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

[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."

[themidnightson]

"Yes," is unruffled, to hear exactly what he knows about both of those. Has his whole life. But Carlisle has a new fury to light under both of those.

Edward only reiterates what was not, what is still sitting there, knitted into the tension of his shoulders. "But do you think there was a point where it might have been too much? Using his gift to orchestrate everything he's done? When he could have put on some gloves and not gone entirely around the bend if he'd ever really cared about staying sane at all?"

A thing most of their kind didn't care about to begin with, but Aro was an entirely different breed of it. And how much of that is him, and how much of that is how much he relies on every hand he touches, and how much of that is there actually space for in a life. How many lives can one person carry.

And if there is a limit --

Where does the tableau tally even out between lives downloaded, and the ones Edward has been hearing for miles and miles away from him since the second he opened his eyes. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of people at times sometimes. Schools, cities, other countries, full stadiums and concert halls. There have never been walls on it, except for distance, except for the present moment.

And Aro is the only vampire in the world with a gift relatively like his.
But even Aro can choose to stop if he wanted. He won't, but he could.


Even the concept of the possibility is a harrowing one.

[ofthefamily]

"No, I don't.

"I was never privy to knowledge of Their ascendancy, so I cannot say with any certitude. But I'm observant. I watched, and I saw how they all interacted with one another. Aro, yes, but everyone else as well.

"All of them were in love with power and manipulation long before any of their gifts could corrupt them."

Carlisle shrugs here, since he lacks the corroboration he'd prefer, scientifically. "I don't have any peer-reviewed research to support it, of course. But in my heart it feels like the right way of it."

[themidnightson]

He knows that. He does. He has so many of Carlisle's memories, and he's read all the journals, but he was well aware, even before asking, Aro was over three thousand even by the time Carlisle met him. When Carlisle was made.

It's still. It's Carlisle. If anyone.

Edward presses his mouth. Then, unpresses it.
His head nods, faintly. A bobble. "Okay."
But he doesn't move yet.

It's nowhere near the answer he's seeking, but maybe, it's that while he asked the question he intended to ask from the moment he said two, it's not actually the question that needed answering either. That he had that wrong, even when he thought he knew what it was. Where to start.

[ofthefamily]

"There's something else."

Of course there is. A million more something elses, given that nobody has any answers right now that feel complete.

If you want to tell me you can.

[themidnightson]

There is. There really is. He thinks, if he were human, of even if he weren't and he allowed himself to move, he'd find himself trembling. Except he's not human, and when they hold still, they hold very still. Perfectly so. It's their natural state.

He can't really hear them in the distance. Can, but not close enough for it to be words, or even clear enough images. Impressions, almost like colors, but familiar enough he could label each one of them and he'd know he was right. He's played with it so many times, so many ways. He lives by it. For them; for himself.

"Am I--" And his lips do tremble, he can feel them. Could stop. It's stupid. It's so stupid. He shouldn't even. Can't. Can't not. His teeth feel like they are too when he pries them back open.

He can't look at Carlisle for it. He finds himself looking at a tree off one side, forcing it out at a knot in the bark, one hand raising to bury in his hair, freezing, like he and it can't even remember whether to ruffle his shiny, forever windblown, hair or fist in it. "--going to end up like him?"