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The house is quiet.

Emmett, Jasper and Rosalie left in the morning to go hunting. Esme's out shopping for new window dressing and Edward is out somewhere with Bella.

Alice lays on her bed, her head hanging off the mattress as she flips through a magazine before sighing and tossing the book on the floor and rolling over and up in a fluid motion to stand on the floor. She puts her hands on her waist, looks around and sighs.

She's bored. She should've gone with Jasper or Esme.

Downstairs, Carlisle is typing something on his computer, something for work, probably. Maybe she can bother him. In a flash, she's downstairs, her fingers tapping lightly on his door. "Papa, tu es très occupé?"

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"Pas vraiment, ma petite. Tu peux entrer."

Even Carlisle's French is clipped, practiced, metered. When Alice comes into the room, the browser windows are already minimized.

She enters, slipping through the barest crack of the door, letting it shut behind her quietly. Taking her time as she walks, she looks at the things Carlisle has collected in the room, over the years.

Stopping at his bookshelf, she runs her fingers over old medical textbooks, books written in other languages. "I'm bored. Will you hang out with me?"

Carlisle spins just a little in his office chair out from under his desk, bringing his feet under him again.

"You're not changing my hair."

"Oh, but you'd look so cool if you went blue." She throws a grin over her shoulder. Leaving the bookshelf, she comes to sit on the edge of his desk.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Finishing some reports for work."

Mostly.

"What I'm finding is that it has been easier to complete them at home than at the nurse's station, and the office is always taken over by the day shift."

"Ah yes, less women staring at you and sighing wistfully." Alice grins, clasping her hands to her chest and sighing. Wistfully.

"Wanna pretend you're teaching me to drive again? Call Mom and tell her to not go crazy on valances? Do a bunch of tiny braids in my hair? Oh I can find the butterfly clips from the 90s and do your hair--"

" -- no thank you, my dear."

She definitely still has those butterfly clips somewhere. Rosalie and Alice went through a phase and Carlisle was never a fan.

"I can do the braiding if you want. Or we could go to Milliways, if you'd prefer."

"Braids first," she murmurs, grabbing his hand to tug him over to the armchairs he has set near the bookshelves. She settles on the floor in front of the chair and hums, folding her hands in her lap.

"Haven't been to the bar in a while."

Alice's hair is very fine. The braids likely won't stay in without any hair ties for the ends, but Carlisle hardly cares. He imagines it isn't the point.

"Usually when I am there it is for a shift at the infirmary, so I don't take advantage of the myriad...everything, the bar has to offer."

She hums softly, at the feeling of his fingers carding through her hair. Her shoulders relax under his ministrations, any and all stress fading away under his touch.

"How do you do it?" Alice whispers, picking at her dress.

"You'll have to be a tad more specific, Alice."

The braiding is more like practice suturing from medical school the last time, more than anything else. It's an odd thought to have staring at the crown of your daughter's head though.

"Be a doctor? Our dad? Just...you?" She twists to look up at him, her fingers curling at the edge of his chair.

Her mouth works silently, trying to collect her thoughts and have them make sense. "You make it all look so easy. I know...I know it's not. And I know you've had so many more years to perfect it all. But we must be a mess for you to deal with."

Her laugh is more self-deprecating than anything else.

"You make it sound as though you've never seen me make mistakes. You've seen them, in multiple ways."

Finished one braid, off to the second - angled a little differently now, so it'll lay more naturally behind one ear.

"As far as being a doctor...What else would I do?"

"They never seem as bad as the ones we've made," she mumbles. Except maybe the Volturi incident.

"You could teach. Medicine, of course. Or we could become a traveling family band."

There's a tiny smile in there now.

"Partridge Family we are not."

"You can play the ukulele."

"Lead vocals or I'm out, goin' solo."

"Fight Esme for it."

"We can be like Heart. Both of us singing. You're not allowed to sing--we won't be a traveling libretto group." Alice tilts her head back to grin brightly at him.

"That's your loss. Opera recordings have made more money on charts in the US right now than your Heart."

See! Carlisle's hip!

"How?!" She wails, turning around completely to frown at him, her eyebrows drawn together. "Are you like....flooding the market? Somehow twisting the opera economy?!"

Carlisle thinks about pushing the point even further with some line about senior citizens outnumbering the youth of the country.

Instead: “Who is still buying albums legally? People who listen to opera or people who listen to new music?”

"People who listen to opera, definitely. Vinyl's gonna make a real big comeback and I bet you opera's gonna hop right on that train."

She stands fluidly, moving to perch on the arm of his chair, toes digging under his leg as she invades his space. It's been some time since the...events of Denali, Volterra, but still there are moments where she feels like a breath is caught in her throat, a spinning, dizzy worry that there is irreparable damage done between her and Carlisle.

Between her and Edward.

Darting forward, Alice wraps her fingers around Carlisle's biceps, her head against his, her voice small: "I love you, Papa."

This was not what Carlisle had expected. Alice perching like a bird on an armrest, sure, but not the last part.

“What’s this, hmm? I love you too, but this is not about just our feelings, is it.”

"I just worry," she whispers softly, her fingers smoothing out his sleeve from where they'd crumpled it a moment ago. "That I am too much. Edward's right, you forgive so easily. He doesn't forgive himself, ever, and I'm starting to wonder..."

If he's right? If there is some truth to his self-loathing. Not from her to Edward, but...for herself. She can hurt people. She didn't see that coming.

"I'm just, thoughtful. About Denali, Volterra. I don't want you to think about the things I said, before. But I can't not...I think about them a lot. And what if...what if they do come? And they do take me? And that's all you remember of me?"

Her face twists into a grimace and she rolls her eyes at herself. "It's stupid. I know. I feel stupid about it."

"Alice."

One of Carlisle's fingers scratches against his right temple. He's trying to plan what to say - there's an expectation of clarity, of support, of something?

"I won't tell you not to be concerned. It is unreasonable to not perceive them as a threat.

"What did you say that was incorrect or inaccurate?"

"All of it," she frowns at him, her eyebrows drawing closer together. "You...you're not a bad father, or a bad person, and I know I've apologized before, but..."

Her lips press together in a stressed grimace, shaking her head. "I don't...you don't deserve that. Ever, from me, from anyone. You're the greatest man I've known and I was looking for a dumb excuse. I was so mad at Edward. At you. At myself. Bella."

She twists her fingers into her dress, staring past Carlisle. "I just want to remember, always, that I adore you. That I'm useless without you, any of you. I don't want you to remember me as...that. A horrid, spoiled child with misplaced anger."

Part of all this upset, the anger that Alice describes, has very much to do with the fact that Alice was never allowed to actually be a child, but Carlisle doesn't voice that.

"I'm not your biological father, Alice. That part was true."

stormcrow

"I was not at my most couth then either, if I remember correctly."

"You're the only one that's mattered," she whispers. "If I press...if I push for the past, if I think of the man who was my biological father, it's all just...pain. And then I find out...they didn't want me in the first place. Because I was..."

Her lips twist, teeth grinding together hard enough to make her jaw creak. "A freak. I looked up what they did to girls in asylums in the twenties. I don't think, if I had ever had a child, I could ever do that."

Alice has never wanted or cared about children. She enjoys the freedom of being the child. But even she knows she couldn't do that to one.

"You were hurting." Nevermind that she was too. She doesn't care about what she was feeling. Only knowing that Carlisle knows he's right. Always right. Better than her--even though she doesn't mean to think it. Doesn't mean to drag it down further in her head.

She can see Edward shaking his head, a fraction of a tilt, if she made the decision to tell him about this self-deprecation. Well, he doesn't have to know.

"As were you. On your own and then also being able to read the family."

Alice is still perched on the armrest, so Carlisle tugs her slightly with the intent of pulling her to his lap.

"I would hope that by now, you would know that in this family, forgiveness is offered always and without exception. Even when it hurts."

She doesn't fight his tug, sliding into his lap, curling into his arms and resting her head upon his shoulder. Reaching out, Alice fiddles with the button of his shirt, her teeth pressing against her bottom lip as she tries to collect herself.

He's always so right. Even when she's all jumbled up and feeling stupid, it's never him that makes her feel that way. It's not her way to focus on the past this much--the way he bites out stormcrow--and though she'd like to feign ignorance over why she's having a hard time moving forward, she knows: Edward almost died. Aro almost took her. Because of stupid fighting.

"I know," she murmurs, fingers moving to twist the rings on her fingers, the words she needs catching in her throat, fighting as she tries to get them out. "I just find your resolve...your...love for us, amazing. Your heart, Carlisle. Is so big."

Carlisle, for all of his many laudable qualities, doesn't take compliments well. Deflecting, maintaining distance, all of the tools required to keep a successful façade of a life with humans sometimes creep into his everyday.

"The heart muscle of a humanoid male averages around 12 ounces."

"...my kingdom for a man who can take a compliment," Alice sighs, an unnecessary puff of air against Carlisle's neck. "You, Jasper, Edward. All miserably useless at it. At least Emmett takes them gracefully."

"You can't be the only one of the family to be fallible. We would not have anything in common otherwise."

"If Esme were here, she'd tell us we're both way too hard on ourselves." Alice murmurs, staring past Carlisle's chin and out the window across the room. "I can see it, clear as day, the way she'd sigh and kiss us both on the tops of our heads..."

She falls silent for a moment and then: "But I have to be. Hard on myself. It's my job to keep watch, keep us safe. I could've failed, so terribly, in Italy. I guess that's why you're hard on yourself too, huh? Protecting us."

Edited 2020-06-03 01:48 (UTC)

"It's like you've read my mine, my dear."

Only a little levity.

"Alice, I hear what you are saying. I do. But I will never convince you to be gentler with your gifts, or yourself. Likewise, I will always feel as though my purpose in this life and every other is to make sure you all are thriving.

"Even Edward. No matter how hard that may become."

"We're a trio, aren't we?"

It sounds frustrated and tired. The three of them, dancing around to make everyone else happy and content and never themselves. When one of them is happy, another suffers for it, she thinks, unfairly.

She's really got to stop being so melancholy. Alice is the happy one, she reminds herself. But no--that's just another role for her sometimes. She needs to understand that she's allowed to feel other feelings.

Even if she doesn't want to.

"It will get better. If he'd just...do it. I've already seen the ending...the choice is already made, eventually. If only he'd...trust me." The last is a rush, panicked and upset. Edward is her other half, a part of her heart, in a way that no one else can touch. And he doesn't trust her visions about Bella.

It would be so much easier if he would.

"Then it'd not be so...hard, upsetting. Mind-splitting-headache-giving. I could trust my ability to protect us again."

"So you have to do the harder piece now."

"What's that?"

"Trusting Edward."

He doesn't make it easy, now and then.

"I do," she whispers immediately.

But her thoughts whisper back do you?

She pushes herself up, perching on the edge of Carlisle's knee to look down at her father. "I do. Overall. But you're right. This is the harder piece."

Because it slaps her in the face--the fact she isn't trusting Edward to make the choice.

"I feel the same, if that is any comfort whatsoever. I trust Edward with my life. At some point, far in the future, I will trust him with his own.

"Until then, I will protect him as best I can."

He says it so eloquently, the way Carlisle says it.

Her version sounds much angrier in her mind.

And sarcastic--when will that be--but she nods, her short hair rustling with the movement. "Me too, then. I'll keep searching, see if anything changes."

"And in the meantime? Did you want me to finish your hair?"

"Okay," she murmurs, sliding to sit between his feet once more, her head leaned against his knee. "And then I'll find those butterfly clips for you, Papa."

A beat, and then she curls her fingers around his ankle to squeeze lightly. "Ca y ira."

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