The Stormcrow & The Saint, Redux
Jun. 27th, 2020 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
themidnightsonShe hasn't been paying attention for minutes now, and he's listening to the way it's ratcheting in her brain. He wasn't trying to. He's left this alone. For the most part. As much as he could. He's done enough damage. To all of them. But he knows this part of Alice.
It's hyperbolic, to say he'd known this even if he were dead.
He is dead, and he recognize it. The spiral.
Getting tighter, faster, drowning out her class.
He manages to resist for about thirteen minutes, but then he just can't.
Because she might be sitting still, facing forward, but if she were human, he'd worry about the chance of hyperventilation. It's not. That. But it's. Important. Something she isn't even talking about, but she never stops thinking of it.
That term, and Edward's refusal to play nice with her futures.
Both of them in an endless whirlwind, buffeting her between one and the other.
The irony is not lost on him.
It isn't even that not breathing will do anything to her. But she can't freeze up entirely, like home, here, either. And part of that is breathing but in an entirely different way. Even though she won't need telling it's not so much meant that way, even if both apply.
It's hyperbolic, to say he'd known this even if he were dead.
He is dead, and he recognize it. The spiral.
Getting tighter, faster, drowning out her class.
He manages to resist for about thirteen minutes, but then he just can't.
Because she might be sitting still, facing forward, but if she were human, he'd worry about the chance of hyperventilation. It's not. That. But it's. Important. Something she isn't even talking about, but she never stops thinking of it.
That term, and Edward's refusal to play nice with her futures.
Both of them in an endless whirlwind, buffeting her between one and the other.
From: 360-339-2730 (Edward)
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Breathe, Alice.
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11.23 am Tues, Apr 10
The irony is not lost on him.
It isn't even that not breathing will do anything to her. But she can't freeze up entirely, like home, here, either. And part of that is breathing but in an entirely different way. Even though she won't need telling it's not so much meant that way, even if both apply.
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Date: 2020-06-28 03:43 am (UTC)Luckily the near-jerk of a vampire is still imperceptible to humans.
Slumping in her desk a little, Alice pulls the phone out of her jeans, glancing down while still pretending to listen--though, she's not been listening for some time now.
Stormcrow, stormcrow, stormcrow, a haunting refrain in her mind, along with building anger and annoyance at her brother's girlfriend, both rising to a crescendo and apparently enough to make Edward text her.
She turns the page of her textbook with everyone else, thumb flying over the keys.
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Date: 2020-06-28 03:51 am (UTC)--------------------------------------------------
I live to amuse. Or something like that.
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11.25 am Tues, Apr 10
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Date: 2020-06-28 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-28 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-28 04:10 am (UTC)She had typed and retyped several things before it. Snarky things, things that admitted her thanks for him interrupting her mind, but none of them sat right with her.
stormcrow, stormcrow, stormcrow
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Date: 2020-06-28 05:04 am (UTC)2 of 2
Date: 2020-06-28 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-28 01:14 pm (UTC)She sends the message with a shaking thumb, biting down on her inner cheek to keep from making a face.
A glance at the clock, it's almost time for class to end. Just a few minutes.
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Date: 2020-06-28 02:51 pm (UTC)Even with as intuitive Esme is, he doesn't think Alice'd tell her.
She hasn't chosen to tell him, and from what Edward can tell without brooking the subject, he's not certain if she and Jasper have spoken about it. Before now. Before they all came back to Fork. And he and Jasper are the two who know best how well Alice can put on her sweetness and light, manic pixie dream girl exuberant smiling face, even when everything is tumbling apart inside of her.
He's not even sure that he's going to press, only that the lie of high school isn't the right place for her right now. Even though there's a part of him, deep and twinging at unplanned, until five minutes ago, idea of having to be any further from Bella than half the campus, his sister needs him, needs something, and he can't leave her alone to it, either.
He owes her so much.
Which is why, some of the rules be damned, Edward is leaning on the lockers outside her class about thirty seconds after he can depart the classroom of watching mortal eyes. Shoulders relaxed and hair artfully askew as ever, books under one arm, held by a hand, watching the door.
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Date: 2020-06-28 03:01 pm (UTC)She sees Edward's feet first, her gaze firmly on the ground, then she forces her eyes up to meet his. Her own are cloudy, tumultuous, even as she forces a smile on her face for him.
To humans, it looks real and natural. To Edward, it's probably more of a grimace.
"Hey," she murmurs, coming to stand in front of him. "Where'd you wanna go?"
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Date: 2020-06-28 03:56 pm (UTC)"I was thinking a drive. Be back by lunch and all that."
He'd rather be closer. But he thinks Alice might need space more.
Even having decided on that between their last text and now, saying the words out loud hurts in a physical fashion he's still trying to get his hands around. He needs to be better than this, too, even when it feels impossible. Even when being away from Bella feels like a slow suffocation too like the floor in Rio, the waiting room in Volterra.
He knows it's insane. He knows better than to show it. But that doesn't stop it stabbing into his center even while he waits, calmly, for Alice to say yes or no, or voice a different suggestion.
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Date: 2020-06-28 04:02 pm (UTC)stormcrow, stormcrow, stormcrow--
Blinking back up at him, she nods again and then pushes forward into the hallway, slipping between students until she can get to the doors.
Suddenly, everything just feels...suffocating.
Alice waits for Edward, a short pause at the doors to the parking lot--he's right behind her anyway. She feels an odd sort of disconnect to the world around her, her visions quiet, her mind a riot. A constant screaming stormcrow she can't get out of her head. It's got to be driving Edward insane.
Instead of addressing it, she just gets in the passenger seat of his car, her hands fiddling with each other. A twist of her rings, the tug of one fingertip with another. Another pass at the choker on her neck.
Flitting, uneasy.
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Date: 2020-06-28 05:46 pm (UTC)He's considering it even as he follows her. Across the school, across the parking lot. More like blurs, than children surreptitiously escaping. If they needed it, Carlisle could get them a note for anything. Or they could just charm whoever wanted to complain. Beyong their physical charms that could do that, it helped that that most of them were stellar, upstanding, teacher-favorited, always an 'A' students, who had never caused a single problem in any class. Ever.
They were the most venerated example of hardworking foster kids.
It meant there was a lot they could get away with, when they had to.
Edward's in the driver seat, and peeling them out of the student parking area at at least two, headed toward three, times the speed limit for the small docile area. The first attempt is still flipping through options, and possibilities.
"Music or no music?"
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Date: 2020-06-28 07:45 pm (UTC)The trees and buildings whip by them as Edward drives. She has an overwhelming desire to unbuckle, to get out, to run. Instead, she just presses her fingers against the window.
"Carlisle and I," Alice begins, her voice wavering. She doesn't want to say it. Doesn't want to talk about it. But does. It's always so jumbled. "We had a fight, in Denali."
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Date: 2020-06-28 08:35 pm (UTC)But it matters being told. Choosing to say things to him, speak them to him, and if they break all the rules for each other, if he often picks thoughts, visions, tangents, out of her head and comments on them, this isn't like those. This isn't like almost anything before it.
He chooses -- he can't say it's a careful question, because none of this can be, Alice has been hit too deeply by it -- but something circumspect, something grounded. "When?"
There are rough estimates he can make (has made), but he isn't Aro, he can't pluck the whole thing from the flashed parts of it that Alice thinks about it in. The constant repeating single second most. The single word that resounds and resounds and resounds. Carlisle's voice. How he said it. His face.
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Date: 2020-06-29 12:30 am (UTC)It's like pulling teeth, saying the words out loud.
"I found out that he was keeping letters from Bella, letters she wrote me...he'd picked them up in Milliways, hid them." Alice looks down at her pants, tugging at the fabric. "And I snapped. I was so angry, Edward. At him, at you, at Bella."
Her face crumples as she stares out the window. "I told him he only pretended to be my father and that he had no right." Eyes squeezing shut at the last, breath hitching as she pulls the veil back, revealing what's been bothering her. "He called me stormcrow."
His face, all controlled anger. Hers, unbridled. That stupid ascot between them.
No, you're a bad person because--
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Date: 2020-06-29 12:48 am (UTC)"He didn't mean it." It's not defensive.
Or even absently, unplaced, apologetic.
It's quiet; a wince put into words.
He'd not sure what happened with the letters, why Carlisle made that choice -- because Edward had made his decision, the first in over a century like that, like anything any of the others had done, decided, caused, and Carlisle was standing by it, him? -- but he knew the more important part. The part that continued to sting her, over and over in her head, a never flavor to the dark ocean she couldn't outrun behind her. He knew Carlisle didn't mean that part.
(He can't help wondering where the letters are.
Are they in the house? Unpacked? In boxes?
Did he destroy them? And what was in them?)
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Date: 2020-06-29 12:53 am (UTC)Alice pushes her head against the glass, mussing her hair, turning slightly to look at Edward. His tight hands on the steering wheel, his glance at her.
Between them, the vitriol of Carlisle's slashing word through her.
"I deserved it." She picks at her pants again, focusing once more on the passing scenery. "I was a horrible brat."
I could be worse, one day.
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Date: 2020-06-29 01:03 am (UTC)And did he get the inspiration from the earlier letters?
Not a thing he can ask either. It doesn't stop the wheels spinning.
"You didn't. You were hurt, and angry. And he was, too." But it's not that simple is it, when he's trying to lay it out in a line. Because it doesn't make sense. Not in comparison. "I didn't think he'd do that. They didn't--"
But he and Alice did. Somehow, that is so much worse.
His lips pressed, with a shake of his head, at it, at the two words.
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Date: 2020-06-29 01:07 am (UTC)The words fall from her lips faster now, her eyes squeezing shut again at the hurt on Carlisle's face she can see in her mind's eye.
I'm a bad person because of my fashion choices?
"And then I left, just as abruptly. I didn't even say goodbye. I just...I turned around and I went to Forks and I didn't even call until I was there, and it was just to Jasper. Then it was Italy and--"
She breaks off. I lied. To Jasper, about knowing I'd come back okay. I told him to tell Carlisle we'd both be fine. I didn't know that.
"What if the last thing I had said to Carlisle was awful, and then we...I...Edward, I was so angry."
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Date: 2020-06-29 01:40 am (UTC)Except.
And can't stop his gaze from shiting toward her; Alice did.
Alice did come for him. And, maybe, he is still livid on some level that she used Bella, and she knew she was using Bella, and she even told Bella as much. But she did it for him. Alice broke all his rules for him. Alice left everyone for him. Alice came for him. Alice found him. Alice stopped him from killing himself. Alice stopped Aro at the last moment, giving herself up, too. Alice.
Alice did all of that. Even after all of this. She's why he is here.
Maybe Edward doesn't know what would or wouldn't have worked at all.
He can't tell her it would have been fine. Neither of them were sure they'd walk out that presentation room, with or without Bella, by the time they were in it. So many possibilities, almost all of them bloody. He can't tell her Carlisle would have forgiven her, even if; she already knows that, and it's horrifyingly unhelpful. Black maudlin. Suited for Edward. Not for Alice.
"I know." He knows she was angry, and even that some part of her still is, even as it ebbs away. Even as what sticks is the pain of wounds punched too deep with too much casual fire. "I knew he would be, too. But not like that. He's never," stops. Clips to: "He didn't," becomes;
"They didn't have any fights like that Alice, not one, last time. Not in the whole time." Not in five years. And this had been less than one. And it was. It'd been so long since. He was supposed to be fine. He had all of them with him.
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Date: 2020-06-29 01:53 am (UTC)She saw their deaths so clearly. So sharp, so full of finality, until she made that final decision to give herself (and Bella) away.
It was the only way.
She'd do it again in a heartbeat, if she had one.
Just like she'd do whatever it takes to stop them again, from hurting Carlisle, Jasper, Edward, anyone, when they come for her.
Alice blindly reaches for Edward, her hand on the center console, upturned, for his, if he'll take it, refusing to look anywhere but out.
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Date: 2020-06-29 02:22 am (UTC)He takes her hand, curling long thing fingers around her smaller hand, with a sigh, and a momentary close of his eyelids, that exists even if it's less than a millisecond.
"It's not true." He wants to add, you know that, but it doesn't even spring up between them as a possibility, because he knows it can't be said. Because she doesn't. She wants to. She knows she used her power to save everything. Everyone.
But that's how much it matters that it was said --
"No matter how many times you say it."
-- by whom it was said.
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Date: 2020-06-29 02:38 am (UTC)After a moment, she finally looks over at him.
"I made the choice with the options I was given." A bare whisper, soft, even for them. "But I made a choice, long ago, to keep them away from Carlisle. Before Milliways, before I'd known for myself, their terror. I will keep that promise, Edward. However I can."
Her lips press together. Then:
"But for now, I'm watching them for Bella. And for you. They're not going to make a move without me knowing."
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Date: 2020-06-29 03:11 am (UTC)"Good. We're going to need that."
Then, with an odd look out the front, "I need that."
Needed her, needed her to do that, be her.
He needs to know they're safe. Bella, and Alice. Needs to know the family will be. Because They will come, and Alice made Them a promise, and Carlisle agreed to make it a true one. Against his own personal vows, a seventy-year treaty, and anything like a damn what Edward thought.
Then;
"Your promise is still a half-decade behind mine."
And his was made with a full understanding from the beginning.
"You still haven't see what they're like near him, or about him, now."
He has. He has, in person, in America, and in Volterra proper.
He's been inside all of their heads now. Aro. Caius. Marcus.
"Or what they were like the whole time before you got there."
He thinks of the small boy, with his hummingbird heart.
And the broken Icarus wings on the floor.
The message he couldn't miss. Either.
How much she still doesn't know.
About two weeks ago. About the months before.
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