Waxing Crescent (Alice Cullen x Bella Swan)

Chapter 10 - Finding Home

I hadn't heard her enter but I did hear the wail that shook the walls of the room.

I searched through tear-logged eyes, making out her face through the moisture.

"Alice," I croaked, "Alice... Are you alright?"

She rushed to my side in a burst of speed, her arms wrapping around me like a vice, although not altogether an unpleasant one. 

"Am I alright? Am I alright? Oh my love," Her head fell into the crook of my neck as she mumbled her words breathlessly against my skin.

"Please, Bella. Do not listen to my ignorant sister. Do not dare believe a word out of her treacherous mouth!" She continued to plead with me, her words tingling over my flesh, "She is so often caught up in her own personal theatrics that she fails to see the truth - made bitter by her own losses and misgivings. I dread the thought of you ever allowing her words to hurt you."

"How can I not?" I tugged, pulling out of her grasp, "Nothing she said was a lie. It's like I've been trying to tell you all of this time - I'm not meant for your world and I don't fit into your life. Just look at what I did to Edward! I practically drove him out of house and home because I'm human and he's not. It's unfair of me to be so selfish. To force myself into this world - your life - and tear your family apart in the process."

My words were cold and unfeeling, only the salt fringing my lashes betraying the illusion.

It wouldn't do to show Alice how much I was hurting, because it would only make this harder.

"What on earth are you talking about?" She scrutinized my face, her jaw clenching when she found only more dissatisfaction, "You did not run Edward out of this house! He did that to himself. And I would know - I know him better than anyone else here! My brother is... stuck. In some ways, we are all still stuck. Permanently rooted to the year that we were changed - our development forever frozen in chilling ice and impenetrable stone. He is a seventeen year old boy, regardless of the hundred or so years he has actually lived through. He throws moody temper tantrums endlessly, and this is no different! If Rosalie said anything to you about it she is just trying to manipulate you. Do not listen to her."

"But-," I spluttered, my carefully curated thoughts already starting to reel, along with my once steadfast plans, "Why aren't you upset that Edward's gone? If you are so close, you should hate me!"

"Bella," Alice closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.

Frustration lined her porcelain features so inexorably that her usual appearance - a beautiful and pale doll-like frailty - was replaced with a sturdy and broiling vehemence.

"I told you. This is normal for him. Were you not listening at all? Every twenty or so years, he has this god awful habit of running away, all in search of an idealized meaning that he will never find. His departure was long overdue, and if you were not going to push him to it, something else inevitably would have. He died at a very confusing time - he had recently lost his parents to the Spanish influenza, and he was soon to follow them. He was also caught up in ideals of warfare and battle as if becoming a soldier would make him a man... As if it would give him an honourable identity! As a consequence, Is it at all surprising to you that, given such histories, and his violently underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, that he would pull a stunt like this?"

Alice looked... Tired. Like it drained her to dredge up bitter pasts and open wounds. Like it drained her to have to explain something so brutally obvious to some she had thought had understood.

I'd never felt more scolded in my life. No voice had been raised. No skin stung by the back of a keen hand. Alice's disappointment was the deadliest venom on the planet, and right now it was sinking deep into my veins, right through the bone and into marrow.