(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.

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[themidnightson]

It takes two seconds to stop the slew of James' memories.
Two very long, very graphic seconds to Edward.




"My-" pauses, with a distasteful expression. At over a hundred, and the way things worked, have always worked, for their kind, the term girlfriend will always ring juvenile and strange.

He tries again, one hand curling tight when the rest of him held perfectly still.

"Isabella is still in the hospital."

[noteful]

"Edward, I'm so sorry.

"Will she be all right?"

[themidnightson]

"In time." A minute frown following the thought of months, not weeks. "She's resilient." There something annoyed and relieved and almost affectionate in those words. What they lacked though was approval.

He should be walking away, but it was already too late.

[noteful]

"Good.

"She's what you were . . . worried about the other day, isn't she?"

It's not rocket science to make the connection.

And she doubts she needs to specify the day.

[themidnightson]

A small nod. "Yes. She was-"

It takes some will power and a reminder that Meg should know the risks, especially when Milliways keeps bringing in everything else they never thought would happen here.

"-still comatose then."

[noteful]

Meg nods.

She's a doctor's daughter, after all, not that one needs to be to know that comatose is never a good sign.

"I'm glad she's woken up."

[themidnightson]

Strangely enough, it's there.
There where his expression softens.

Where his lips shift, and he almost speaks to agree.
Settles for a simple nod because there aren't words enough.

[noteful]

Meg's smile is very soft.

"You care about her a great deal, don't you?"

[themidnightson]

This should involve words, shouldn't it. "I do."

[noteful]

Maybe.

Maybe it's one of the things that doesn't need to involve words.

Meg nods and waits.

Whether he resumes with this topic or changes to another is entirely up to Edward.

[themidnightson]

His family would be far more effusive on that subject.
They can't or won't stop thinking about it. Baseball. Hospital.
They find the recent events even further proof of their assumptions.


He can't say they are wrong.
But he did get off the track somewhere.
Which is harder to find his way back to.

(She could be awake again on the other side of The Door.)

Edward forced himself to focus, sifting through words and thoughts, both his and hers -- and far too many others in the vicinity. Until. "You deserve to know there are substantial risks."

[noteful]

"To knowing you?

"Or to knowing about you?"

Or both?

[themidnightson]

"To all of it." Edward shifted, with an slight marring effect to his face in the change of his features. An expression change far too fast for the human eyes. "There are many reason we didn't inform people to what we were even during or after the baseball game."

It was safer for everyone involved if they were simply super powered and strange. All the leaps of assumption, small and large, made by many from there, and made by those who interacted with them, were left to their devices to do so.

"And why very few people know the truth still."

Though that circle was widening.

[noteful]

"Ignorance has its own set of risks.

"And I'm glad to know you."

So.

There it is.

[themidnightson]

That leads the unreadable staring at her, again.

If it were Bella the words would be preposterous, and endearing.

[noteful]

Yes?

[themidnightson]

Almost unbalanced for the pause, he shrugged then, with a fluid gracefulness that was inherent even in how much it was forgotten. As though it was at once apparent, even as the rest of him seemed to be aware of the lack of assumption

"The sentiment is mutual." If he says it with something else in it, as well.

Not that he would ascribed the word 'glad' to it.
That wasn't him; but that was dickering.

[noteful]

Meg smiles.

Well, then, that's settled.

She's not entirely sure she could articulate what that is, but it's settled.

And there's a part of her that thinks this ought to be, well, if not the most surreal conversation of her life (because after two years in Milliways, how would one pick one?), at least in the top twenty. She is, after all, sitting on a bench on a snow covered baseball field outside the bar at the end of the universe, calmly discussing with a vampire the fact that he can hear everything she's thinking.

It's almost odd that it's not . . . all that odd.

[themidnightson]

Whatever that is, indeed.

It's not answering the original question.
Yet it's the answer to something somewhere to her.




Wryly, with irony she wouldn't get, one side of his lips slanting,
"At least a good portion of my family already knows who you are." This time.

[noteful]

She's met all of them but Rosalie, at one time or another.

"Does that make it easier to tell them you told me?"

[themidnightson]

"It's not about making it easier to tell."

The emphasis in on the last word. It isn't about his telling at all.
It's about how they'll hear it. How they'll take it, after Bella.

Even though after Carlisle revealing himself to Meg, and Esme working for Sallie after Carlisle and Alice revealing themselves, and Jenny and Jane with Alice, and himself, and even Jasper's Kate...it won't be as odd.

It'll just be that he doesn't. And this is another bigger line.
"I may only tell Carlisle and Alice for the time being."

[noteful]

"All right," she says.

His family, his news, his timeframe.

"This really is fairly unprecedented, isn't it?"

And that's not an intimidating thought. Oh, no.

[themidnightson]

Even that is an over generalization of the microscopic predictability event.
(Excepting Alice. But then, all probability was an exception from Alice.)


"You are the only person I've told here."
The phrasing is specific on many counts.



He has not had a hand in anyone else's foreknowledge of him here.
Not Yrael's or Jenny's, not the Reynold's; from cosmic to simple.
All of it previously beyond his grasp of choosing.

[noteful]

Yeah, intimidating is a good word.

And it brings them back to the question she didn't quite ask and he didn't quite answer.

"Why me?"

She's not complaining.

She's just . . . a little puzzled.

[themidnightson]

Why he chose not to lie now is not a direct result of her interaction with Carlisle then. It was the first reason, of what became a few, for why he actually took notice of her and found himself in her presence several times.

But it was more how she handled those that led to how he handled -- or specifically didn't handle -- this.


"It's complicated." But it's not. Then, he added, "I had considered doing it before this-" Once or twice. "-though in a much less brusque fashion."

Not that that meant much in all honesty. He'd considered telling Bonzo as well for months before he was openly acknowledging Meg's existence and that had not happened yet.