Three Nights Later, Part Two

[themidnightson]

Edward's rather obvious tonight. He didn't start that way.

This was more of a family favor that just....happened.




Kate's been gone about an hour now, but Edward is still at the piano.
The piece is pianissimo, at the deeper end of the scale, wandering slowly.

Comments

[noteful]

It's all so jumbled, the telling and the connections her brain makes to things she learned at other times, but one by one, she's finding pieces and dropping them into place.

It's a death sentence, he'd told her once, to tell humans anything about them.

He went there to die . . .

Commit an act that you know carries a death sentence, and the enforcers of your laws have no choice but to kill you.

And Bella stopped him, somehow.

Have I got all this roughly correct?

[themidnightson]

There's a nod. Singular and slow.

She's missing some of it.




But there's enough horror in her already.
Something he's rarely had to give her.

[noteful]

"And . . . where does Victoria fit into things?"

[themidnightson]

"I was tracking her. I took a wrong turn in Texas, and ended up in Rio."
Forgetting there was anything good left anywhere in life.



"Except she doubled back to Forks, where she's been for months."

[noteful]

Meg takes a moment trying to work through all that, and then hazards a guess.

And is her being in Forks the reason you thought Bella was dead?

[themidnightson]

He almost said nothing. There was a glance off.
Then, finally. "No. That's...more complicated."

Alice and Rose and Jacob. Oh my.


But it was all Bella's choice. Like his were.
Except her choice was his fault, too.

[noteful]

"Oh."

Well, simple is boring, right?

"Do you want to tell me?"

[themidnightson]

His lips shifted but didn't open.








"Not all of it is mine to tell."


Alice's visions.
Bella's suicide attempt.
Jacob's new shape-shifting.

[noteful]

"All right.

"Do you want to tell me the parts of it that are?"

[themidnightson]

"Rose called me to tell me. She was misinformed."


It takes more will than he can manage for either of them to say the next part. "But she meant well. As well as Rose will ever know how to. So did where the misinformation came from."

He can't really think of it. And his hands are tied.
He'd never betray Alice. Or impinge Isabella.

"Left in the rest of my family's hands I might not have know for weeks, months. It's hard to say. It was only when Alice made it to Forks that she found out how wrong everyone had been."

There's a small tilt of his head. "And about Victoria."

And Jacob. And Bella's condition.

But it was already too late then.

[noteful]

"All right," Meg says.

"So Alice went to Forks and found that Bella wasn't dead, and that Victoria was there?"

[themidnightson]

"Yes."

[noteful]

"And then what happened?"

Because even the pieces of this story she has aren't quite in order.

[themidnightson]

"They found out I was in Volterra."

[noteful]

And they would know what that meant, wouldn't they?

[themidnightson]

He's glad she skipped the step between those prior two.
Because all he could tell her was that he couldn't tell her.




"We all know what it means." No one as much as Edward.
Even what Jasper and Alice saw recently isn't everything.



"And I told Bella. Once." What the Volturi were.
Why he would go to them, if she was gone. To die.

[noteful]

"So Bella went to stop you."

Alone?

[themidnightson]

"Alice took her."




The faintest curl to his lips. "And a sports car."

[noteful]

A sports car?

[themidnightson]

There's almost a real smile, nodding. "It was yellow."
As thought this should truly explain things. "And fast."

[noteful]

Oh, yes. That clears it right up.

Well, the fast rather more than the yellow.

"At least it wasn't Emmett's Jeep?"

[themidnightson]

Edward snorted, surprised. And rubbed his hand on his face.

Trying to think if he'd managed anything like laughter for anyone else, who wasn't Bella. And with Bella it wasn't exactly free. Nothing was now.


"Maybe I could accidentally break it in a fit of melancholy?"

[noteful]

"And then offer to make it up to him by buying him some other means of transportation."

[themidnightson]

"If things were ever only that simple with Emmett." He leaned his face against his hand. "He'd probably want the exact same jeep again."

[noteful]

"Probably not worth it, then," Meg says.

A lot of hassle and expense for no change in the status quo.