April 7th, 2006; Right after the New Moon Epilogue

[themidnightson]

Edward is, for lack of a better word, irritated.

He'd usually be with Bella right now, during her 'Official Visting Hours,' but thanks to the mongrel, she's now being grounded on top of being 'grounded until Charlie decided otherwise.' He'd been smart enough not to ask. Just to let his fingers tighten only ever so gently to squeeze Bella's before, with a single nod and "Cheif Swan" to her father, followed by a quiet "I'll see you at school tomorrow."

Not evening pausing to brush his fingertips or lips against her face, or to tell her he'd be there, later tonight, once Charlie was asleep. She knew that already. Even if her fingers had clutched harder for a second right as he pulled away.

Though he hadn't left until Charlie stopped yelling about the stupidity of everything related to the red motorcycle parked by his cruiser and how she'd 'be lucky to see freedom before he was in the ground.' Charle had gone back to the game he was watching before realizing the bike just appeared. Bella had stomped off, muttering about 'killing Jake' to start dinner, and he'd finally turned the Volvo toward home.

He doesn't think about going anywhere else but home. He knows what the only next step is, and there are hours yet until the sun will set, and even hours from then until he'll need to be back. He parked the car in the garage, at least threw a look in on most of everyone watching the tv (two more deaths in Seattle; a weird recurrence), and headed straight up the stairs.

Taking less time between the bottom of the stairs and standing behind one of the chairs in front of Carlisle's desk, hand resting on the top of it, than he'd taken between his car and the stairs themselves. "Are you busy?"

Comments

[themidnightson]

Maybe?

But he has little time to question himself watching a tree miss him by a few good feet. Thrown by a man who knows precision down to a surgical degree.

Somewhere somewhere there's the faintest hint of Esme's voice, the reminder of something old. About the family. But then, just as suddenly, he can't hear her. See her. See anything. There is nothing in existence except the fierce, rage-burned gold of Carlisle's eyes suddenly an inch in front of his. Snapping a jagged, sharp inhale through his teeth that his body will never need, but wrings from him as impossible to have controlled.

When it's all he can do as coiled flinch happens at the same time as reaching out grab Carlisle's shirt, both reflexes without thought from opposites sides of his existence, reflections of Carlisle's words, the anger and anguish, even as he clings to the last words. "I'm okay." Even if the grip of his knuckles might make that not seem as much backed up. "Alice is okay."

He just said he might rather be hit, or splintered in some small (hopefully?) survivable parts, by Carlisle, and somehow he's trying to say those words? Too? A second later? The amount to how fucked up he was really wasn't even a countable amount, was it?

And is it true, is it even a little true, with everything coming, with everything screaming on the inside of his head. With how much Aro would be delighted to have caused even this. That same clap of hands, and that same oily, manic 'Delightful!' as when he walked back in with Alice and Bella.

"She wasn't there more than a few hours."
Even that was too long. "He didn't."

At least it wasn't longer.

At least they had no time for anything else.
(But it's in her head, too, now. In their futures.)

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle is supposed to be the restrained one.

But he's breathing shakily for someone who doesn't need oxygen, looking down at Edward's hands to shoulders to over his hair, back down the other side and up the other arm.

"You're okay. Alice is okay."

It doesn't seem real, and the panic seeping away from him would make a human Carlisle's hands tremor.

[themidnightson]

It's the wrong words. It's the wrong words. All of them are the wrong words. He has fifteen billion, in more than dozens of languages, several with actual degrees to their names, and all of them feel useless, feel gutted open, fish rotting on a beach as Carlisle breath shakes, and it'd almost be an ironic laugh at that joke if he didn't think Carlisle was close to something like the hint of a hyperventilation none of them could actually do.

And Edward can't lie. He can't. He can't. He can't.

He can. He always can. Does. Even to Alice.
(Told Bella he's fine calmly so many times.)



He has to choose not to.

While Carlisle is making a circuit of the top of him, and he almost pulls away instantly, like it's Carlisle's eyes and not his own hands that make him aware just what he's done, how much every part of him except his mouth is that lie. Reminds him almost too much of a similar moment, seventy-five years ago. But it's not similar. And there is nothing similar in comparing what Edward might have done to himself and what Aro could have done to him. Them. (Did?)

Not for Carlisle.

(Not if he went there willingly, especially.)

Edward ducked his head, forcing his hands to let go. "We will be."

There's something of an apology in those few words. As though his mouth had gone too fast for his head. The same as Carlisle coming for him only to stop this close hadn't. The same as any ability to discern anything fled at the overwhelming need to give Carlisle whatever would help, prove the worst of the fears under his anger false.

"We're here. We're in one piece." Standing.
Something like standing. They would be. "With you still."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle doesn't step back yet.








After a long moment that would be awkward if either of them felt like thinking about social niceties: Did Alice tell you what would happen when you came after me?

[themidnightson]

"No."

Except, and Edward almost wants to sigh. His eyes can't seem to decide whether to make it back to Carlisle's or to just keep hovering somewhere at about his shoulder. Never beyond him. No further than this one foot. But.

"There was something that happened there she saw as I was leaving. She was answering some question. Something about this, maybe. Or about my leaving. It didn't have that part." There's a shrug, vague, even for how effortless graceful it is. "It probably had to be decided by my closing the door, or something shortly after it."

Even he's not perfect at his sister's gift, even if he might be closest.

"But I didn't pause to see if she'd test the edges of it, what it was or why, or to who. I was already out the door then." He's used to that, after all. Alice's random visions in his head, about all of them, little things and big, every day and night. Sometimes the smallest unmoored snippet, sometimes a still shot polaroid, sometimes a strange, fully realized movie of life not yet happened.

And.


And.


Even though, it bites somewhere at the inside of his cheek.

"I don't need Alice to tell me whether it's safe to come after you. Even if she said it wasn't--" Edward made his gaze shift back to Carlisle's eyes. Still so, so close. "--I still would have come."

Some things were more important than simply 'good' or 'bad.'
Even Alice didn't need to be told he'd ignore her for that. She knew.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle's coming back to Earth somewhat - the usually non-existent crease in between his eyebrows makes an appearance in something like regret.

"I don't want her - " any of them, Edward, Esme, any of them " - to see me like this."

Feeling hors sens, for lack of a better word.

Carlisle's the restrained one.

[themidnightson]

"No promises."

He's not there. He can't tell yet if she can or she can't. But she often saw so much more than either of them let on to everyone else. Unless they were asked pinpointedly. For the same reason, he tried to give everyone as much respect as he could, even as every thought they had cut into his thoughts through whatever else he was doing.

But. She'd seen more of what happened to him in Volterra than he wants her to, to have seen, before she even got there. He gets the gist of the statement all too well.


"But she wouldn't say anything if she had."






Aside from maybe to him, and even then, only in the way that didn't involve words anyone else could overhear. Somewhere between his thoughts and her visions, in the prism of what could still be chosen, and yet neither would, riding an echo until it faded, cheating the system.

[ofthefamily]

"She wouldn't have to."

Alice doesn't have to share what she saw for Carlisle to wish that she hadn't needed to.





"I don't know what to do now."

In the moment. Obviously.

[themidnightson]

Edward tilted his head just barely.

"About Alice?"



"Or the trees?" He tries.
A rarity still.




Before,


"Or Them?"

[ofthefamily]

Pick one.

Maybe if they both just stand here, time will stand still as well and nobody will miss them.

They both know well and good that multiple people at the house are waiting for them to come back.

No matter how much Carlisle doesn't feel ready for that.

[themidnightson]

Edward still has hours until he's needed somewhere that isn't here.
The longer they stand there, a fraction apart, the easier that gets.


(He doesn't say, At least you didn't pick me.
He couldn't give it any levity even if he tried.)


"For Alice, I can tell you later, if you want to know." There was no way he would start other than with her, was there? Or Carlisle, if he actually did. Alice knew how very little Edward wouldn't do if Carlisle needed it, and he was capable of giving it. "No one will even notice the trees, for the storms here."

"As for Them." Edward's expression drew inward. Thought-filled, more than thoughtful. The whole of it a map larger than he could. A small twist to his mouth. "We'll figure it out. We have to." For all of them.

His mouth pressed toward a line.

"I feel like I'm still putting together everything I saw."


Feel is the wrong word, but it's chosen that way, too. Wrong.
He was feeling almost nothing at all during those times. Empty.
Lifeless. Despair so grand it stood like a lighthouse still nearby.

He wasn't paying attention to everything around him, then. Save the quickest way to get what he wanted. But, like Alice's visions, there was no controlling his gift even then. His mind has all of it. Everything that was happening within the radius of himself the whole time. Compressed, in perfectly clear, eidetic, photographic, true to life, memories. His, and everyone's around him, of those moments, of whatever they were doing, thinking, saying, feeling. He just has to actually pay attention to it now.

He wasn't going to need it when he was just going to die.

But he knew they might need all of it now,
to give them even more chances of staying alive.

[ofthefamily]

The fact that there's a We to accomplish that...

We should go back to the house.

With far less grace than he is usually credited for having, Carlisle shifts and starts walking toward their home. It'll take about twenty minutes at this speed, which should be enough time.

[themidnightson]

Carlisle is the first to step away, just as he was the one to instate that lack of space, and that, too, is things returning to normal. Somehow it's still all that space that makes Edward, only too aware of his absolute lack of a need to breathe still feel something deflate in his chest. He doesn't let a breath out. Doesn't allow himself.

He doesn't know if the time constraint is a timer counting down for something he's supposed to do or for Carlisle's stopwatch to put himself back together.

But Carlisle has decided what he wants, what he decided they both should do, and so Edward does the only thing left to him. He turns and falls into step at Carlisle's side. Quiet, given that Carlisle'd chosen not to answer any of the other pieces or add anything to their place, too.

[ofthefamily]

On the way home, Carlisle is outwardly quiet and making a smooth path toward their home incongruously in his black leather brogues.

Holding a branch up for Edward to pass under behind him: I promise to do my best.

It's all he has.

Which is awful, somewhere behind his sternum.

His thoughts are still speeding along, but his outward composure is improved.

Carlisle is the restrained one.

[themidnightson]

They both have brand new mantras, don't they. Carlisle and Alice.

"Thanks." For the branch, easily slides straight into. "You always do."

Quiet. Unchangeable truth more than anything like reverent.
Those words fit everything from Denali to changing Bella.
He may not agree, but that doesn't change it either.

Edward had nearly stopped himself from saying it, before deciding there wasn't a point. Even if Carlisle couldn't hear it yet, that didn't change the sentiment. Or it's age. Or every tick mark in the chart that proved in over most of a century. One of a thousand things he didn't agree he was, no matter how many times Aro's words repeated circles and circles in his brain.

It was too easy to see through every child's imitation of that right now.

But not making those three words the point, like it was some kickback against those words ever needing to be said given who Carlisle was, had always been, Edward added barely a second after that do: "About what this time?"

[ofthefamily]

He doesn't have a good answer for that. The closest he gets is - "Whatever the family needs me to be."

And maybe trees won't have to die for it.

[betagainstme]

They weren’t all staring out the window, plastered to the glass to watch Carlisle and Edward argue, fight, whatever.

No, instead, the other ‘children’ gathered around Alice, to watch her watch them. It was almost so normal it hurt. Everything felt so shattered and wrong lately but doing this, spying on her father and brother to quietly whisper the details to her siblings and husband—that felt perfectly right for their family.

“They’re coming back,” she whispers and Emmett groans. He’d been hoping for more trees destroyed, always ready to watch the scenery get upturned.

Rosalie thwaps him on the arm, rolling her eyes, and Alice allows herself a tiny smile. At least they weren’t too affected by the events of Volterra. Jasper’s jaw is tight though—another fracture in the family that needs mending.

She knows Esme heard her too, at the pause of her movements downstairs.

Alice pokes Emmett’s shoulder. “Act natural, dork.”

[themidnightson]

There's no comfort hearing Carlisle phrase it as something he has dozen of times in the last nine days. Aro's words whisper even more so. A corrosive burning finger drawing down some part of him he can't see.

It's the only promise they all can make the same, isn't it?
The whole family. Trying. Promising. To do their best.
In some amount they all say it. Think it. Live it.

Edwards has no words for it though. Which is the problem, isn't it. It's the thing they always come back to. Each of these times. The forest isn't. Quiet. Animals still fleeing from them, the greater predator, even as they mill through the grounds of the forest, walking all but the speed of humans.





Until Edward's steps stopped.

At the moment he could make out the whisper at the edge of his thoughts. Not close enough anyone would be able to hear them, or Carlisle would be able to hear the family. Just close enough he could make out the well-known feeling of them at the furthest edge in his thoughts.

"Two questions."

He forces the words out, not because he will mind at all the first, but because he doesn't think Carlisle will let him stop after it, having said that first word. To see if he can force himself to find the nerve to ask it, knowing if he doesn't he might never be able to.

[ofthefamily]

Stops moving forward.

Edward was still behind him, so Carlisle stops and he doesn't approach, but he's waiting.

"Two?"

[themidnightson]

It's gray. It's almost always gray. He still looks up, even though there's nothing to look up and see. Clouds rolling and merging. A see of shades. The sun is somewhere beyond the tumult of cloud banks that almost never lets up. It's not paranoid, the thought, just a little more uncomfortable than he'd like, when he's not looking up at the clouds, the sun, the sky.

It's not important to the question itself anyway.

Which he asks, letting his gaze fall to Carlisle's back in front of him,
toying with shifting his weight back, whether everyone else will vanish,
if it'll just be Carlisle again,

"I saw Star. In Rio. I assume that was you?"

He saw a lot of things on that floor in Rio,
but he's mostly certain she was real.

[ofthefamily]

"For as much as Stella does anything at the behest of others, I suppose. I cannot say for certain that it was entirely me so much as her own curiosity alongside."

[themidnightson]

"She didn't seem all that curious," Edward settles for the term Carlisle chooses. He can't claim to understand her. Or to have even tried. To have much cared at the time. He was so angry and so empty. "Just there. Just watching."

He still hasn't looked up that card from her first day.

"We didn't even talk much." Not much is an overstatement in itself. In all those weeks, months, they never had one real conversation. He'd snarled things in her direction a handful of times. He'd acclimated, among the starvation and halllucinations, to the sound of the cards being shuffled in his window, the skirt that sometimes ruffled against the wall. "She never said why she came, but I never asked either."



Though she did allow him to attempt breaking his sanity on her.

It's an unclarity. A blinded mark on his memory.
A before, and an after. Static in between.
The moment she let him in her mind.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle winces a fraction. "I wish I could say that I knew her full reasons for anything. I hope that wasn't the second question."

[themidnightson]

"No."

That much is easy. Even as it's not. Definitely not as easy, not as potentially trivial as asking about why something-like-a-god from Milliways had decided to play peanut gallery to his desiccation.

It's easier than reading to step out into the piazza, so why doesn't it quite feel like that's a lie. His mouth twitched a little. His nostrils. It's almost like he looks like he's looking for phrasing, except he isn't. There really isn't a way to settle his shoulders for it.

"Aro." He lets the name sit between only long enough to be a subject change, before adding. "How much do you think the way he is, his head is, is predicated on his gift?"

There's a question under it. Of course, there is. How could there not be. Was there a limit to how many lives were supposed to fit inside even an inhuman mind, when everyone else carried only one, and even if he were nowhere near three-thousand, does that mean there's a callous calculus coming for him, too?

[ofthefamily]

Whatever question Carlisle expected, it wasn't this and it shows. His eyes widen slightly and he looks off into the middle distance for a second seeming for all the world to be checking boxes off on a mental list.

"I have always assumed that gifts that manifest as vampires were personality characteristics as humans, amplifying what already existed and bringing it forward.

"All this to say - even without his gift, Aro would still be a fucking horrifying specimen of our kind and a threat to us all."