I felt his hand on my shoulder, and I shook it off absently. I couldn't pay attention to him.
"Fall for a human?" Esme repeated in a stunned voice. "For the girl he saved today? Fall in love with her?"
"What do you see, Alice? Exactly," Jasper demanded.
She turned toward him; I continued to stare numbly at the side of her face.
"It all depends on whether he is strong enough or not. Either he'll kill her himself" - she turned to meet my gaze again, glaring - "which would really irritate me, Edward, not to mention what it would do to you - " she faced Jasper again, "or she'll be one of us someday."
Someone gasped; I didn't look to see who.
"That's not going to happen!" I was shouting again. "Either one!"
Alice didn't seem to hear me. "It all depends," she repeated. "He may be just strong enough not to kill her - but it will be close. It will take an amazing amount of control," she mused. "More even than Carlisle has. He may be just strong enough...
The only thing he's not strong enough to do is stay away from her. That's a lost cause." I couldn't find my voice. No one else seemed to be able to either. The room was still.
I stared at Alice, and everyone else stared at me. I could see my own horrified expression from five different viewpoints.
After a long moment, Carlisle sighed.
"Well, this...complicates things."
"I'll say," Emmett agreed. His voice was still close to laughter. Trust Emmett to find the joke in the destruction of my life.
"I suppose the plans remain the same, though," Carlisle said thoughtfully. "We'll stay, and watch. Obviously, no one will...hurt the girl."
I stiffened.
"No," Jasper said quietly. "I can agree to that. If Alice sees only two ways - "
"No!" My voice was not a shout or a growl or a cry of despair, but some combination of the three. "No!"
I had to leave, to be away from the noise of their thoughts - Rosalie's selfrighteous disgust, Emmett's humor, Carlisle's never ending patience...
Worse: Alice's confidence. Jasper's confidence in that confidence.
Worst of all: Esme's...joy.
I stalked out of the room. Esme touched my arm as I passed, but I didn't acknowledge the gesture.
I was running before I was out of the house. I cleared the river in one bound, and raced into the forest. The rain was back again, falling so heavily that I was drenched in a few moments. I liked the thick sheet of water - it made a wall between me and the rest of the world. It closed me in, let me be alone.
I ran due east, over and through the mountains without breaking my straight course, until I could see the lights of Seattle on the other side of the sound. I stopped before I touched the borders of human civilization.
Shut in by the rain, all alone, I finally made myself look at what I had done - at the way I had mutilated the future.
First, the vision of Alice and the girl with their arms around each other - the trust and friendship was so obvious it shouted from the image. Bella's wide chocolate eyes were not bewildered in this vision, but still full of secrets - in this moment, they seemed to be happy secrets. She did not flinch away from Alice's cold arm.
What did it mean? How much did she know? In that still-life moment from the future, what did she think of me?
Then the other image, so much the same, yet now colored by horror. Alice and Bella, their arms still wrapped around each other in trusting friendship. But now there was no difference between those arms - both were white, smooth as marble, hard as steel. Bella's wide eyes were no longer chocolate. The irises were a shocking, vivid crimson. The secrets in them were unfathomable - acceptance or desolation? It was impossible to tell. Her face was cold and immortal.
I shuddered. I could not suppress the questions, similar, but different: What did it mean - how had this come about? And what did she think of me now?
I could answer that last one. If I forced her into this empty half-life through my weakness and selfishness, surely she would hate me.
But there was one more horrifying image - worse than any image I'd ever held inside my head.
My own eyes, deep crimson with human blood, the eyes of the monster. Bella's broken body in my arms, ashy white, drained, lifeless. It was so concrete, so clear. I couldn't stand to see this. Could not bear it. I tried to banish it from my mind, tried to see something else, anything else. Tried to see again the expression on her living face that had obstructed my view for the last chapter of my existence. All to no avail. Alice's bleak vision filled my head, and I writhed internally with the agony it caused. Meanwhile, the monster in me was overflowing with glee, jubilant at the likelihood of his success. It sickened me.
This could not be allowed. There had to be a way to circumvent the future. I would not let Alice's visions direct me. I could choose a different path. There was always a choice.
There had to be.
5. Invitations