Alice Whitlock Cullen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
betagainstme) wrote2020-06-01 09:34 pm
betagainstme) wrote2020-06-01 09:34 pm
Entry tags:
1960.
It's summer.
The world around the Cullens' home has burst into life with flowers and green grass and the sounds of summer bugs chirping and singing. The air smells sweet, a thousand different flowers open wide with their scents, reaching upward as the earth prepares for rain.
Because, as Alice knows with a near certainty, it will rain today. Dark clouds gather far across the horizon, looming in a threat for the evening.
She stands on the edge of the deck, her feet braced against the posts holding the fencing up, making her taller than her normal four-eleven, her head cocked to the side as she watches bees buzz by, birds swoop to pick bugs off the flowers.
A flash of something coming--laughter, water, Edward grinning so widely it seems his face may split, Esme exasperated at their sopping clothes, the water tracked into the house, but smiling, Carlisle smiling, because Edward is smiling--and then it passes, flitting away but not gone.
Glancing over her shoulder, Alice raises her eyebrows at Edward as he steps out onto the deck, closing the kitchen door behind him. "There's a river nearby."
The world around the Cullens' home has burst into life with flowers and green grass and the sounds of summer bugs chirping and singing. The air smells sweet, a thousand different flowers open wide with their scents, reaching upward as the earth prepares for rain.
Because, as Alice knows with a near certainty, it will rain today. Dark clouds gather far across the horizon, looming in a threat for the evening.
She stands on the edge of the deck, her feet braced against the posts holding the fencing up, making her taller than her normal four-eleven, her head cocked to the side as she watches bees buzz by, birds swoop to pick bugs off the flowers.
A flash of something coming--laughter, water, Edward grinning so widely it seems his face may split, Esme exasperated at their sopping clothes, the water tracked into the house, but smiling, Carlisle smiling, because Edward is smiling--and then it passes, flitting away but not gone.
Glancing over her shoulder, Alice raises her eyebrows at Edward as he steps out onto the deck, closing the kitchen door behind him. "There's a river nearby."
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A hand ends up raising, casually, a thumb tucked in his pocket.
His head barely tilting. At her voice. As the flicker of images.
"Doesn't seem very..." He lets it drag. Considers. A glance up. "--sporting."
But there's something light inside his tone. It's not any of the thousand slammed doors he once gave her from worded to single frozen looks. It's almost teasing. Just barely not to there. And he doesn't fault his steps headed toward her.
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A cardinal lands on the garden path, red and bright and beautiful. It hops around a little, picking at bits of grass and twigs until it unearths what it's searching for: a little pill bug, curled up tight in a ball. The cardinal carries it off again, Alice watching its flight with detached interest.
She waits until Edward is closer before pushing herself back and off the railing, twirling gracefully on her toes when she lands to look up at him. Edward, impossibly tall, and Alice, barely reaching his bicep at full height.
It doesn't stop her from reaching up and straightening his collar, barely out of place, a slight wrinkle from moving. She hums, glancing over her shoulder at the wide world behind them once more.
We can talk a walk. Is that more sporting for you, old boy?
Her elbow grazes his side to nudge in jest, barely there.
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(He might actually be slightly slouched and forward.)
A dutifully, half-blank, contrition with the faintest flick of eyebrows.
Rosalie is the only one of the three of them that don't. But Esme has her own, completely different, completely only Esme, reasons, and more than half his wardrobe has been absconded with by Alice, even if supposedly all three of them go shopping together. He knows better.
"Or we could run."
Why would you ever suggest going slow, Alice?
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But she is more acrobatic than him. And less constrained by pants. She vaults over the railing and lands in the grass, frowning as her heel sinks into the dirt below. Standing perfectly on one foot, Alice unstraps the shoe and sets it on the deck above her, then the other.
C'mon, then.
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Given they will never change, she will always be the smallest of them.
Even in his time, she would have been called diminutive.
"That sounds like a personal problem."
Edward hopped the fence, with a single hand on the top, in fluid graceful movement. There's even a small chuckle as she stared at the offending mud on her shoes and put them away carefully. As though she couldn't run through them like water. Alice's presence in their family had made any number of assets more fluid than they'd been in decades. They'd never wanted for much before them, but it was almost, entirely, inconsequential a concern now.
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She sets off, flitting between Esme's flowers and the trees, knowing Edward is right at her heels and will soon overtake her. She's going towards the river, it's solidifying in her mind more and more, less hazy, less gossamer-thread-thin.
Nothing has to be said to Edward about it. He's seen it in her mind already, will adjust accordingly.
(She's never felt more whole)
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But that doesn't mean there isn't something nice to it being almost purposeless.
This isn't a hunt, and it isn't any of the years he was running to outrun his own skin.
Alice's jubilance bounces around his mind, brighter and brighter, filling more space with only itself the further they get from the house, as they cross those invisible lines where Edward hears less and less and then none of the rest of the family. But he doesn't worry about it, except tangentially. She'll see it if something shifts. Her power has it's own strange limitations, too, but range isn't one of them.
It's not the same for him. Not exactly. It's... easier. He didn't even think about saying no. Except as a joke. Esme still thinks it's exactly what he needed. (When she isn't wondering if he won't always be half alone against the world, incomplete without another as he continues to disregard options, even with Alice's near constant presence and their own little world.) It's not the same, but it's even easier with each passing year.
Even though he can't, even though it makes him remember vividly,
sometimes he almost forgets what it was like not to have her there.
"Wouldn't help you." He decides to continue on, only a minute or two later.
"If it made you taller, then it would make all of us taller."
And then they'd be even more like titans among fieldmice.
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She slows as they near the river, her fingers brushing flowers and overgrown grass. Around them, away from the house and its noises, nature's sounds fill the air. Cicadas scream and bees buzz as Alice spins to take in the world around her.
To her left, the river rushes over rocks and a fallen tree. Across the way, a rabbit hops away from the water. In her mind, a vision of her splashing Edward and his pristine clothes--and his retaliation on her.
Her lips twitch in a smile, carefully and purposely shrugging her sweater off to lay over a tree branch. "Jasper gave me this sweater, I don't want it to be messed up."
The dress can be replaced. Her eyebrows raise at him as she cocks her head toward the water. A question? A dare?
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Edward snorts, even with the smallest shake of his head.
His hair is a riot of wind-blown copper by the time they stop, not that it much ever stops being that. Just this side of a little too long. Most people find it artfully rebellious, this not quite to unprofessionally outright head tip to the burgeoning new collective of 'hippies' pushing their way on to the stage. Of his age. As though it's a choice and not another iota of his frozen existence.
His brow quirked. Amused derision at her explanation of the article.
He didn't have much care for the clothes on him, even if she likely picked most.
It's all she gets -- no warning at all (except that, as always, it flickers to life between them, in their minds) -- as he lunges toward her, a silent streak of speed, even knowing she'll know he's coming.
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Her laughter is high, a gasping full-gale scream of joy as she clutches onto Edward's shoulders, letting him take her, carry her toward the river.
Alice braces, her toes the first to hit the water--cold, even in the summer--then the hem of her dress, Edward's pants. Wrestling out of his grip (quick, squirming, laughing breathlessly and full of happiness), as soon as she's dropped back to the ground, and the water, she cups her hands, sending a spray toward him.
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Predators of the highest accord even when he's ignoring all the tempting sounds of panic and fleeing, the scent of terror, for dropping Alice, bare feet and floating dress in the far traveled cold, mountain-fed water. Already having to duck when her flailing is still an acrobatic marvel that twists and comes up flinging water. A wall of icy water that spatters half his face even when he jumps back with a laugh, kicking water in her direction, with the submerged shoes that definitely won't survive this.
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Alice squeals as the water splashes over her, wetting her hair, the top of her dress, soaking her completely now. Cupping her hands, she fills them and throws more towards him, aiming for the wild hair atop his head. Time to soak 'em down.
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The unweighted possessiveness of it.
Bright and gold as the sunshine, blinding on the top of the river and in the water droplets bothing flying through and clinging to the air between, disturbed by her (their) sudden fit of whimsy. She gives him the space to be this. Space to not even think about the next step, word, choice first. To keep her on her toes, more in this second than the trillion others crowning her mind, always coming and coming.
When Edward's sputtering as the water smacks his shoulder, the bottom of his face, more in his mouth than his hair. And it tastes like shit, but at least he doesn't need to breathe. Doesn't stop him from laughing, even though he'll be spitting it up later, and darting backward, holding his hands up like a challenge, waving her forward toward him still,
"Nope, still too short."
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Alice can't make deliberate decisions, not with Edward, if she doesn't want him to see them. It's taken them the last decade to get it right, to figure out where her mind ends and his begins and then accepting that it's fluid and changing and ever present.
The Edward in front of her is so different than the standoffish boy she met in 1950. The Edward in front of her is hers, to have, to hold, to cherish. Something special that was cause for concern then, and is as normal as the changing of leaves in fall now.
So she darts forward, not thinking anything through, singing songs in her head to keep him from digging too deep (though, she knows, that won't work either, the visions always push their way forward, so it's best to just be spontaneous) and goes for his legs, an attempt at toppling him over.
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Her voice fills his head, singing high, and an offkey she can't ever get to with her real voice, even as she's flying through the air at him, thinking the same thing they both know. She'll always be having the visions, even if she tries not to, and he'll always have all of their thoughts, even if he lets them believe from time to time they can keep anything from him.
It's politeness, not ability. Because he'll always hear both parts going on. The closest it ever comes is only if they fully commit to the distraction with not a single other thought until they're gone, but people, and even vampires, don't manage that. Any of them. It always bleed through. That part of this, too. The secrets they keep for each other, even from their own family, so their family can still feel unencumbered by how deep and far their gifts truly go.
But even more, as Alice collides with him, with that truly ear crashing sound of marble on marble,
even through clothes, it's not either of those really that makes it happen.
He's already agreed to getting caught in the ways that matter more than this second, as his back slams the top of the river, and he sinks like any statue might, hard and fast in the minuscule depth, he already agreed. From the first moment. To getting caught. The same as he already agreed to coming home, soaking wet, dripping everywhere on Esme's carpet while she can't decide if she's angry or elated. The first step did that.
Fast as that happens though, river water soaked through his whole outfit, running rivlets traveling down his face and his neck from the amount of it suddenly in his hair, he's already reaching down for her shoulders and twisting his body in an aim to dunk her right under him, into the water just as quickly, too.
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Sputtering, laughing, she pushes him off of her to sit up, wipe at the makeup running down her face. Her cheeks ache from the smile she can't, won't, get rid of, the laughter that rings through the air at Edward's hair now formed to his head by the water, still looking every bit as modelesque as ever.
A frog hops out of the water next to them, frantically trying to get away from the interlopers, and that for some reason, makes Alice laugh harder.