late," I thought it would be nice to make an analogy with her endless wait for Jasper. Damn good White Rabbit... Ahem xD
[6] This is a reference to James, the villainous nomad from Twilight book one, who knew Alice from her time as a human and wanted her blood but was beaten to the punch by another vampire who turned Alice just before James could bite her.
[7] "You kept me waiting long enough." and "My apologies, ma'am." are the first words exchanged by Alice and Jasper in the saga.