Late 1950; i'm inbetween the moon and where you are

[themidnightson]

It's the first time he's sat down at the piano, since.

He slides in and out of the times when he's playing often, and when he doesn't play at all. It'd been spotty the last year or so, but he'd felt even more averse to the thought of it after watching her playing his piano in Carlisle's thoughts. As though it hadn't been enough she'd blown in taking everything else, from every other member of their family to his bedroom.

She'd decided to take this, too.
Like nothing was sacred. Nothing was his.
She could plow through and just take everything.

It's been a few months. It shouldn't still bother him now.

They are a known, at least as much as anything is this early. He has little reasons to rely on her visions, to believe in the unknown quantity of her. And yet. It was her vision that flipped back and forth, back and forth, back and forth (especially once he could see the changing eventualities in her visions; stealing even his choices from him, giving him only options to chose from, to reject, to fight), when the urge struck him.

When he found his fingertips playing against his leg,
the couch while reading, more than once,

thoughts turning into notes
more than words and images.






He gives in. But it is that.
Giving in. Frustrated surrender.
To the pull. To her options. The cage.


He almost hates how easy it. His fingertips touch the keys, soft, reverent, and then it's gone, it's all gone, and him with it. Everything else leaving his mind except where his fingers moved, and the sound they produced. His eyes closing as he followed a familiar piece.

Comments

[betagainstme]

It's not quite the victory she had been promised.

No one promised her that victory, just the ever clear and ever present vision of a future where she fits so perfectly under Edward's arm, where there is no end and no beginning and just them, close as close can be without any ulterior motives.

Love, pure and crystalline.

But, the sound of him at the piano, it's good enough when she watches Carlisle and Esme look up, and smile at each other. It's good enough when the sound relaxes Jasper at her side. It's good enough that even Rosalie seems to stop scowling so hard and Emmett winks at Alice.

It's good enough, for now.

She's up with barely a whisper of clothing as her dress' hem settles at her knees. She watches, from the door, leaning against the frame with her fingers tangled together at her lap. His hands, flying over the keys, a mirror of what she had seen.

No, not a mirror. A mirror implies backward images, things not matching. His playing matches, even when the rest of the vision is discordant, unrealized. She feels a stray flicker of shame for having played at his piano, days after her arrival. It's obvious, watching this moment in real time, the piano is so much more than just...instrument.



Alice watches, a slight frown on her face.

[themidnightson]

It ripples through the whole house, everyone in its' attention turning toward him, then toward the music he's playing, but it's so much easier almost not to hear it like this. He'll never not hear it, never be able to turn them off, as they all but breathe relief and focus is almost singular, but it's distracted, distanced, as his fingers move almost without his focus on them at all, as though they knew every move without the need of thought.

And in some ways, it was deeper. It was deeper than just the thinking of it.
Though it wasn't in this piece, he overlayered the harmony of Esme's favorite piece.

It played hide and seek, call and response, with the wandering notes of something unfinished and only just beginning to be touched, brushed. Winding, yearning, fraught, frustrated. With his fingers. With the birth of itself into sound. There was the barest flicker in his expression, if not a pause in the playing, when Alice's vision became the view of himself at the piano. Shadow and far away sun.

Her longing, and uncertainty. Something that isn't right again,
but it's the one thing always there when she looks at him.

[betagainstme]

She doesn't want to interrupt.

Not when it made the others so pleased to hear the music emanating from this room. But she doesn't want to leave either; she's aware there's a precipice here. Turning from it would change it, the future, the present.

Staying doesn't feel right either, though. She wavers, her faith in her talents shaken to the core by the man at the piano. One who so staunchly denies the truth in her powers. The inevitability. She's aware of the bias she holds for her visions--fate is a scary thing. But her visions don't depend on fate, they depend on decision.

And somewhere along the line, Edward will make the decision. And her vision--crystal clear and bright, not hazy like the dozens of others she sees spin out all the time--will be true.

Pressing her lips together, Alice steps into the room, over the threshold, but still stays silent, listening with her head cocked to the side like a curious bird.

Uccello, Carlisle had called her.

[themidnightson]

In the Italian. Same as Esme's. Only his isn't.
Only his is rarely said out. And rarely said at all.

A nickname, and already a declaration of where she'll wear the crest.

There's something steeper that touches the music, making his lips press slightly more. Something that defies words, but is so old the floorboards of this house are newly born in comparison. The frustrated note. The one that doesn't matter. Hasn't mattered in so long, that he knows that's a lie, even on his own thoughts, it matters more than words can touch; but it only goes so far.

And what it asks will go on to eternity, despite that greater truth.
He's never claimed not to be selfish. Or to be truly forgiving.

Neither will change the equation. Nothing ever has.
Not even one, then two, then four, new people.

It's, also, not worth it be frustrated about that. Not now. Not again. Not with Alice watching him, creeping closer. Wanting to and afraid to all once, and that's it's own frustration, and it's own shame, too. Somehow she always manages to prick him too deeply. Just existing. It tugs at the seams of everything. The music isn't helping. He doesn't want to stop, but there's no way to close the bars flung open in his chest with the music. No way to make every reaction, every emotion as clear as each note played.

Like he is the one being played, flayed open, by the music, and not the other way around.
Still, he tried to return to the earlier beginning of the piece, looping back.

Smoother, softer, more politicly polite and easy.

[betagainstme]

Her lips purse at the change, then the return to the softer beginning of his music. She almost wishes he'd keep up the frustration because that, at least, is real. Him.

Maybe, she thinks idly, coming around to a bookshelf near the piano, her fingers skirting the binds of books she's never even heard of, if you yelled at me, you'd feel better.

The vaguest of visions, like gauzy fabric: him, as close to yelling as he ever got; her, as close to crying as being a vampire will let her. It spins out fast, gone in an instant, there long enough to make her fingers catch on the spine of a book in Italian.

Or not.

[themidnightson]

Edward lets himself consider it, and it's strange. He lets himself consider yelling at her (and it spins out in their vision; his yelling; her crying; yet it stays hazy, like they are half-formed mist, too), because he can't really reach it. Can't really consider it fully. Not like this. Not with his eyes half-closed, and the piano music reflecting back from all the perfect acoustic setups Esme built into this room. Into every room that ever houses the piano.






"It wouldn't help."
Small. Resolutely even.
Each word between three notes.

Maybe later. But not right now. Yet even that is a lie. They've already gone there, and it hadn't helped in the slightest either. She was here, and she was here to stay. And it hadn't been her he'd been railing against the second before, though he understands entirely why she'd jump to thinking it was about her. That was another thing he couldn't press down with the music playing, and one he didn't want to ever clarify for her.

[betagainstme]

"So what will?" Alice whispers, turning her head from the books, her hair in her eyes as she glances over to him.

Does she break here? Cut her losses and leave, because even as she and Jasper settle into the family, even as Jasper becomes more and more confident in the diet each day, there is a wrinkle in the fabric.

Edward. Her. Her; it's Alice that is the problem, because Edward was here first. The Cullens would survive without her, but not Edward.

(So she thinks.)

"I'm not trying to hurt you."

[themidnightson]

"I know."

And then, as if he just couldn't stop himself.
(It's the music. It's always the music.)

"Mindreader, remember?"

There's something for a second, that's almost light, almost a question, in the music, before it fades right back away. As though those notes were no more than a pebble tossed unexpectedly into a clear glass lake and swallowed down into it's dark depths forgetting to ripple outward first.

He's not sure that she's right. Maybe once. A long time ago. Before Rose, and before Emmett. Before Jasper, and now Alice. Before the before, in the times and things they really don't talk about, except with the best of those times. The rest glossed over. But that doesn't matter either. He promised forever, and he meant forever.

He still meant it today (as the silver lion rampant on his right wrist winked with the reflections of moving light while his hands shifted across the keys) as much as that day.

[betagainstme]

Her head cocks to the side again as she turns to full face him, the tiniest of upturned lips at his comment. The lightness may not last, but it lights a flame inside of her that had been flickering.

Hope. She steps closer, still hesitant, but growing more assured. The tiniest of jokes.

With her.

Stopping short of the piano, Alice walks around it, until she's able to see his hands on the keys, to watch their graceful journey. I play, a little, she tells him, the memory of her playing a tidbit for Carlisle flitting across her mind. I think I'm better at the violin. Sorry--

A wince flashes across her face. --about playing your piano. I didn't...I didn't think about it. Sometimes I don't think.

And sometimes, like probably right now, she thinks too much.

[themidnightson]

It's weird. How much it matters.
That she says it. That she means it.

Not exuberant driven willfullness foisting itself off under the masks of fifteen other faces with only one goal beneath it, to simply make him stop. Make him give in. Her bereft uncertainty leaves her remorse clean of ulterior motive. The notes turned soft, melted toward, but not into Esme's actual piece. He's not sure what to do with that. How to even feel about it. It's a muddle among the music, the flow of water tumbling over rocks.

Too jumbled to play Esme's actual piece, to touch actual peace.
He just nodded. Some kind of acknowledgment. A few seconds late.

It's strange. What decides to come out. From nowhere.

"Rose plays, too. But not often."

He feels the surprise from across the house. At her name. At being mentioned. The irresistible, irritable spike that is not knowing where it came from, why it came up, what Edward means by those simple six words. What he's saying to Alice about her by them. That undercurrent of jealousy that Alice is so fixated on him, and that she doesn't want Alice to take whatever Edward's insult is for God's Word.

[betagainstme]

That surprises Alice.

Not much surprises Alice anymore. But she'd never seen Rosalie at the piano, not like she'd seen moments of Edward. How easily he and the piano fit together in her head and Rosalie does not.

I think she likes me less than you do, comes unbidden into her mind, thoughts she doesn't mean to share, to think. She doesn't know how to filter her mind--she's never had to, before.

Grimacing a little, she rests her fingers on the top of the piano, no where near the keys. You're very talented.

In more than the piano is implied. He's good at whatever he sets his mind to. She thinks of the violin, the pull of the bow over the strings, the flow of notes that would harmonize with his playing. Then, with the smallest huff of a giggle, she thinks of the fiddle she picked up for Jasper, transferring the knowledge of one instrument to a similar one, to learn songs her husband enjoys.

[themidnightson]

It's rare. Incredibly rare. But it happened. And Edward has to make the effort not to point out that Rose might not life her (yet?), but that Rose still liked her better than she liked him. Oh, Rose considered him family, and she'd probably take someone's head off for him, and enjoy it, but it'd been two decades and he still wasn't going to live down snubbing her when they first met, or after she'd been changed.

She was still at times that vapid and vain girl.
And he still wasn't apologetic for his actions.
Or for not wanting her, human or vampire.

It was just how they were.

Compliments are strange. Most of his family doesn't think of it like that anymore. They think of the beauty, or the emotions it evokes, spinning out their own little stories. They think about it was being part of him; part of them. But they don't spend a lot of time thinking about in compliments. Except for Esme. He doesn't have to say anything when Esme thinks it, but he doesn't know what to say here, only that Alice needs him to say something. Even if it's not, can't be, I need you.

"I've had a long time to practice."
A patent enough blase response, without lying.

His head tips and there's almost more. Except the corners of his mouth pressed instead, and his head tilted more into the music. Uncertainty clouding his chest. The vision had come and gone in the flicker of less than a second. He'd opened his mouth to ask or say something, but the second it came, he changed his mind, brow furrowing slightly.

[betagainstme]

She watches him, blinking the tiny half-vision away, focusing on the press of his lips as he struggled with whatever it was he wanted to say. Didn't want to say.

The vision didn't last long enough for her to know.

"I don't know how I learned piano," she murmurs, focusing on her finger tracing invisible patterns on the piano's top. "It was something I woke up with, though. I guess from the past. I mean, obviously, from the past. Anyway."

Pushing away, she crosses behind Edward, to come to the other side of him. "What were you going to say? Before you stopped yourself?"

[themidnightson]

He thinks he hates that. That feeling like his actions as stolen from him before he can do them. Before he can even do the thing he wasn't sure he wanted to in the first place, that felt as ripped from his cracked-open chest as the music did. Which is what he stared at instead. Eyes slightly more open, staring hard at his fingers.

Even as he couldn't dislodge her finger drawing on the piano.

Her question though demands an answer, like her vision demanded to be first, always first, taking whatever was his from him, and he makes his gaze cut toward her side, her arm more than face. Makes it happen (again; but different; his face is tighter; it starts with the huff out his nose and a small frown),

"I was going to ask how long you've been playing."

"Violin." To clarify. Since she already said the other.

It was stupid. It was such a small, inconsequential question to have had the reaction over. But it grated on him. The invasion of it all. And it wasn't lost on him it was the same kind of invasive uncomfortable everyone in the family felt with him from time to time. But he'd never had to deal with it. Experience it, as his own feelings. Until now.

[betagainstme]

"Since 1925," she murmurs, watching his reactions to her intrusions. "Saw an orchestra play, wanted to see what it was like."

Alice clasps her hands behind her back and bounces on the balls of her feet for a moment before leaning in closer to Edward. "I could tell you wanted to say something, even without a vision, Edward. I'm more than just a fortune-teller. I have eyes, too."

He thinks his tics and tightening of various facial muscles are meaningless. But when compared against his stony-exterior, any flicker of movement is eye-catching. It does help she's had thirty years of wandering with the Cullens in her future to know who is who and what is what, but it didn't prepare her for the actuality in front of her.

"I also could make a killing reading palms." With that, she leans back, out of his space again, levity filling her air as she shrugs, hands still behind her back.

[themidnightson]

There's that furrow line between his brows, even as his gaze moves back to the piano. This time to the empty stand. Exquisitely carved black wood in vining plants and buds, but he rarely ever needed to put anything on it. On of the rare gifts of being able to read a new piece of music once and already have it memorized. To be able to listen to a piece and play it back near-perfectly from memory the first, or second, time.

"But you haven't."

It's a statement, but there's something of a question in it.

[betagainstme]

Alice laughs as she spins around, moving to grab a stool from the other side of the room. She places it an acceptable distance from Edward, leaving him his space. Respectfully. Perching on the stool, Alice smooths out her dress. "No, I haven't. Cold fingers, might scare away the customers."

She studies Edward's shoes, a safe place to study, she thinks. "No, most of my money is made from the stock market. And gambling." Her eyes widen conspiratorially as she flicks her gaze up to his face. "Probably not the most ladylike of past times, but it's 1950! Women should do what they want."

Hmph!

[themidnightson]

There's a bit of a pause for that move of hers. The piano music didn't stop, and he didn't quite get to going still, but for a few long seconds only his hands and his arms were the parts of him that moved. The music spooling out into the room.

If he was human, he'd say it was helping him to breathe.
Deciding if he'll react. Deciding whether to have patience.

He watches it;

(in some the music just stops playing; and she sulks, understanding but getting up; in some he says nothing; in one he just continues on, commenting on the today's paper said were the soring stocks and did she have those)

It's uncanny. Unnerving. Unsettling.

He keeps playing, as his shoes fill part of his mind. As much as the way Carlisle and Esme are exchanging silent looks in this direction of the house, pretending to have 'a silent' discussion about whether this conversation is going well or not. They know him too well to think he can't hear it. Ever. They know him too well to not know that polite conversation can be almost as bad as nothing. Sometimes.

Jasper is still the odd one out in that room, even as Emmett toys with a lock of Rose's hair, and everyone still listens to the music playing. Jasper, who gets tenser the further Alice gets from him, even in the house. Jasper, who is ready to be in this room the moment Edward starts yelling or hissing or Alice sounds hurt again.

He keeps playing, and maybe, just maybe, between the music and the people, he's fogotten, for these few seconds, that he was supposed to say something, or that he didn't say anything at all. It just keeps going on. Weaving through all of them. Like him.

[betagainstme]

Edward is Alice's lesson on patience.

Jasper had come around to her so much quicker than he realized. Even before he'd realized that it was love he was feeling, two weeks into their travels, Jasper had already let Alice in, let her worm her way inside of his heart, mind, soul. She'd seen it, and she'd predicted other things for him that came true faster, so therefore: he believed her.

Edward is stubborn. Alice is stubborn. The two combined could spend decades skirting around anything and everything, if they decided on it.

(That, thankfully, isn't a future she sees. She thinks Carlisle might actually kick her out if that were to happen.)

But Alice knows she has to push, or Edward will never take part. "What's the process?" She wonders, tilting her head at him, curiously. "For your writing music? Do you...do it all in your head? Write it down? Both?"

She knows his process will be laid bare to her once he decides to tell her. If he does. She really hopes he does.

[themidnightson]

Had he mentioned that he wrote music to her? Had Carlisle? Esme? Or did she pluck it straight out of the future and hands that weren't even his hands yet? It grates in a strange way, and he's still too distracted by something before it to truly focus even on that part of him that feels unexpectedly tensed, threatened, by the question.







"He wouldn't do that."

"That's not who Carlisle is."

There's no waver in this tone. No whisper. And if Carlisle's pique is there momentarily, surprised and curoious-by-concerned at the phrasing, he doesn't focus on it long either. He knows Edward's (as he would put it, were he asked, and it's why he never is, over inflated) opinion of him and that Edward wouldn't lie. Not about him, at the least.

Which is, though Alice can't know it, why Edward's eyebrow twitches faintly almost upward, and his response is at much to Alice as it is the man not entirely paying full attention to them, without being able to ignore them.

"If it was, Rose and I would have been gone a long time ago."

Especially him. Especially.

[betagainstme]

"Well, I think there's a difference in kicking out the ones you create and the ones who foist themselves upon you."

Her hands fold in her lap again, and she fiddles with her rings to busy her fingers. An urge to press, backwards and not forwards, to see if she can dig up any memory of a father like Carlisle.

Somehow, she thinks that even if she could, she wouldn't find the memories happy. It's a black wall that encompasses her, threatens to, but she jerks her head to the side, staring at the wall across from them, focusing on that instead. The paint, the art hung there. That's real, that's solid, not a cloud of dark worrying uncertainty.

Her attention goes back to her rings: she straightens out the engagement ring and wedding band on her left, the oval shaped opal on her right.

[themidnightson]

"That's not how it works here."

Edward won't even pretend to truly know how Carlisle works. He could detail it out in a hundred journals, defend it, emulate it, describe it by day, and it still wouldn't do him justice, it wouldn't explain how someone so good, against all odds, could exist the way Carlisle did. To the very root of his most instinctual, uncontrollable, thoughts.

"If you had to leave, it would only be because you chose to now."

They knew many other vampires. Vampires they crossed while traveling, vampires who crossed into their territories in different states, and different cities, and even those friends who were scattered across the world. The closest they'd ever come before this were the ties with the Denali coven, but they weren't exactly family.

And whether he liked it or not, Jasper and Alice already were.
To both Esme, near immediately, and Carlisle, already.

[betagainstme]

It's not good enough.





And then she feels immediate shame at the thought. It is. It is good enough. But not right, not the way she knows it could be. Will be? She grows more uncertain every day.

She continues to fiddle, spinning the opal around her finger, once, twice, three times, her attention back on Edward's shoes. Then, with a sharp inhale, she straightens and focuses on his face instead. "I'll keep that in mind. Is...there anything you want to ask me?"

Does he even need to? For as pervasive as her visions are, does he realize he's there at the precipice with her? Always knowing--whether it's their future or their thoughts, doesn't he get that he's very nearly the thing he's mad at her about?

[themidnightson]

Edward doesn't comment on her first thought. Maybe he's impressed she made it three or four minutes without going there immediately. At least in her conscious thoughts. Instead of commenting, he keeps playing, and it's easier finally. To slide into Esme's piece. It's always easier when he's thinking of her. Thinking of them. Who they are.

Carlisle would be disappointed if they left now,
but Esme would be heartbroken.

There's a gentle, tender warmth to this piece. The closest he could ever come to trying to describe how much love and kindness and compassion suffused Esme. Her acceptance in the face of all adversity, and all situations, for all of them. Not one person turned away, or left alone, ever.

"No."

Before she can even move. "Yes."

"I don't know."

It's still not entirely true. It's more like he doesn't want to know. Not that he doesn't want to tell her. Or wants to give her too many answer to cloud up those visions. It's more like. He doesn't want to know what that answers really is. Inside him. When she's sitting so close. Twisting her ring. Esme grimacing, and Rose rolling her eyes, muttering, "Drama Queen much?"

Every inch he gives is on the path to just surrendering himself.
Like his room. Like his piano. Like Esme, and Carlisle.



Every inch he gives is every inch he might have to take back.
Every inch he gives is every inch he doesn't know if can get back.

When inches, and miles, and half-centuries never do come back when he gives them.

[betagainstme]

"Do you want your room back?" She hazards, leaning forward to look at him, her head tilted curiously again. "I'm sorry about that, too."

There's a slight curve to her lips that may betray that she's not that sorry. "I'll spend the next thirty years making up for it, if you want. First pick next time we move. Best view. All yours."

Her head straightens and she watches his fingers dance over the piano, the warm notes washing over her. Then she sighs and fixes him with a stare. That isn't threatening whatsoever, and her voice is gentle. "Pick one. Yes, no. Then ask a question if it's yes. You're giving me a headache."

[themidnightson]

He didn't really care about the room now. Or her lack of remorse.

It was a room. He'd already moved, and had Esme build in a whole net network of large box shelves to hold all his records, that took up that whole wall. And another, normal bookcase, for the books, as they moved between his room, Carlisle's office, and the library.



But it's the last thing she says, that makes him slightly shake his head.
Irritated already at the instruction telling him what to do. And then. That.

"How do you think I feel?"
It's rhetorical. So, so rhetorical.


And yet fraught. Weary. Uncertain.
The music notes gaining complexity.

[betagainstme]

"Feelings are Jasper's arena," she smiles beatifically at him. "I just have them. A lot of them, at times."

If she can't get him to talk, maybe she'll just talk instead.

"So, should I start with the biographical items? I'm guessing I was born in the early 1900s, because I don't seem to be older than twenty-ish. I woke up in Mississippi, in 1920, in the woods. A shallow grave, it was really creepy. A very fitting beginning for a vampire, I like to think. Alone, so it was...weird, to figure out what to do next."

Alice shrugs, glancing down at her feet. "Should I keep going?"

[themidnightson]

Edward cannot stop having feelings. Especially about her. He can't stop suddenly turning about in rooms when she thinks his name and it's like being called, the voice too new, and too often, and too distracting.

But she starts talking, and he can't help but thinking it's a beginning unlike any other he's known. Anyone else he's heard of. Changing someone was usually a very specific choice, even for those who woke them only to use them as chattel, followers, and fodder. The music finishes, and it slides into something else.

More somber, more subdue, fitting for an elegy, except that before he can stop himself one hand is at the opposite end, weaving a soft, very high, flickering of notes through the low, cloudy, thunder. Somewhere else, somewhere deeper in her head, he can hear it;

(an echo; from a thousand directions; a hundred rooms; starting like this, over and over and again; as the furniture in the rooms changes; and Alice; a dozen Alice's; laugh and sigh; while his hands make the same moves they are under his gaze)

It's hard to tell quite what the answer is, but at least he doesn't shake his head?
And, somehow, he doesn't stop playing either.

[betagainstme]

Her breath hitches.

The notes, closer to her laugh; the vision.

A smile, soft and small, on her lips as she continues to watch his hands. He hasn't told her to stop talking but now she doesn't know what else to say. Her lips press together for a moment before she chooses her next words.

"I don't remember anything before the change. Not how I got there, my childhood, why, who I was." She's whispering, barely louder than the notes he plays. "I woke up and I had a vision. Of Jasper. Cheesecake, in Philly. A diner, though I didn't know that yet. I had other visions too. Black robes, red eyes--those didn't last long. Then gold eyes, a family hunting animals."

A pause, her eyes very deliberately going to his face. "You. Um, just your...existence, at first. Nothing big. My visions at the start were...sporadic and strange. Half-formed and unhelpful. But it was a start. I knew that I didn't have to live on human blood--which was a relief after the first time, honestly. Not that there weren't...mistakes...but, well, I like people too much. Don't particularly like eating friends.

"And Jasper. I knew it'd be some time before I found him but...he's what drove me to keep going. To learn how to be me. So I could meet him in that diner. So I could meet your family."

[themidnightson]

The Volturi. He wonders briefly if she's mentioned that to Carlisle yet, and he makes a note to talk to him about it anyway. The flicker of those early momentary visions she saw. The way she tries to avoid saying you all throughout the second part if it, after that first time. Even though it lays under.

The Family; and him, specifically.

Carlisle thinks too much already on her words about how she'd seen he was going to be the other half of her, needing something more than what Jasper could provide, which in itself was, again, completely different from Carlisle & Esme, from Emmett & Rose. He doesn't even know what to think about that.

There are a lot of holes in her story, but there's a lot of time in her past, just like there is in all of theirs. "What did you do before you found him?"

It's better than the question he doesn't want to ask.
That he wants to shove down as far as possible,
And pretend didn't even exist.

[betagainstme]

"Travel. Learned the violin. French. Went to the Kentucky Derby, won a lot of money. Went to Atlantic City. Won a lot of money." Her smile is crooked and impish now, as she talks about the things she feels more confident about.

"I got outta the south pretty fast. I uh, ran into some other nomadic vampires, in Baton Rouge. Learned all about the territory wars...decided that was something I didn't need to witness, so I went up north. Spent time in New York, Jersey. Miss Louisiana though--that place is amazing. I think you could tell anyone in New Orleans that you're a vampire and they'd just brush it off."

A laugh and a silent promise that she never did so, never would.

"I sat in on a lot of classes at local universities, when I could. It was nice to learn things I didn't know. 'Course, most of the universities where women are allowed aren't all that exciting." She shrugs, fiddling with her rings again. "By then, it 1945...and the war was ending. My visions of Jasper were becoming stronger, more filled out. He was on the move, but I knew I had to wait. My vision was 1948, in that diner."

Shrugging again, Alice looks at Edward expectantly. "So uh, yeah. That's my story. Most of it. The important parts at least. I didn't do anything crazy. Except go back and win really big a few more times at the Derby, and Atlantic City.

[themidnightson]

Edward keeps playing. It doesn't all become new, and it doesn't magically become whatever it was in her head, whatever it might be. If he allows himself to think that's what her vision is supposed to say. It cycles, and circles, following the notes even into things that don't work, that he doesn't like, and has to find a way to return to.

"You never left the country?"

Somehow, and he doesn't know why, even as it hits, it surprises him.

[betagainstme]

"I was nervous." She laughs, self-deprecatingly. "Alone, trying to figure it out as is. What if I went to, I don't know, Paris? And just lost it and ate half the population?"

A shudder. All those pretty clothes would be gone. Also the people.

"And I looked, to see myself there, once." Alice stills her hands and shivers a little. "I'd thought about Italy, though I was worried about the sun. But that...flash of what I had when I woke up, red eyes and dark cloaks, it wouldn't leave me alone when I thought about it. So I just stayed. Though, I would love to travel now. Now that the big events I saw are in place--"

She carefully avoids the word mostly, even in her mind.

"--I think I will visit Paris. And London. Oh, my list is huge, but I have no idea where to begin."

[themidnightson]

The problem with that is that by trying to force herself to avoid it, it only draws even more attention to it. Like trying to hide or jump away from something. Which he watches, because he can't stop himself from doing so, but he face remained passively smooth.

"At least you can use the transatlantic now."






Beat. "I'm honestly not sure if I like them, or the boats better."
He loved the speed, but there were a lot fewer exits from temptation in the sky.

[betagainstme]

Each word she draws from him tastes like hope.

"Oh, I want to so bad!" Alice's hands clap together softly. "I took a plane from Baton Rouge to New York. That was a lesson in not-breathing but also trying to look like you're breathing."

She giggles softly. "The man next to me snored the entire trip. It was terrible. But much easier than driving across the Eastern Seaboard."

[themidnightson]

There's an oddly calculating zip that crosses Edward's expression at the example she decides to use as her personal comparison to his about the boats he and Carlisle used to get between American and Europe.

"I don't know if I can agree with that."

Edward liked cars.


Edward really, really liked cars.

[betagainstme]

"Jasper and I drove everywhere. Better with company, I think." She says fondly. "Though I did spend many alone trips singing along to the radio as loud as I possibly could."

A beat.

"Well, I did that with Jasper too but alone there was no one laughin' at me."

[themidnightson]

There's nothing about he has to imagine, as her mind supplies clips and flashes of it all. Different cars, and different scenery, in wholly different parts of the country. All of it rolling back, wind and grey and rain, the rarest streaks of sun far from cities, and that music, in slashes and hashes, muddied and more like the whisper of it, with to focus on the hilarity of singing so loudly.

Of Jasper at her side, laughing, slowly unfettering.

"We haven't done it in a long time." Though he means more the shadowed 'I,' but the best part of that is that it is true as 'We' just as much. They didn't take those kinds of drives unless they were moving a lot, and even if Rose and Emmett took a few years leave here or there, doing whatever they decided to while on them; Edward didn't.

[betagainstme]

"Well, I'll take you on a nice long drive some day, if you'll let me." She rests her elbow on her knee, cupping her chin in her palm, head turned to the side as she smiles, unfocused. "Or drag everyone along with us, if you'd rather. I'll still sing loudly, no matter what."

Besides, Alice thinks at him, I'm not half-bad a singer.

Modesty, perhaps. Or fishing for a compliment? Hmm, she's tricksy.

[themidnightson]

There's the faintest shift to his mouth. It'd be hard for anyone, even Esme or Carlisle, to pinpoint what exactly it'd been. Not really the tightening of a muscle, or press of his lips. But something, here and gone. Something ... different.

It's strange that he can't help but appreciate her backtrack. She didn't even need to, but she did anyway. From both of them, to everyone. She's becoming more careful. He still can't tell if he should be grateful or ashamed. Everyone in the house has very definite thoughts about his actions. It is all very confusing. But only for him. Well. He supposed he could accede that wasn't true. It wasn't confusing for the rest of his family. For him, obviously. For Alice (obviously, too?).

(Even Jasper's;

though confusion was far less with him, or him and Alice, and far more with the whole situation of their family. The choices they'd made. The life they lived. The way the whole thing seemed wholly impossible, even as it existed at him. No matter that Alice had told him about everything before they arrived.)

There's a small pressed line between his eyebrows, because he doesn't quite know what to say to either, and the music isn't helping. The music cracks him open, sends him spinning in spirals, as it winds, through those thoughts and emotions he'd almost rather stayed as far away as he could keep them.

Which is maybe why he chooses safely, "Esme would probably love that."

[betagainstme]

All of Edward’s thoughts to himself happen in the span of milliseconds but she still feels each one span decades, or so it feels.

Each careful word he speaks—and his words are all careful, purposefully chosen, unlike hers that fall from her mind and lips without pause—is metered and special.

“Excellent,” she smiles softly at him. “We can pick a place to travel and make it happen.”

Another pause, then: “Do you like other music too? Like, I don’t know. I love Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley...all the popular singers right now, I guess.”

[themidnightson]

There it goes again. That exuberance. He tries not to feel a little irritated it's 'that simple.' Without actually asking anyone else who might have suddenly been roped into this newest idea of hers. Pick a place, any place, and they'll go. Take as many other people as are needed, if he'll come along.

The sudden fork in focus though draws him up short in the middle of his smallest knot of thoughts, and makes his gaze shift toward her again. His head actually turn, opening his eyes most of the way to look at her. This time there is a faint press to his lips and furrow of his brow.

Something serious settling into his expression, though not darkly. As though his expression might be weighing her worth without warning, in a suddenly wholly new and wholly serious fashion. And he returns her questions with a question,

"Do you listen to anything not on the Billboard Chart Line?"

If there was one thing Edward could be said to have a hyper fixation on, that wasn't speed and any means by which it could be reproduced, it would be music. Which did not stop, only started, with the piano.

[betagainstme]

She sends him a flat look, an almost-glare. Between them:

--she reaches out, lightning quick, to flick his ear, but he'll duck in time to miss it and--

"Yes, Mr. Music Snob," Alice laughs. "I enjoy all music. But you can't sing along to Chopin's Prelude in E Minor."

[themidnightson]

It was a serious question, though there's no time for clarification -- even if he wouldn't -- before he's dodging to one side from her hand coming out, and the movement sends him leaning further down the bench away from her stool, stopping the playing with a brief clattering of the wrong keys. A strange silence sucking in where the music was seconds ago.

Even though, what she gets, is a more blasely retort,

"Not with that attitude."

[betagainstme]

Her lips purse, eyebrow quirked.

She can see, on the edges, cracks in his exterior. But under it, more shields and gates and walls than the Pentagon. The silence stretches between them for a moment and then she gestures lightly at the piano.

"May I? For a moment?" Her hands press together like a prayer.

[themidnightson]

If there was the edge of a not quite joke there seconds ago, it vanishes. Entirely. There's a flicker in his expression, but then even that compresses away entirely. An emotion, a reaction, that clouds his eyes, but isn't allowed anywhere near his muscles. A single facial feature.

There's a blink and then, there's the very faintest shrug.
Elegant and absolutely as unreadable as his face.


Before he simply gets up from the piano.



It's not like it's even a real question.

It's not like it would matter if he answered it like it was. Or as if he sees that as anything like an actual option. He hasn't overtly said no to anything, not since they arrived, not since Esme and Carlisle made their decision. Even before them. Long before them. It's not what he does. It's not who he is in this family.

He really shouldn't have let the words she said earlier matter so much. Why had he?

[betagainstme]

For a long moment, she doesn't move, knowing she asked the wrong question. Knowing it when she asked it. Before. It still fell from her lips and she wants to take it back.

But the damage is done. So she slides onto the bench and places her fingers on the keys, lightly, thinking for a moment, flipping through a catalog of songs she knows. Then, her fingers start a hymn she learned, once upon a time in the last thirty years.

She can hear Jasper's soft noise through his nose when she plays it. A good, Southern hymn, for good, Southern children. Her fingers stop just before the chorus line and she stands up again, moving to the window, her hands coming to rest behind her back.

"I'll let you be," Alice murmurs, to Edward, over her shoulder. "I'm sorry, again."

[themidnightson]

She sees it.

She sees it, and she does it anyway.

She sees it, and does it anyway, and apologies, again, only after.


After he's stood there, with a hand on the top of a wingback chair, not moving around the room as she had, her fingertips drifting over the spines of all of Carlisle and Edward's carefully kept books. Stood there, and listened. It's the least he can do. The first time she plays, and he's not hearing it through Carlisle's memory.

She is good. Not as good as Rosalie, but still good. Still skies above better than anyone who was human could even dream of playing. Their acuity and speed landing a graceful lack of pauses the human body requires during all it does.

He listens as Esme and Carlisle exchange a smile thinking he's sharing, and Emmett hums a few bars from so far out of nowhere he has to crack off into a laugh at Rosalie's surprised expression; the Tennessee boy among them. And it's fine. It is.

It's fine.
It's fine.
It's fine.

It makes them happy.
That's what matters.

She stops, and she apologizes, and he says, "It's fine."

But it's not an invitation to stay either.
(He'd almost thought he had a choice.)

Edward's done playing, for now though, and he lets himself out of the room, without even stepping back over to the piano to the pull the cover back of the keys. Esme will, likely, later. It's not like she hasn't dozens of other times, even on good days. Gives himself the leisure to go back to his new room and doesn't reappear for about an hour. Near almost perfectly an hour.


Coming down the stairs, at faintly faster than average a pass, and sticking his head in the living room only to announce to Esme he was going for a run, and with passing ease as though it is nothing else, to ask Carlisle if he'd like to come. Pausing only long enough for company, and more opened, and then closed, doors.

Because he still needs to do the first thing he thought of earlier, too. Certain loyalties will always come first, and watching for them, for things like that, anything that might pose a present or future risk to the family, before it could ever be an outwardly visible and acted on event beyond a thought, has always been his job.