(no subject)
Hmm, so for anyone who has read Stephanie Meyers' Twilight (and her other two books in that series), here's a piece on Jasper and Alice, about Edward's refusal to believe they have souls, and what Alice thinks about his opinion.
>>>>>>>>>>
Vampires don’t dream… but the mind must find some way to deal with all of the things that disturb it, and while it is nearly impossible to disturb a vampire, or for one to have had such trauma in their past that it may linger, it does happen, occasionally.
Alice gets waking nightmares sometimes. Like flashbacks, but not always… and she has never mistaken them for visions. They are induced by the world, not a product of her life. Or, unlife.
Her first ones occurred early, when she was on her way to Jasper. This was before she had felt him in real life, or experienced his emotions, or the warm look in his eyes when they rested directly on her. Back when she only had gone because she was content with visions that showed her gazing at someone, so bewitched. She liked it, what she saw in that future, how he looked at her, where they would end up, and where she saw he, troubled man, darling soldier, needed to be. It was the only one she saw, and it satisfied her.
That time… the fresh time… At that time, everything may as well have been the present. She didn’t know the difference anymore, or actually, she never had. The past, the present, the future… one was wiped from existence, two never existed, and if she had any affinity for three - well, it went unremembered the second her eyes turned gold and her skin went pale. But after the change, suddenly, she woke to a present that was interesting, but empty. She might’ve never known, and gotten wrapped up in the empty world full of wildlife, and then strangers, but the visions told her. They reminded her, and brought her out of the dark when the waking dreams, the flashbacks of dark, dank, nothingness and the change would engulf her. She would get another vision, and it would slide in among scarce but enveloping remembrances of darkness, imprisonment, until she saw the land in front of her, wherever she was, and began to run again, or walk.
She reached the place where she would meet Jasper. She reached the diner, the stool, she sat there all day, every day, even when the clock wasn’t at the right time, when the time displayed was different from her vision. What if it changed, after all, all of a sudden? What if the time in the vision changed as abruptly as the fate of the dog she’d thought was cute, who she’d seen a vision of in his owner’s home later that night, or she’d have shooed him off the road? The one that died from the swerving car, whose driver suddenly wheeled into a wide and dangerous U-turn because he’d forgotten something from home. Hands on a clock, cracked thin bones amidst the animal corpse on the ground, spilling not a large amount of blood, but enough that she had to move quickly before the scent carried itself to her sensitive nose (because even just the sight had her wanting to jump the human), they are both the same, these hands of that clock in that now, those bones then from at least days before, her hands over her eyes in the days of waiting at the clock as she watches his hands run through his hair, agitated, a vision from a few hours before he will find her.
Since that time Alice learned many things. She learned what it was to be called by name, not just possess what she knows she can and will and maybe was known as. She learned to live happy in other’s emotions, and to thrive off of living in the moment, rather than living happily in only hope, because her visions have shown her assurance that something would happen.
Nowadays, her visions do not save her from the episodes, which still occur only rarely, as often as they used to. Her mind does not struggle to protect itself with the same desperation it once did. Whenever the darkness comes, or a waking dream takes her from her present, Jasper is there.
Jasper is there, Jasper is with her, Jasper is holding her, and he’s kissing her, and then she’s drowning in his hair dancing over her forehead, and cheeks, and nose, like a blessing. Jasper’s voice is murmuring in her ears and only once her breathing steadies does he begin to exude calm. She doesn’t want to run from the fear, but she will accept that he does not want her to panic after facing it. He can fortify her, if he wants, but he will, perhaps, never know that everything else he does, disregarding his talent, is more effective, or just as so.
These days, her lucid horrors are split, down the middle, into one of two things. Two exceptions… :
The short one she got in which she relived the one vision of Bella clearly being gutted by James and the long one from months later, just a month after Edward left, and took the Cullen family away with him. That one was worse than the emptiness because she could see them both, and nothing brought her out of it until she had watched them both waste, and waste, Bella into a frail skeleton-girl who passed away in the night, still well-fed and well-rested, but simply preferring to sleep and never wake. Edward pined until the moment the Bella had gone to sleep. Then he turned to look at Alice and drew his heart from his chest, walked across her mind, placed it on Bella’s pillow, and faded away. Jasper had been in such a wreck he’d had to leave her with Carlisle and Esme the second her eyes refocused, for fear of driving the entire room into a hysterical panic.
But even that, she could speak with him about. The nothingness… there was little to say, little to share. They were flashbacks, memories of an empty room, her cage, and though they did not much concern her, it occupied her mind the way the memories of a life occupy those of any other vampire of her age, young enough to remember most of their living days.
And the other half of her day-mares… the waking dreams… she could not share. He may never know she had them. Except that was lie. He did know, he guessed the first second she realized he’d been shouting her name, days before they found the Cullen clan, just a week after they’d met for the first time. In that time, she’d heard much about him, and him all of her past, because there was little to share, for her.
But the waking dreams about Jasper occurred as often as her flashbacks did. She could see, in them, murders, intrigue, mindless killings, thoughtless brutality, broken ribcages half-torn out of the bodies of children not yet fourteen, dressed for war, civil or vampire, glistening in the moonlight, sometimes still being licked by the newborns who hunted under the command of the former Jasper.
It was not that she feared Jasper in these dreams. It was that she worried for him. Each time she watched a new battle, or him disciplining the newborns, learning the hard way new tricks to maintain large numbers of senseless beasts stronger than he, she feared for him. She didn’t mind the blood, in fact it called to her not at all, being a product of her vivid and detailed mind, but the danger scared her. The past… that is where she cannot reach him at all. In the present, she can try to protect him with her body, or as with Italy, by leaving him behind. The future, she can see. His past is known by rote, told by him, honestly and starkly, but a slow story in the telling. Even now there are gaps. It was long ago, he’d forgotten some, or not cared to remember others and so can’t recall them now, or perhaps he can’t remember what she now knows and what she doesn’t.
But there will always be gaps. Small, but existing ones. And so she fears for him, and what he went through in the past. She cries for him, for his soul, which she knows they have, because she can feel hers each time he calls her back from the inner sections of her brain and mind, when her soul gets caught on a snag. She inhales obediently as his presence and soft calls, touches like night mist on soft grass, breathe his love into her and inflate her living soul like a soft balloon.
If only it weren’t the kind of thing Edward had to experience for himself. But the next time it happened, she had told Jasper to call Edward, which had never happened, not since the first time her thoughts got lost and their new family panicked… she wanted him to stick around, for the first time, to witness the most intimate contact she has with her soul mate. So that he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they have souls, and that the layers of hard diamond on their skin isn’t stone, it’s dust… diamond dust that will flake and fall in useless ashes upon death, not the unbreakable cage separating him from the faith he could have.
Foresight… only a fool would think that it was the only reason a family of supernaturally gifted vampires do not bet against the youngest one in the clan. Brilliance and compassion are fearsome flanking weapons in the tenacious arsenal of Alice Whitlock’s personality.
>>>>>>>>>>
Vampires don’t dream… but the mind must find some way to deal with all of the things that disturb it, and while it is nearly impossible to disturb a vampire, or for one to have had such trauma in their past that it may linger, it does happen, occasionally.
Alice gets waking nightmares sometimes. Like flashbacks, but not always… and she has never mistaken them for visions. They are induced by the world, not a product of her life. Or, unlife.
Her first ones occurred early, when she was on her way to Jasper. This was before she had felt him in real life, or experienced his emotions, or the warm look in his eyes when they rested directly on her. Back when she only had gone because she was content with visions that showed her gazing at someone, so bewitched. She liked it, what she saw in that future, how he looked at her, where they would end up, and where she saw he, troubled man, darling soldier, needed to be. It was the only one she saw, and it satisfied her.
That time… the fresh time… At that time, everything may as well have been the present. She didn’t know the difference anymore, or actually, she never had. The past, the present, the future… one was wiped from existence, two never existed, and if she had any affinity for three - well, it went unremembered the second her eyes turned gold and her skin went pale. But after the change, suddenly, she woke to a present that was interesting, but empty. She might’ve never known, and gotten wrapped up in the empty world full of wildlife, and then strangers, but the visions told her. They reminded her, and brought her out of the dark when the waking dreams, the flashbacks of dark, dank, nothingness and the change would engulf her. She would get another vision, and it would slide in among scarce but enveloping remembrances of darkness, imprisonment, until she saw the land in front of her, wherever she was, and began to run again, or walk.
She reached the place where she would meet Jasper. She reached the diner, the stool, she sat there all day, every day, even when the clock wasn’t at the right time, when the time displayed was different from her vision. What if it changed, after all, all of a sudden? What if the time in the vision changed as abruptly as the fate of the dog she’d thought was cute, who she’d seen a vision of in his owner’s home later that night, or she’d have shooed him off the road? The one that died from the swerving car, whose driver suddenly wheeled into a wide and dangerous U-turn because he’d forgotten something from home. Hands on a clock, cracked thin bones amidst the animal corpse on the ground, spilling not a large amount of blood, but enough that she had to move quickly before the scent carried itself to her sensitive nose (because even just the sight had her wanting to jump the human), they are both the same, these hands of that clock in that now, those bones then from at least days before, her hands over her eyes in the days of waiting at the clock as she watches his hands run through his hair, agitated, a vision from a few hours before he will find her.
Since that time Alice learned many things. She learned what it was to be called by name, not just possess what she knows she can and will and maybe was known as. She learned to live happy in other’s emotions, and to thrive off of living in the moment, rather than living happily in only hope, because her visions have shown her assurance that something would happen.
Nowadays, her visions do not save her from the episodes, which still occur only rarely, as often as they used to. Her mind does not struggle to protect itself with the same desperation it once did. Whenever the darkness comes, or a waking dream takes her from her present, Jasper is there.
Jasper is there, Jasper is with her, Jasper is holding her, and he’s kissing her, and then she’s drowning in his hair dancing over her forehead, and cheeks, and nose, like a blessing. Jasper’s voice is murmuring in her ears and only once her breathing steadies does he begin to exude calm. She doesn’t want to run from the fear, but she will accept that he does not want her to panic after facing it. He can fortify her, if he wants, but he will, perhaps, never know that everything else he does, disregarding his talent, is more effective, or just as so.
These days, her lucid horrors are split, down the middle, into one of two things. Two exceptions… :
The short one she got in which she relived the one vision of Bella clearly being gutted by James and the long one from months later, just a month after Edward left, and took the Cullen family away with him. That one was worse than the emptiness because she could see them both, and nothing brought her out of it until she had watched them both waste, and waste, Bella into a frail skeleton-girl who passed away in the night, still well-fed and well-rested, but simply preferring to sleep and never wake. Edward pined until the moment the Bella had gone to sleep. Then he turned to look at Alice and drew his heart from his chest, walked across her mind, placed it on Bella’s pillow, and faded away. Jasper had been in such a wreck he’d had to leave her with Carlisle and Esme the second her eyes refocused, for fear of driving the entire room into a hysterical panic.
But even that, she could speak with him about. The nothingness… there was little to say, little to share. They were flashbacks, memories of an empty room, her cage, and though they did not much concern her, it occupied her mind the way the memories of a life occupy those of any other vampire of her age, young enough to remember most of their living days.
And the other half of her day-mares… the waking dreams… she could not share. He may never know she had them. Except that was lie. He did know, he guessed the first second she realized he’d been shouting her name, days before they found the Cullen clan, just a week after they’d met for the first time. In that time, she’d heard much about him, and him all of her past, because there was little to share, for her.
But the waking dreams about Jasper occurred as often as her flashbacks did. She could see, in them, murders, intrigue, mindless killings, thoughtless brutality, broken ribcages half-torn out of the bodies of children not yet fourteen, dressed for war, civil or vampire, glistening in the moonlight, sometimes still being licked by the newborns who hunted under the command of the former Jasper.
It was not that she feared Jasper in these dreams. It was that she worried for him. Each time she watched a new battle, or him disciplining the newborns, learning the hard way new tricks to maintain large numbers of senseless beasts stronger than he, she feared for him. She didn’t mind the blood, in fact it called to her not at all, being a product of her vivid and detailed mind, but the danger scared her. The past… that is where she cannot reach him at all. In the present, she can try to protect him with her body, or as with Italy, by leaving him behind. The future, she can see. His past is known by rote, told by him, honestly and starkly, but a slow story in the telling. Even now there are gaps. It was long ago, he’d forgotten some, or not cared to remember others and so can’t recall them now, or perhaps he can’t remember what she now knows and what she doesn’t.
But there will always be gaps. Small, but existing ones. And so she fears for him, and what he went through in the past. She cries for him, for his soul, which she knows they have, because she can feel hers each time he calls her back from the inner sections of her brain and mind, when her soul gets caught on a snag. She inhales obediently as his presence and soft calls, touches like night mist on soft grass, breathe his love into her and inflate her living soul like a soft balloon.
If only it weren’t the kind of thing Edward had to experience for himself. But the next time it happened, she had told Jasper to call Edward, which had never happened, not since the first time her thoughts got lost and their new family panicked… she wanted him to stick around, for the first time, to witness the most intimate contact she has with her soul mate. So that he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they have souls, and that the layers of hard diamond on their skin isn’t stone, it’s dust… diamond dust that will flake and fall in useless ashes upon death, not the unbreakable cage separating him from the faith he could have.
Foresight… only a fool would think that it was the only reason a family of supernaturally gifted vampires do not bet against the youngest one in the clan. Brilliance and compassion are fearsome flanking weapons in the tenacious arsenal of Alice Whitlock’s personality.