1927, Philadelphia

[themidnightson]

'Cause that day in my life...
That day in my life...
~*~

Edward knows he's asking for it, courting it closer and closer -- his eyes turning shot thorough golden and then black, the shadow in the hollow of his eyelids a bruised purple -- but there is nowhere else to turn now.

Every road and path before it had been crossed off, every extra minutes' or days' or weeks' compromise he broached within himself was yet another bridge he was too angry (too tired, too alone) to consider managing from where all the days of yesterday had left him.

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[ofthefamily]

He doesn't hunt.

Carlisle can't make him hunt even if he felt like forcing it, but...he's gone starving before. Edward is going to go c--

Would you talk to me?

[themidnightson]

He isn't reading or playing.
He isn't really doing...anything.

(He's never been this thirsty by choice.)


It takes another half minute, but then his eyes track to where Carlisle is. There's something, a wrinkle in his expression, when he finds Carlisle's face.

[ofthefamily]

He'll have to start this.

There is nothing Carlisle wants less than to start this.

"You can't keep this up, Edward. You have to hunt."

[themidnightson]

Edward reached up his left hand and ran his fingers into his hair as he shook his head, slow and specific, too tight from the tension of all of it.

"I'm done with that."


It's too soon.


He can't say it fast enough.

He refuses to let himself look away.

[ofthefamily]

"Done with eating?"

If he's going to say it -- tell me, Edward.

[themidnightson]

"Done with hunting animals."


From holding himself back from what he's supposed to be.


From what Carlisle made him and then denied him being.


From being the person who maintained unswervingly.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle's thoughts are not shielded from Edward.

His mind just goes blank and slack, his expression matching.




"If that's what you need to do."

[themidnightson]

Carlisle's obliterating silence is compounded with the sudden cacophony of Esme's thoughts, rooms of paper thin walls away. She'd dropped whatever she'd been holding.

There's something to that. The dichotomy.

Painful; that only incites frustrated anger.

"Is that it?" He has to say it, before she comes.

[ofthefamily]

"No."

Carlisle hears Esme too, but he gathers himself in his head, fumbling through a No that's not it at all. Don't leave. I know you think you have to but we can make it work

Unless that's why Edward won't live as Carlisle does anymore.

It isn't about the hunting of animals.

[themidnightson]

He can't think about that. It's not even that he won't. He can't.

It's somewhere far away, beyond the thirst and the tunnel vision focused on Carlisle, beyond Esme's steps and the all the heart beats located in miles of them.



Edward turned fully from the window he had been at.

If he was human he might have taken a breath, felt more remorse, felt something, when he opened his mouth again. But he wasn't human, he hadn't been for years now, and he took the next step those first words had necessitated.

"I think you're wrong, and that you've been wrong. I think you've been holding us back from what we're supposed to be."

[ofthefamily]

Which is?

Carlisle can't even manage speech.

[themidnightson]

"More than just surviving like this." His expression almost wavered when she hit the doorway. "Hiding. Lying. Existing on their terms. Satiating ourselves on tasteless vermin."

[ofthefamily]

You would have me living in tunnels and hiding in a different way

Words disappear and desperate images flash at a greater speed than Carlisle's ever allowed them before -- the stench of gore in an Italian city run by vampires, screaming for days and crawling through the sludge of 1660s London just to escape and swim to France to hide yet again -- the backstabbing and intrigue and distrust their kind seems to revel in --

I would have you exist on your terms, not anyone else's.

[themidnightson]

"No, I wouldn't have you-"

Edward didn't even know where to make that end, even when his voice rose sharply, even when leaving it there was just as tragically mismanaged as any of the words he tried to make fit into the sentence. And that only heightened his frustration.

He couldn't. He looked away, glance flickering over Esme in the doorway, watching him, hurt and concern and anger and protectiveness in a forming knot, over her silent face and loud thoughts, the way her fingers curled on the door.

He looked back to Carlisle. "I won't do this anymore."

[sheisourheart]

Something was coming. They'd have to all be blind not to see it was coming. But this? Her husband looked as though he'd been hit repeatedly and Edward continued to throw words as though they weren't stones shattering a house of glass.

Her family was cracking at her feet.




"What will you do, then?"

[themidnightson]

There it was, the simplicity of Esme's voice cutting through everything to heart of it. Edward looked to her. It was better, and by that worse.



His gaze held to hers for a very long time.
Maybe half a minute, maybe many minutes.

She pleaded without words;
And threatened without understanding.


And Edward, turned his head to look at Carlisle.


There really was only one thing to say to that, right?



"I'm leaving."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle should ask when Edward will be back.

When it occurs to him that 'when' in that question could possibly be inappropriate, his mind goes blank and useless again.

[sheisourheart]

And then, there is went again.

The two different sides of the same coin.


Esme swallowed, her throat thick and whatever she had of a stomach dusted further, when she spoke. "When?"

[themidnightson]

Anything that isn't -- "Now." -- would only be an excuse to listen them making ramifications and fortifying for the next conversation, trying to convince him to stay or change his mind or justify where and how this would work for him.


All of it never understanding why and how. Still.