Title: Shadow to Light

Author: Girl Who Writes

Characters: Alice/Jasper

Word Count: 4254

Rating: PG

Genre: AU, Angst

Summary: AU. In 1918, Jasper lures the newborn known as Mary-Alice back to Monterrey. He is lost to her before it even begins.

Notes: And I continue my George R.R. Martin-style update timing. On the upside, since Jasper's last chapter was split in half, and everyone is in lockdown, Chapter 7 should arrive a lot sooner. I have once again lost any perspective regarding the quality of this chapter.

Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, liked, and left comments. It means the world to me that people like my writing, and are enjoying my stories.

Story notes are on tumblr and AO3 because does not like my formatting.

Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer; I make no profit from this fan-based venture.

Six. You had to look inside me to see the scar

What does freedom feel like?

It feels like everything and nothing. It makes her feel very small but very powerful.

It makes the empty space where her human memories are supposed to be seem impossibly vast.

It feels like she has been remade - no better or worse, just different - and with every step away from Mexico, she fits another piece of this new self into place.

So she keeps running.

She tries not to peek, pushes the visions that aren't directly involved in her current safety to the back of her mind.

Now is not the time.

Not to time to look and see the Major and his family, to plan her escape to their peace.

Not the time to try and figure out where he is, and how she is supposed to get there. To decipher names and places and topography into some kind of map.

Now is not the time to look forward and see if she even makes it there; if there is anything waiting for her after this.

Now is not the time to think or consider or worry.

It is time to keep moving, keep watching, keep ready.

Just keep moving.

That was the very first rule the Major ever taught her about battle. Stillness meant death. If you were moving, you might lose a limb - but that could be fixed later. But to pause, to stop, to wait…

She moves faster.

How long does she run, really?

It feels like nothing, but it feels like everything. There's sand, and rock, and road, and mud. There's sun she hides from, there's long cloudy nights that smell wrong.

The first time she stops running in the middle of a forest, right next to a river. The forest is so green, it feels like it is burning itself into her eyes. The smell of damp and rotting leaves almost wraps itself around her, and she can hear the rustle of birds and small prey around her. The early morning light has a different kind of brightness than it ever was in Mexico, filtering through the trees.

It's enough to distract her, to make her forget the dust on her dress is also ash; that there is no chain around her neck weighing her down.

Enough for her not to notice the family camping on the other side of the river, until it's too late. Wide eyes, clean clothes, and pounding hearts.

They want to help her, and they do.

She takes the little girl's sweater, because it fits her and somehow there's no blood on it.

And then she keeps running.

She finds herself in the city. A city? Its name isn't important. It wasn't chosen for any reason beyond her proximity to it. It's a city with no overwhelmingly singular vampiric scent, so no covens have claimed it as territory. It is teeming with humans and animals - mostly reeking vermin - that will help erase her path through the streets. It's been a long time since she's come across a gifted tracker, but she can't be too careful. Not now, when she by herself without anyone at her back, without any claims or power or allies.

The city is the easiest place she's ever been, really. When they took people for the armies, the local priest would pray for their safe return, and then - after a time - their peaceful deaths. People knew not to linger too long on the streets after dark; spirituality, religion, and long-forgotten truths congealed into an unspoken fear of what lay beyond their neat little human worlds. They thought a little cross or a yelled prayer might spare them.

Here, there is no fear, no caution. There is no time or interest or awareness. Just people, constantly moving. She kills a man who spits at her and tells her to go home to her mother, and leaves his body amongst the garbage, with his throat torn away.

She likes the people.

Not to hunt. Well, not only to hunt. They make it easy, with all the dark alleys and forgotten corners, with the stillness of late night. But she likes watching them. At the way they react to the people around them, familiar or foreign; at the way they move and hurry and stumble; at the ridiculous mess of clothing - new, old, elaborate, plain. They carry food and flowers and small animals, and they just… are. Constantly in motion, from the click of high-heeled shoes on the sidewalk, to the thump of their hearts.

But then, she hates the stench of so many human bodies together, of waste and garbage and damp. She hates the constant prickling hum of neon signs, and the filth of their transport, and the rotting remains of human food. Sometimes all the things she hates about it feels like it is choking her, holding her down, and she misses the sand, the ocean, the solitude.

She stays anyway.

Days and nights jumble together, and she doesn't keep track of them. For that time, she simply is.

She learns how to steal. Clothes usually, though she gives up on shoes quickly, and she refuses to be parted with her hooded sweater. Sometimes small, forgotten things - a lost button, some change, a bit of ribbon. Little things, things she can keep and claim. Little bits of treasure she finds in the gutter, when the rest of the world is asleep.

It takes time, until she realises she's waiting, again. Waiting for… something. Anything. A direction, a purpose, a plan. Her visions remain reluctant and unhelpful, showing her nothing more useful than a particularly beautiful dress being strung up on a clothes line, a broken bracelet in a gutter, a drunk slumped down the side of a dumpster - links in a chain of days, nothing even slightly helpful.

She steals more clothes, she kills more drunks, she watches and waits. She ignores the few glimpses of Maria her visions shove at her. She doesn't want to know. She can't know - it's not like she can ever go home again.

It's not like she even has a home beyond the reeking alleys and backstreets of whichever city she's in. 'Home' is an out-of-commission subway tunnel, or a forgotten warehouse. 'Home' is the night sky, when she can creep across the city, and find something new to see. 'Home' is being utterly alone for the very first time she can remember, and… it's really not home at all. Those are just the times she doesn't have to hold her breath tight, hold her very self tight, and slip through a human world that feels more like a bear trap than any sort of freedom.

This is what being lost is, and she doesn't care for it at all.

Sometimes she lets herself think. She finds herself a place for the day, and sometimes she'll let herself be weak, let her mind run wild.

She wonders what it will be like, seeing the Major again.

On one hand, he's been gone for a long time, lived a lifetime without her and Maria. Maybe he's different. Maybe he'll be confused, when she shows up. That in her story, he was the sun, the lost treasure map, the King on the chessboard. But in his, she's like the grains of sand that she'd shed on her runs back from the beach; the button that gets lost in the street, or just another newborn, another soldier.

Maybe he won't want her with his family. A refugee that will be sent on her way.

She doesn't like those thoughts; she shoves them in the back of her mind where she doesn't linger, and smothers down the panic, the hopelessness that wells up when the little voice in her head whispers "what if…"

Instead, she thinks about if he's the same. If being 'Jasper' has swallowed up everything the Major was. It's hard for her to quantify, that difference. For her, his title is symbolic of every nuance, the very essence of him to her - the harsh words that were the difference between life and death; the way he'd take her hands in his before he'd lean down to kiss her on their days alone; the time he took to explain things, his hands gesturing as he spoke.

If she were a different kind of girl, she'd think maybe all those little things about him that she's collected and tucked behind her dead old heart might mean something. But for now, they are touchstones of her hope for something a little better than what's behind her.

She is curled in the metal rafters of an old warehouse, watching clouds pass over the night sky through a hole in the roof. A new treasure - a strand of blood red beads - is twisted around her fingers. It is just another night - there is absolutely nothing special about the day, the week, the month…

Red hair. Vengeance, rage, loss written over a face. Running south, like a bullet.

Sand on bare feet, the tilt of a familiar chin, a blood-red smirk.

Maria, complete with a new scar down her face. Newborns she cannot recognise, quiet, solemn Reina at Maria's side.

And then green, so much green that it feels like it is a living, breathing mass. A sign that she cannot quite read, but she saw a human map once, with each of the states labelled with two letters. She knows W-A - it's right up the top, further than she's ever gone.

An army - feral, raging newborns with no training and one direction.

The Major. The Major, caught unaware, furious and terrified. The Cullens, vulnerable but determined.

And then death.

The vision clears as instantly as it began, just in time for the string between her fingers to break, and send a small rain of red beads down to the concrete below.

But she is already moving before the last bead hits the ground.

Move faster, Mary-Alice!

It's not easy to get as far north as the Major and his family are. There might not be war, there might not be battles, but there are territories and threats and risks.

And she is confusing to them. She is small enough that they think she is - was - young (perhaps even too young, but they are cautious enough not to outright accuse her of the highest of crimes). But then, they glimpse her scars, and they are defensive. They want her gone.

But they don't know exactly how dangerous she is. After all, she's a small girl in an ill-fitting dress. They think they can scare her. They think they can threaten her.

Some of them let her pass by. Others need to be taught a lesson. But she makes it north.

Of course she makes it north. She made it through the wars, she made it through the South, through Mexico and Monterrey and out the other side. Nothing has ever stopped her going exactly where she needs to be, and she'll be damned if she falters before the finish line.

She makes it to the city, and then she is stuck. She cannot read, so the sign in her vision is nothing more than hieroglyphics in her irritated mind. In stolen, dirty clothing, she isn't a welcome patron of bookshops or libraries, plus it is not yet… wise to venture into close human quarters.

So she wanders, waiting for a trigger, for a vision, for a goddamn compass to point her in the right direction. She walks the night streets, finding the solitary and the homeless to keep her sated and balanced. She traces the symbols in fogged and greasy glass to try and decipher it, to try and know something.

Six long nights - and longer days - she is there before she writes it on a bus-station window, her lines fluid and clear now that she has drawn them so many times.

"Going to Forks, love?"

She looks over at the man bundled up in clothing, clutching a paper cup of some reeking fluid. He's got a bag bundled next to him, and his cheeks are bright red and unshaven. Reeking and unremarkable, his interruption might have saved his life.

"Forks?" she asks, her voice sweet but curious.

"Up north." He coughs wetly, and Alice wonders if he's ill. She's seen humans die of illness back up in Mexico, and it is fascinating and terrible to watch. "Not much up there, it's a small town."

She looks at what she's written, and looks back at him. "What does it say?" her voice is girlish and bewildered, when she wants to shake this man until he answers every question she has.

"The City of Forks," the man recites obediently. "Part of their sign. Worked up there, few years back." Then he studies her. "Can't you read it? You wrote it."

"No, I can't read." She frowns and nods. "North." She turns to leave.

"Honey, where are your shoes?" he calls after her, but she doesn't turn back as she walks forward into the darkness, with a purpose. She's already out of the city when she thinks maybe she should have thanked him, but figures leaving him alive was probably thanks enough.

She gets halfway through a massive forest when she stops. She freezes and sniffs the air like a common dog, before she scampers up into the canopy of trees. Oh, she doesn't like that smell at all. She's dealt with the pyres, with dismemberment and dying humans, with the reek of the city, and the stench of humanity, but never has she smelt anything like that. It is foul, and it is dangerous.

And it makes getting further north very, very irritating - she kicks down a tree in a temper when she realises her visions are blocked by whatever emits the stench, forcing her to search for the path around the darkness.

But she makes it (she goes too far north at first, and startles a pair of hikers into grievous harm, and well, waste not want not). She makes it to the sign, in the middle of a grim, rainy night, and this must be how the pious feel in front of an altar.

She cannot stay ("Always keep moving, Mary-Alice") because the stench that has chased her through the forests still trails her, and she's no fool.

But she made it.

She made it.

The days that follow are a jumble. She finds haven in an old cave near a river; good for covering her presence, her scent. Away from the people of Forks, away from whatever is blocking her visions, and away from the Major.

It takes no time, then, to find the redhead in her visions, to find her paths and follow them back closer to the town. To find the house the redhead stalks. Watches her steal clothing, press her pale hands against the windows, and crouch in a tree, watching and waiting.

(Why the same house? What is so interesting about the girl and the man?)

She watches and waits, and then steals a sweater for herself, to cover up the scent of her presence in case the redhead gets curious. She follows the man between his work and his home in the early evenings. She can't follow the girl, because her visions disappear, but she always reappears at dusk, the stench clinging to her clothes and her hair.

She trails after the redhead - the woman is fast, but she is faster. The woman occasionally brings companions with her - newborns, she realises, with apprehension. Old enough to know their power, to wield their strength, but young enough to cause devastation.

She follows and listens and watches and tries to piece the entire piece together; there's a human girl involved, and the Cullens, and the redhead - Victoria - feels the need to raze the Cullens and the town to the ground in some kind of retribution.

Huh. It's an original dilemma, and Alice thought she'd seen them all. She trails Victoria and whichever newborn she brings with her, watches from the crooks of tree branches with Isabella's sweater wrapped around her shoulders. She kills more than one wandering newborn, grimly aware of what would transpire if they make it into the small town.

She finds smouldering remains of others, and wonders if she'll cross paths with the Cullens. No one else in this town would be able to destroy a newborn, even if she hasn't seen any visions of them finding Victoria's rogues.

(She's not even a little bit ready to acknowledge Maria's role in this. That Maria is almost the architect of this disaster, and she wonders if the old harpy knows, knows that it is the Major and the Cullens, and this is her farewell gift. It's no question whose side Alice herself would take, but she is repulsed by the idea this is Maria's fault, of Maria's design.)

It is a muddle of calm and anticipation; of fear and curiosity. A veritable balancing act of watching Victoria, of watching Isabella Swan, and remaining unseen.

She wonders why she's waiting. She's here to help the Major, but she hasn't even sought him out. She's not naive enough to pretend she's trying to make up for her past, by watching over the humans. She's not stuck in a girlish stupor, so close and yet so far to her intended target. The best she can come up with is that, when it comes down to it, she is an old soldier, trained and tested. And no soldier goes into battle without knowing the field, without knowing the players, the pieces, and the price.

In the few days she lingers around the peninsula, around Forks, the stench creeps a little bit closer to her hideout, wiping away any and all of her foresight. She has no choice, no map, no path. She has no idea what the next right move is. She cannot make a leap of faith, convince herself that whatever divine power gifted her the visions will see her to the Major's side no matter what.

She has made waiting an art form, and she is goddamned tired of it.

Victoria beats her to making the first move. A convenient motorcycle accident has provided her with blood, but it is at the throat of the victim when the vision hits.

Every single one of the windows smashed in.

Two bedroom doors splintered down the middle.

The man sprawled out on the floor, his eyes wide in horror and face white, with his throat ripped through to the bone of his spine.

Blood splattered on the wallpaper, smeared with fingers that cut into the wall like a knife.

And Isabella, dead. The most dead anyone could possibly ever be. She has seen human death in a hundred different ways, and this… this takes her back to the humans in the shed, the day that Maria found the Major gone.

It is inconvenient, but no other word quite describes Victoria so well. She growls, forgetting to pocket the dead man's watch as she hurriedly cleans up, leaving a convincing, if bloody, accident scene. It is already late, no one will find it until morning, when the animals have taken their fill.

She runs, Isabella's sweater billowing out behind her, as she dives through the forest; she can see her path to the town, to the house, clearly for now - whatever is blocking her visions has vanished for now, thankfully. Perhaps Victoria was evading it as well? A thought for another time she decides as she slips between the houses and closer toward Isabella's residence.

Victoria's scent is everywhere, and she feels the growl rumbling in her chest as she slips down the street, sniffing and watching for any of the newborns. The night is as still as a human town gets. There is no blood on the air, no lights on inside the houses, just Victoria's trail.

She sees the plastic garbage bags taped over some of the windows at the Swan house, crackling in the breeze, and she is watching the house when she spies Victoria, perched on the roof. There is a monstrous smile on the woman's face, as her plan takes shape, and Alice wonders were the Cullens are. Isabella has been so well guarded, away from the house. Why is she alone now?

She steps into the pool of light the feeble street lamp gives off, and growls low, in warning. Victoria's gaze meets hers, and for a second, they are locked together. As vampires, who know the push and pull of instincts and senses that humans cannot comprehend; as women who have been disappointed by the stacked deck their second life has dealt them, and as old predators who have their eyes on the same pound of flesh.

She tilts her head so that the scar above her right eye catches the light; an unspoken warning, her medal of honour. Victoria's face is twisted in a vicious scowl; the vision is fading. Isabella will live the night.

Victoria takes off with a throaty snarl, one that rouses a few of the neighbours, but she is already distracted again. By the pale face staring at her from an unbroken window of the Swan house, eyes round in fear. She doesn't meet the girl's gaze, just stares at Victoria's abandoned perch.

Victoria and Isabella both know she's here now, which means the newborns will know, and the Cullens will be told soon enough - by morning, at least.

This is it.

What she came for.

What she waited for.

And she turns away from the Swan house, walking into the darkness.

Whatever - or whoever - creates the foul smell around the forest rises up as she moves closer towards the Cullen's land. Her visions have gone dark again, and she's working with the sheer conviction that the time is now - to reveal herself and what she knows. To plan and prepare.

She is intensely aware she will have to feed again if they wait much longer; that the Cullens do not hunt the locals, and that Victoria is most likely enraged that she was interrupted at the Swan house. Things will happen quickly now; she knows the tension in the air, in the set of Isabella's shoulders. The heaviness of the air before a battle.

It's been a while, and whilst she doesn't miss it in a way that makes her want to seek it out again, she can't say she doesn't relish the anticipation of a fight.

The scent of the Cullens and the Major feels like it has seeped into the soil, as she slips through. She slows her pace, and creeps forward, ready to skitter off into the darkness if the situation changes, if whatever has blocked her visions comes swooping down at her.

She finds a perch, and sees them all, with her own eyes, in that moment. The Cullens.

Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Emmett, and Edward. (They are no different from her visions. Clean clothes, golden eyes, kind faces.)

Drawn-looking Isabella.

The Major.

And ten of the largest wolves she has ever seen in her long life.

Unnaturally large wolves, that appear to be listening to the Major and to Edward Cullen.

Huh.

It does not take a great intellect to make the connection, to Isabella's protection, the darkness of her visions, and the reeking trails through the forest. Supernatural wolves.

The Major always manages to surprise her.

As she moves closer, she takes a deep breath, lets her own thoughts and worries slide off her, like water over stone. The Major never did well with … an excess of emotion, and she's not going to contribute to more stress now, not before battle. She can be that girl, that soldier, again and carry that stillness that protected them both all those years ago. The time for feelings will come eventually. Just not today.

And she can see the tension, the burden he carries, in the way he stands, in the way his jaw is set and the pinched look on his face. Something akin to regret; if it was anyone else, she would guess fear. But not the Major; for him, it is regret, regret at the deaths to come. It is the way of war, after all.

A breeze twists through, dragging her scent towards the clearing and the wolves begin to rumble. There's a massive tree behind her that she can shinny up quickly enough, but she doesn't like the indignity of introducing herself from the bower of a spruce. She sees the Major straighten, an air of bewilderment about him, as he half turns towards her.

The look on his face is … unfamiliar. It is incredulity, confusion, and something she cannot name. He opens his mouth to say something, but stops and just stares at her.

"Hello, Major. I heard you might need some help." She stops at the edge of the clearing, staring up at him, waiting, and not willing to get even an inch closer to the wolves.

She wants to believe there is something almost warm in his eyes when he dips his head in greeting, and if her world was upside down since she started running, his voice tips it upright again as he speaks to her.

"Mary-Alice."

(She wants to laugh, to sit down in the mud and laugh like a mad girl. How far has she run, how hard has she fought and tricked and waited, just to hear him say her name one more? But she can't, not yet. Soon. And for once, soon is enough.)