Late December, 2005

[themidnightson]

He's been thinking about it.

In days, hours, minutes, weeks, seconds. Has it been a month yet.
Holding together pieces of a string when consciousness is never lost.
But the idea of being found, of holding on, is as ludicrious as wanting to.

The grains in the beam of the ceiling above him don't change. Like him.
The weather is warm with freak cold fronts, constant pressure changes.

The crowds outside inside are the only reason he knows it's December



Sunday

Evening

Christmas

The effort even to press the button is monumental. And within milliseconds of achieving it already questions if it's real. Again. This place. This endless weight. The dulled want stabbing his insides, burning, scorching through his throat, up into his mouth. Every dead cell aching. The whispered words flooding his mind, memories and phantasms and people. Some he knows. Millions he doesn't.

But then he remembers. Again.

Unforgetting. Unforgettable. Unable to forget.

The scent of her blood and the catch in her voice (You don't...want...me?). Jasper's desperate shame, the others pleading with him. Placating him. That this is all his own fault. He set the wheels in motion. (You think I lifted a van off of you?) He knocked the dominoes off the table. He deserves this place. This feeling.

And still the phone rings.

Comments

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle hates ringtones. Most of his family has some sort of chirruping noise that rumbles through their mobiles when they receive a call; Carlisle's beeps once as it vibrates.

For every number except one that he cannot miss.

He answers on the first ring of Westminster Chimes, almost veering into the opposing lane, driving home from work.

"Edward?"

[themidnightson]

His voice sounds wrong. Electronics have nothing on real sound. He can hear how broken apart it really is by transmission. The reconstruction that is not even a pale comparison to any million of memories clamoring to be the example. But the paroxysm that seizes a small corner of his chest doesn't seem to care.

How long has it been? He'll be interrupting the day. He had to.




It's not as though the parallysis holding his jaw helps either.

[ofthefamily]

Maybe he can't speak.

Won't. No. Can't. Twelve different ways.

Carlisle pulls over the car onto the shoulder.

Please say something. Anything.

"Thank you for calling me."

It's too specific - calling me. Carlisle doesn't care to edit.

[themidnightson]

Maybe he shouldn't have. He did this. It's his fault.
He should be able to ask for --

The concept is too stark. Beyond need. Need is gone.
(Except for blood. Except for her whispers.)


The silence stretched. He can almost hear the waiting. The way Carlisle's thoughts would be pleading for anything. Some response to come. Should he lie? Force himself to make some mockery of normality? (Isn't everything that already? A mockery? A lie?)

He passes one thing. Another.

Where are the others.
Why can't he hear them in the background.
For a moment, he'd rather them than the rabble.


"It's Christmas."
It's not anything it sounds.
Maybe not anything at all.
A grinding nothing.

[ofthefamily]

"Yes. A quiet one this year," Carlisle starts in a low ramble. "I covered a shift at a nursing home nearby for the morning."

He could give a shit less. This is whay he chooses to talk about?

What else is there that Edward wouldn't hang up for?

"I'm driving back to the house now."

[themidnightson]

He's trying. He closed his eyes. (The beam and it's wood grain and burned into his mind already. Is it actually any difference, if he can see it exact and unchanging, with his eyes closed and open?) Locked his jaw and forced himself to swallow.

His fingers shifted but didn't form into a fist. "You should tell them--"

He says hello? He says wishes them well? He thinks of them at all? He watches each time they call or message, watching the phone flash on the floor less than a foot from him, their names lit up in electric red light, until it stops, without moving, without being moved?

That he can't hold on to the idea a single minute of them?

That he knows the truth would worry them too much to tell them?






It's Christmas. (It's Carlisle.)

His eyes still don't open. "--whatever sounds best."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle's nodding even though Edward can't see that, or possibly know what he might be doing unless he tells.

"I will, Edward."

And there's nothing. No volunteering of information from either side.

Carlisle doesn't know how to fire the first shot.

[themidnightson]

It's an admission though. A request for a cover or a sane decision based on any number of reasons ungiven, accepted without question. But it's the same as having said he couldn't. Wouldn't. Wasn't. Giving an excuse, a lie, even. (To Carlise. Only.) Edward who was beyond a master at them. Had to be. Every millisecond he spoke to any person.

And wasn't that glorious advocacy of a family member.

Edward's face contorted around a grimace formed only on his lips.

[ofthefamily]

What can he ask?

Where are you? No. When are you coming ba--? Obviously not.

"I was asked to participate in writing this medical textbook. Maybe I will, but I think they might be concerned when I hand in my chapters written out by hand."

Carlisle has a habit of breaking keyboards when he is thinking too hard.

[themidnightson]

It takes longer than it should.

Distracts. Disjoints. Before he finally manages.

"You could get a student to type them for you."

[ofthefamily]

The response shouldn't feel like a victory.

"If I liked any of them."

[themidnightson]

There's always someone. Carlisle could find someone.
One of them would figure it out if he needed it.




Edward opened his eyes at the leg of his table.
He could have if he. But it'll never.
He'll find someone. He always does.

He wouldn't have gotten lost


"You'll figure it out."

[ofthefamily]

"Maybe."

Come home.

[themidnightson]

It is what it is. He'll figure it out. Why did he do this. (Dominoes, and wheels. And he knows why. He's -- ) The grains in the ceiling. In the table leg. In perfect clarity everything blurs as one. The scent and sound of people not too far away in the warm winter wind closes his throat.

It's not like he was using it anyway.

[ofthefamily]

"I'm afraid to talk to you. I don't want you to hang up, because I know."

I know you won't pick up if I call back.

There's a thunk - Carlisle is smacking his forehead on his steering wheel a couple of times.

[themidnightson]

He could say it. Should. The words that jumble in his mind. A tangle of langauges and the one that defies it. Defies everything in his mind, in the world. That made it impossible not to press the button. Not to do something before the truth of it consumed what was left of his thoughts.









"Tell me about them."

[ofthefamily]

"The whole house has smelled of gingerbread for at least a week; Esme insists that my office is severely deprived of cookies."

It's offered with fondness, but not as much as there should be - if Edward thought about it, he could probably guess why. Or the last time that happened.

"Alice and Jasper are back from France. She keeps trying to get me to go to Manhattan."

[themidnightson]

It's the smallest of glimmers. His eyes close again.
It's almost like relief. They're together. Again. Finally.






"Good."

[ofthefamily]

No. It isn't. It isn't...good. Nothing is.

Please come home.

Carlisle tells of Rosalie and Emmett a little as well. It's small talk.

He mentions nothing of himself again.

Please come home.

[themidnightson]

Edward wants to care. About Esme keeping busy. Rose getting herself another new honeymoon. Alice's shopping. How the Denali are. He wants to hold on to anything for longer than the moment it's said. Except the only urge that stays that is a wave of distant, untouchable, nothing by watchable, swell of panic any second Carlisle pauses.

Like if he stopped talking, the world might stop seconds later.
But even as he clutches toward the sound, he can't force himself to care.
About the words the sounds make up, anymore than caring about not moving in days.
Their's is normal world and all the he had of on is slipped beyond his grasp now.

[ofthefamily]

And on another continent, Carlisle sits behind tinted windows in a tinted Mercedes, sticking out on the side of the road as much as his conventions try to help him blend in.

"Merry Christmas, my Edward."

I love you.

"Come home."

[themidnightson]

He should feel something shouldn't he?



More than an urge to shift where his thumb is.
More than the urge to end this phone call, any plea.



And. Home. What is home? A place with wide glass window walls and rows of journals? A place where people will be too worried, too caught up? Where they will be sad, but together, and always remind him, with each look, each touch between themselves, to each other, would brand itself on his mind, a ghost against his skin. There is no place this wouldn't follow him, where she wouldn't.

If he opens his eyes just barely and tilts his head toward the table and chair, he can see her. How she would, if she could, had. One knee drawn up her chest, face wrinkled in collection of mock disgust and suprise, just exactly like the day he'd told he actually liked Macbeth.

She isn't real. She isn't here. Not the way she tilts her head, and her eyes track to him and she smiles, her mouth always just this side of uneven, before it shifts to frame the same words he just heard in different voice. Come home.

And he wills it all away. There's only a chair.
Only a chair. In an empty room. No life here. Literally.
She's safe. They're safe. He removed the obstacles to it.






The words mean and are meaningless. Come home.
There's no home anymore, and moving from this room...
This is everything. Subsumed. Blacked out. Eradicated.



Almost. Almost gone. Again.

This is why he had to.




To call Carlisle, even on Christmas.







"I don't think I can do this, again, Carlisle."

He doesn't think he has it left in him to want to.

[ofthefamily]

Call him again?

See him again?

Care?

About life?

Carlisle is scared again, and he stares up at the (S)tars visible in the sky.

And, through all of it, Carlisle is pissed off. Pissed that his hands are tied - and Edward put them there.

Pissed off that he cares for the both of them.

"We aren't enough."

[themidnightson]

The words come.



The words go.



Too close.



Too far.







Circling until they fall, land on him, slam into the center of him, finally, finally, like the lead weight of chain finally set into place. The proclamation, as close to the right hand of God as he's ever going to get, of what this is and what is to come.





He can't sleep. He can't cry.

There is no vice he can hide in.

And they won't be enough.





It will only be him.
And the blackeness.

[ofthefamily]

"I won't lie to them. They're too important to the both of us, my Edward."

The voice on the other end of the line is cutting a little ragged, almost older than his years.

"But I will tell them that you thought of them."

[themidnightson]

He wonders if that, too, counts as a lie.





He asked about them when Carlisle said he couldn't talk. Said he was afraid. Said one of the two completely true things said in this whole conversation.

Does he think of them?

Does he ever not?




Does any of it matter?

It had to, didn't it? He pushed the button. Made himself.
Not that it changed anything. Made it worse?

(For Carlisle. On Christmas.)




Edward grimmaced into the heel of his hand, without even thinking about having moved it. Made himself go back to Carlisle's last word. His jaw locked. Unlocked. And he made it through two words -- "Thank you." -- that sounded absolutely unlike those two should sound, like there was gratitude behind at all.

They sounded quite like two other words.
That weren't said. Weren't allowed.
To be said. Heard. To escape him.



(Were.)


Which is why even as his shoulders, hand, jaw tremored, he pushed the end call button the second after he'd said it. Even eyes clenched, against his hand, he was only listening. To the last second of silence touching him. Connecting them. Before the click.






The one sounded perfectly in time to a different click and shift.
And Edward turned, pushing upward with a sudden, sharp snarl.

[ofthefamily]

Disconnected. That is what the cell phone screen says.

It just ended, like a million other little things. As if they create their own endings, since their lives keep going on and on and onward.

Carlisle sits by the side of the road for another good twenty minutes, staring at the night sky through his windshield and seeing absolutely nothing at all.

[bright_daughter]

She's there when they turn -- one in a darkness, the other in threat -- sitting on the window ledge, shuffling her cards over the white bag they stay in. The palest shape of a form, traced as thought from the flickering of a candle flame. But his eyes would be too good for that comparison. Their kind's. Her light, even banked, even faint, is too true, too pure, for that simplicity. And her eyes settled, silver-blue, truest deepest light on the black ones beneath her.

There is no darkness she is not part of.


And she owns no fear in any part of her being.








And whether Star is there as Carlisle's Hope, or Edward's Promise, or a making of her own means, is not shown in this sudden solidity of appearance. Only the steady flip, flip, shuffle, flip of the cards in her hands in the silence of the shack -- the house of Ruin.