![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It hasn't been more than eight hours since he nearly walked in the sun and ended his life.
It hasn't been more than eight hours and the whole of his world has been rewritten again.
Even in the new clothes Alice bought him, leaving Italy for Forks, for their family, there is so much and so little actually taking place inside his head. As though the whole of his waking universe was fixated permanently and undeniably on the small, fragile girl curled up in his lap, willfully drinking caffeine to keep herself awake, staring at him, saying absolutely nothing. He'd nearly killed himself, and some far too large part of him, was, this moment here, willing still.
But these thoughts paused, hallowed and holy for her hands, when she was reaching up now and then to trace his face with her warm fingertips. Her brown eyes didn't always stay on him and he could remember, how beautiful they were, how silent, how frustrating it was not to know what she thought.
No, he knew what she thought. Especially when she wouldn't say anything.
They'd drug her into all of this again. Alice had. Rose had. He had.
He was beyond any ability to stop himself from touching her.
Her cheeks, her hands, her hair, to holding her close.
Even her scent, overpowering, couldn't touch him.
It would all end sooner or later in Forks.
The world was not different.
Even if he was alive.
If she was.
The only person truly bearing any scope of happiness at all in their party was Alice, to his side. She would be reunited with Jasper, with their family, after too many uncertainties, the phone call where she hadn't been able to promise Jasper she could return to him when she'd left for Italy. She would return to Jasper and forget that she almost thought she never would.
But Edward -- glancing only barely toward his sister, without losing sight of Bella -- wouldn't.
It hasn't been more than eight hours and the whole of his world has been rewritten again.
Even in the new clothes Alice bought him, leaving Italy for Forks, for their family, there is so much and so little actually taking place inside his head. As though the whole of his waking universe was fixated permanently and undeniably on the small, fragile girl curled up in his lap, willfully drinking caffeine to keep herself awake, staring at him, saying absolutely nothing. He'd nearly killed himself, and some far too large part of him, was, this moment here, willing still.
But these thoughts paused, hallowed and holy for her hands, when she was reaching up now and then to trace his face with her warm fingertips. Her brown eyes didn't always stay on him and he could remember, how beautiful they were, how silent, how frustrating it was not to know what she thought.
No, he knew what she thought. Especially when she wouldn't say anything.
They'd drug her into all of this again. Alice had. Rose had. He had.
He was beyond any ability to stop himself from touching her.
Her cheeks, her hands, her hair, to holding her close.
Even her scent, overpowering, couldn't touch him.
It would all end sooner or later in Forks.
The world was not different.
Even if he was alive.
If she was.
The only person truly bearing any scope of happiness at all in their party was Alice, to his side. She would be reunited with Jasper, with their family, after too many uncertainties, the phone call where she hadn't been able to promise Jasper she could return to him when she'd left for Italy. She would return to Jasper and forget that she almost thought she never would.
But Edward -- glancing only barely toward his sister, without losing sight of Bella -- wouldn't.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:07 pm (UTC)There was an icy chill between them, as if all of the anger she'd felt and put aside for saving him had come back in one fell swoop.
And it had. He had put himself in danger, she had almost lost him. If it weren't for Bella (and she will not apologize for dragging the fragile human with her) then she'd be alone in this freakish world of hers in a way that only Edward would have been able to fill.
So yes. She's angry, to say the least.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:19 pm (UTC)He's going home. Is it home? Home was never a place before. Forks. The place his, never more than silent, heart has had spasmodic dreams about for six months. And they'll all be there, flown down from Denali because he'll be there, too.
And they'll expect more than silence, too.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:23 pm (UTC)i may never forgive you for leaving us. me.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:32 pm (UTC)It's heavy, icy, exhausting more than painful. Her pain.
The hazy memories of Aro wanting of them at his back.
A matching set, Carlisle's children, in red by him.
He shifted Bella, pulling her in closer at the same time as he moved her, she fought it but only until her head ended up against his shoulder and he gave over one hand into hers. Her brown hair brushing the bottom of his chin, as he watched her finger move over his, and he spoke, far too blankly and quietly for her to hear, "You wouldn't have come then."
If it was true. More fact than debate, or even reaction.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:37 pm (UTC)you are such an insensitive bastard, edward.
"You could have prevented all of this. You tore us apart. Carlisle and I had a huge fight. He--"
may never forgive me is thought, loudly, and painfully. She said things she shouldn't have. She went too far. But Edward drove them to that point.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:51 pm (UTC)Edward flinched so very slightly it would be missable even to their kind. The tremble of eye lashes. The smallest finite crease at the edge of his mouth on the far side. About him, about his choices, about his right to choose. His fault, undeniably.
He took a breath in. The scent of Bella's blood clouding up his thoughts. Want and yet so blackly against even the faintest hint of her hurt. He'd thought she was dead. His eyes closed, breathing out and then in and then out again. Before.
"It's not in him."
"To not forgive you, to not understand why."
Edward couldn't even begin to fathom what it would be to stand before Carlisle. In the airport, likely still unwilling to let go of holding Bella, and....even just to look at Carlisle. If he might not forgive anyone, it would be Edward.
No matter that he'd tried.
No matter that Carlisle had been the last one.
And he'd deserve that, too. For so many reasons.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 06:26 pm (UTC)Alice leaned her head against the wall of the airplane, letting the vibrations reverberate into her. In a normal whisper, she murmured, "I'm glad you're alive."
no subject
Date: 2010-10-25 01:40 pm (UTC)(Except for the detail of girl in his arms.)
Yet that didn't make him any less aware, the only reason -- he was alive, or holding Bella in his arms -- was Alice. But she'd also decided to interfere. She, too, had given Aro their secrets, and she'd promised The Three that Bella would be one of them.
"We'll be landing in Atlanta soon," was said at a normal tone.
Perhaps, to both of them, because it could be, really.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 02:37 pm (UTC)All of this would have been avoided if he'd stayed with her. Either of the hers in this situation.
She idly gave him a rude hand gesture for good measure. "Don't lose Bella in the hustle and bustle, please. I'd hate for all of this to be pointless."
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 09:56 pm (UTC)Some movement. Some tact. Maybe to shove her or flick her hair.
Something that lost cohesion before moving any further. In the pang of having to let go of Bella and not being able to. And still having felt the urge for something else. Something that had been Alice's, even if it was more than three-fourth's buried.
Bella was looking up at him, no words even for his, those brown eyes fixated, and his tone dropped to Alice's hearing only. A bare note. Not blank, simply bare. Barren, empty like a cavern. "You don't know that it isn't, Alice."
There was still no telling if Bella wanted anything from him now. She shouldn't.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 10:03 pm (UTC)And the epic level of his proportion to that would fill another century.
If he mananged to live through this one. Which he didn't say either.
Didn't want to consider while Bella was still this close.
He leaned his head back, looking upward, at nothing.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 10:05 pm (UTC)It's not now. But she doesn't want now. She wants to still be annoyed. She's more worried about Carlisle (oh God the things she said to him).
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 10:10 pm (UTC)His jaw bone touching the head rest, as his completely black eyes settled on her face. On seeing her. Not just hearing her inside and out, not feeling what she was feeling. Her. Here.
He didn't deserve her words. Any of them.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 10:15 pm (UTC)Her hand reaches over for his free one and she squeezes.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 10:22 pm (UTC)But he stared at her. Her golden eyes, the depth of the anger and sadness there. She'd kidnapped Bella. Manipulated the Volturi. Turned on Carlisle. Left Jasper without knowing she'd be alive to return.
For him.
And his mostly bland features shivered at her touch. A flicker of his eyelashes, before they closed as though the hover on a point of breaking. His fingers closed around hers, in his, shivering with the tremendous strength he could not even try to display toward Bella.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 10:25 pm (UTC)She loved him. So much. He was worth all she did. Her very best friend.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 11:00 pm (UTC)It was an awkward angle, too. Not near enough to be resting on her chair, and yet off of his. A gravitation he didn't notice himself.
He was quiet for a long time even here. Maybe only half realizing he's been quiet for an endless string of minutes with her now. Before, he looked somewhere in the space between Bella's head and Alice's shoulder.
"The future -- you're --"
Is disjointed. Never makes a full sentence, still sounding like a vacant question the whole time. And there is a sigh, and he shook his head. He has no right to ask her. And she's been wrong before. He can't feel himself and he already cares more about them.