(no subject)

[themidnightson]

The Back Door opens and closes.

Two people leave, one dressed for the weather and one decidedly not.

The snow is still covering the ground except for well worn paths that have turned slushy and gray-brown. But it isn't falling right now. And Edward paused, while the door swung closed, to look across the expanse. Would anything feel far enough here to him? Was it just another distraction from?


Except he could not chance these things;
And he did not trust the Front Door after all the things it had thrown at them.

Comments

[noteful]

Things are what they are.

Meg pulls her gloves on.

"Where to?"

[themidnightson]

Edward started walking forward at a consistent pace.

There is a glance toward the forest. But it wouldn't be safe for her. Toward the mountains. Which is almost outlandishly an over reaction. It's far enough to be too far even. Even if it is tempting.

They turn toward a path between, heading between the bar and the lake off toward the left from Milliways.

[noteful]

Meg has walked this path before.

It was warmer then.

For now she'll just follow, three steps behind, and wait till he's wherever it is he wants to be.

[themidnightson]

Edward keeps walking. It's oddly enough a lot like another walk he took not too long ago at home. At least he had a specific destination in mind then. He'd made decision about how and what and why.

Right before it all fell apart.

He doesn't notice the cold, but he does keep an awareness on how she's doing and whether anyone notices them leaving or is about anywhere near them. He goes for a while, never even anything less than perfect, less than moving at what to him is glacially slow pace, listening to the words that aren't words rattle in his head.

Until he stops in the middle of the path.

"We don't talk to people about this. I don't."

[noteful]

She's aware that it's cold, but not especially bothered by it.

She is, after all, dressed for January in Montreal.

She's not expecting the stop, but at least there's distance enough between them that she doesn't collide with him.

Small favors.

She nods. "I know.

"Well, I guess I didn't know, but it makes the most sense."

She also knows, or at least is reasonably confident, that he wouldn't be telling her if he hadn't accidentially kind of told her.

"Not for public consumption," she says, using his phrase.

[themidnightson]

He turns and faces her. Too fast. Not remotely human.

"Not for public consumption." It's repeat while he's looking at her face, his lips pressed. It's not an inhuman expression at least. He doesn't want to endanger her, or his family. And Bella didn't get the gravity of it because.

Well. Because there other things to handle then. She hadn't even known about vampires. And he was still barely managing Alice. And he was still fighting everything Bella represented.


"It's not even that simple." Edward shook his head. He reached up and furrowing his fingers into his eternally just too long bronze hair. "The number of people who have known this in eighty years would not fill the smallest room in that building."

[noteful]

She doesn't flinch, or look away.

"Then you're paying me a remarkable compliment by trusting me with it. And I'll do everything I can to deserve it.

"I won't repeat any of this, Edward."

[themidnightson]

He looked out to one side at what ended up being the baseball field. There weren't any people practicing at present, even if he was still close enough to hear everything.

"You'd know even if I didn't tell you at this point."
About as much as Isabella did at present.
"I don't have days like that."


There is no usually. Nothing was usual about that day. Weekend. Week.

[noteful]

"At this point, yes.

"But you could have lied then."

And he didn't. Which she appreciates.

She was doubting her own perceptions enough that day.

[themidnightson]

"You've yet to give me a reason I'd need to."

To withhold, amend, divert. Perhaps, had happened, but no more than normal.

Except the Rules. Except Volterra's Rule did not apply here either.

[noteful]

"And I hope I never do."

They're being so formal.

But then, formality exists to make things easier, doesn't it? So perhaps that is not surprising.

[themidnightson]

Edward's still looking at the field. He raised a hand to motion with two fingers to walk down to it. The place representing the thing which was where Meg even came into the picture.

Carlisle. Baseball. The A-- Castiel.



Once they were both walking, keeping pace a step away from her, but even this time. "You don't have to try so hard."

[noteful]

The baseball field.

She can't say it's a surprise.

And not just because she knows where this path goes.

But his comment is unexpected.

(She's kind of still more used to being told she's not trying hard enough, with things even vaguely like this.)

"I don't have try so hard with what?" she asks.

[themidnightson]

He thinks it should be simple, but words stick. Things he never had talk about with Isabella due to the extenuating circumstances of her endless silent mind. Making the last people Alice and Jasper decades ago.

"Earlier, with my being able to hear you."

[noteful]

"Oh."

That.

"Was I shouting?"

Or whatever the mental equivilant of shouting would be?

[themidnightson]

There's something resembling a shrug, small and graceful and entirely miss-able if she isn't looking. "It doesn't have to be any more focused than the normal flow of thinking."

It isn't even so much that the yelling could distract him. Even at over decades it's still and endless maelstrom in his head, albeit a known one.

Which was not the same as a manageable one.

[noteful]

Still, shouting is rude.

"All right," she says.

And takes a moment to wonder just how much focus the normal flow of anyone's thinking has.

[themidnightson]

"It did take some getting used to."

The way people focused and how they thought.
If it was a very, very, very long time ago.

[noteful]

It seems, to Meg, like it would take more than some.

"When you said . . . when you said you can hear me, hear people, thinking . . . does that mean you can choose to hear what people are thinking, or that you have to hear what people are thinking?"

[themidnightson]

Edward settled for the walk and the snow, more of a curve than an outright frown to mar across his golden features.

"You have far more options in ceasing your hearing than I ever have."

[noteful]

The latter, then, she supposes.

Or something closer to it, if it's not an either/or.

And she can't think of what to say about that, because, honestly?

To her, it sounds all together too awful for words.

Which is either an extremely apt turn or phrase, or an extremely, extremely poor one.

[themidnightson]

He doesn't frown at her opinion of it, or even really stop. It's all he's ever known. Silence in his mind is as foreign as an idea can get now. Even in madness they reigned.

No power over how it happened or why or when.
No power over the level or direction or submission.
If anything did bother him at times, it would be that


He can still hear building even now.

[noteful]

When they reach the field, Meg brushes the snow off one of the team benches (the Enigmas, Edward's team, and Castiel's, and Laura's), and sits down.

"So what do you want me to know?"

[themidnightson]

He won't say anything.
He's not that forthcoming on the spot.

"There are rules where we come from. We don't tell humans--" there's a faintly apologetic ripple to his expression, here and then gone as though it never was. "--anything about us. It's death sentence should they be found out."

And still two wild nomadic vampires know about Bella.

Humans learned it for only two purposes;
To enlighten them to being a meal or to change them.

[noteful]

There are rules that one sets for oneself, and there are rules that others set and make one follow.

Meg had initially thought he might mean the former.

But those kinds of rules don't usually come with death sentences.

So.

"Whose rules? And . . . why don't they apply here?"