(no subject)

[themidnightson]

It's been forty-three minutes and sixteen seconds.

Edward is standing in the ER, staring straight ahead of him.

Straight through every person and object collected before him.





Surgery is about to start two floors away; and he's not even attempting to cover his focus.

Comments

[themidnightson]

Edward didn't move at first, gaze staring at the far wall and receptionist, and the hands moving back and forth meticulously.






"They are right now."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle breathes out. That's good. Easier. Hopeful.

[themidnightson]

Hope is all but dead. All but.

He knows what he'll do if it is.
He has known for almost two days now.

Survival of a brutality, that is neither surprising nor unknown to him or any of his family, is not a gift of love. It's stone, hard facts. They all knew. But he can't bring himself to care.

He'll do anything now.
Anything if she'll make it through this.
There is no torture too great. Even leave forever.




Stitches finish. The team changes out. The focus shifts.
It's just a simple alignment. Even simply it will be messy. Painful.

He knows that, too. But when the bones are reset on the count of five, when even held down by four people she screams without rousing entirely, it happens too fast.

A hard crunch is the snap of the arm of the chair Edward had been holding on it. And then he is gone. A black and bronze blur through the doors and down into the hospital.

[ofthefamily]

Edward!

Carlisle is alarmed at the sudden disappearance, the flight Edward takes.

He is more noticeable. Supposed to be the adult, and not worried sick. Strong for the family and keeping his son from losing it entirely. He is more noticeable, so he can't run.

But he follows as fast as human legs would carry him.

[themidnightson]

Bella isn't screaming anymore when he stops in front of the right door.


Her head rolled to the side while they are inserting pins and while starting even more stitches. He wishes he could be ill. Could feel the wave of bile this should all raise.

That he could hit something, be breaking something.

But he's already broken Isabella.

[ofthefamily]

Edward.

Over the years, Carlisle learned how to speak to Edward quietly, even when they are both silent.

She will be alright.

[themidnightson]

He can't. He doesn't want. She has to be.

But what in his existence wasn't about living a hell?

Why had he allowed himself even the dream for seconds?







"Stop trying to comfort me."

[ofthefamily]

"Make me."

[themidnightson]

Edward's expression is expression is flatly black.

There's nothing young, willing to rise or even see the words as bait or challenge in that eternally seventeen year old visage.






"I did this."

[ofthefamily]

"Don't you dare say that again to my face. James put her here, not you."

This is not Carlisle saying that Bella's relationship with Edward isn't dangerous for her.

This is not Carlisle saying that their presence in Bella's life could go horribly awry.

But for him to say that he put Bella here, it's --

"Just don't."

[themidnightson]

He can't stop.

"If she hadn't been there that day--" Then it would have been another day, another set of nomads. Nearly every one of their kind not a Cullen's and Denali and Volturi was.

It would have simply happened later. Wouldn't it?

The sheer improbability. A vampire and human. Why had they let him?


The amount of how much all of this is his fault is beyond the hearing of the rebuke, beyond Carlisle's concern and care for him in it and all times. Edward shook his head, going to the beginning, the first domino.

"If I hadn't come back at all."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle swings a hand at half-speed, meaning for Edward's cheek. A wake-up call, reality check.

Don't you ever! You want to beat yourself up --

And Carlisle's mind brings back a different night of misery for them both and it's so much salt in the wound that he would even hint at doing so --

Don't hurt the rest of us in so doing.

[themidnightson]

Edward didn't stop Carlisle, but he was staring directly at him for the whole of his pulling his arm back until contact.

Resolutely; angry; insulted; deserving.

This wasn't about them. Any of them.

None of them would have been hurt.



His face didn't even shift at the collision of the hand with his skin, at either the sound that traveled outward from them when marble hit marble or the sudden voice from a nurse walking out of a nearby room.

"What are you doing here?! This whole area is off limits."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle doesn't even reply. Just stalks off; Edward will follow or he won't.

(And Carlisle will regret all of this later. But he just -- augh. Cazzo.)

He's worried too.

[themidnightson]

The knife thin glare that forms moving from Carlisle's suddenly retreating back to the woman who was about to speak stops her. The natural instinct of fear like a high pitched whine beneath all her cognitive thoughts.

More than feeling it, more than choosing it, he watches his livid inhuman expression ripple with disgust before he turned and walked away himself. But he didn't make any effort to follow Carlisle.






It takes another two hours before they've finally moved her into the private room Carlisle requested and lifted the ban for visitors. He stands near, but not within feet. He's never been more aware how fragile she was, how wrong what he had been doing was.

He should leave. They should all leave her.



And still what plagues him is how wrong she smells.

He'll never believe he isn't the bigger reason for all her transfusions.

[ofthefamily]

I shouldn't have hit you.

It's as close to an apology as Carlisle intends on getting, preferring instead to expend his efforts to see if he can peek at Bella's charts from behind the nurses' station.

[themidnightson]

It another five minutes, and the visit from a nurse who dosed Bella with more pain killers in her drip IV, before he finally speaks.


"I hadn't meant it that way."
Resignedly even and tempered, if nowhere near calm.

He hadn't even been thinking about him, or them, enough at that time to have even though about the implications Carlisle twined into it on hearing.

He couldn't imagine sitting still if they weren't here now.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle is pointedly sitting in a chair to avoid hovering over Bella and checking her vitals.

"I understand that now."

[themidnightson]

Edward was still leaning, straight and steady against the opposite wall from her, watching without looking away for the most part.




He wants to tell Carlisle didn't mean it. It'd be a lie.
And everything is already the shards of all the lies he's told.

[ofthefamily]

And Carlisle is fine with that for the most part. The tiny part that isn't, that wants to help and to fix and to make better for those he cares for, will just have to goddamn wait.

So Carlisle sits.

And waits.

And he wishes he knew for what.

[themidnightson]

Edward knows what he's waiting for.
What he should do now.



There are so many words in his head, combining deafening silence and eternal cacophony into one. He almost says so many things, only to follow them each time down the rabbit hole.

She was supposed to be safe. Alice had promised bigger things concerning her now.




He doesn't even know how much time passes before he reaches up and covers his face with a hand roughly, soundlessly. It's not as though it stops the sounds around him or the sight of her before his eyes.

[ofthefamily]

Bella doesn't even look half as pained as Edward does right now and Carlisle is having trouble standing it.

So he moves, slowly (and maybe still a little contrite about hitting him earlier) and lays a hand on him. Carlisle wants to do more, but...he'll try this first.

[themidnightson]

There isn't any tremor in him and he doesn't have to breathe, so the hand meets perfect stillness where it lays. Edward doesn't move himself or it.



"She was supposed to be safe." The stupidity dripping through the statement drives him to drop his hand and look up at the ceiling. "As much as she could be when I-" his face twisted at the memory of her blood. "--or with any of us."



That morning she had said she loved him.

In return she had been hunted and abused and nearly killed by a monster -- and then he'd earned the title, again, in nearly doing it to her himself.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle closes his eyes hard before trying to think of how best to speak. He's always tried to choose his words well in this life.

Everything just gets pushed into a soft "Oh, Edward," let out in a whoosh of air and squeezing of the hand on Edward's shoulder.

[themidnightson]

His gaze dropped back to her.

A small fragile girl, a child by any comparison that could be made, bound in wires and under heavy sedation. His Isabella. His... As though that were even a considerable thing now.

She'd understand all his warnings now. Now she'd finally run screaming.
It was sensible, logical, preservation and survival.



"She'll choose safety now."