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

[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?"

[ofthefamily]

Another thing to light Aro afire for.

Carlisle is not all that reserved, in the end. Not for his family.




He takes a second to consider his action, and then taps on his bent elbow to suggest Edward put his arm down again. Once it's within reach, Carlisle points to the crest on Edward's bracer.

"You love your family. You love Isabella. Aro is incapable of this in every sense of the word. You are already everything he isn't. And you won't lose that." Us. "It's impossible."

[themidnightson]

Carlisle taps the crest on his elbow after asking for his wrist. The bracer. The one he never even gave up for preparing to take those steps into piazza. The one he swore would never come off again, and never has. Would have gone with him, even at the end. (Was his only words on what he thought was dead.)

Carlisle says the things Edward knows. He knows them. He even knows that he knows them. They are the things the fill every moment since coming home. They are the reasons everything is a mess and every bit of it hurts. They are the reason it all matters, every part of it.

You won't lose that. Us. It's impossible.

But. But that doesn't change,
So why can't he feel it,
right next to,

"But he's like me."

But even as he says the words, he knows they are wrong.
Backward. It should be the other way around.
Age before. Well. Whatever.


But the only one they'd ever met who was remotely alike in that way. Part in parcel with all the reasons Edward was supposed to stay off their radar originally when he was so much younger. Before they showed up saying they already knew. He represents everything Edward could be capable of. "I could--"

Maybe even so much worse.

Because he'll never have to touch someone to tresspass.

[ofthefamily]

"No. You couldn't. But I do know that I will not be able to convince you of that tonight." Maybe ever, but definitely tonight.

"There is no reason for you to take my word for it." Especially after his display of very obviously not knowing what to do, earlier.

"But you won't."

[themidnightson]

There's no doubt in Carlisle's thoughts. None.

Earlier maybe. About not knowing the path forward where it comes to several things right now. Victoria. The Elders. The Volturi. Even between them. Their road forward But none of that is here now. There are no if's, or ands, or buts. No qualifiers. Not considerations of what that could or couldn't look like. What Edward could or couldn't be. None of the thousand things Edward has wondered as he started untying Aro's spiderweb network of manipulation among all his people.

It's not there. It's just still the same. Unshakeable.

(It's impossible.

You couldn't.
You won't.

Another thing to light Aro afire for.)

Why does it matter? What does it prove? Except that he nearly wants to swallow and step back, step away, from the actual level of faith in that fact, the disbelief that it could ever happen, that he could ever make those choices. Even now. On the far edge of nearly burning everything to cinders. That is untouched. Uncracked.

A burning, blinding belief so deep Carlisle'd like to cause harm seeing it doubted. Even with all the other cracks. That has none. Even now. Like somehow it was indelible. Edward swallowed, nodding again. A little more vigorously.

It's the same word. The same, "Okay."

But there's something else there. This time. Less hollow. Less errant. The breath of a word. Not firm. But true. Maybe something like an unwritten, unsaid, statement. To try. Or at least that he believes that Carlisle believes. That is almost winding. He could hope for that, he could hold it, even if he couldn't believe it yet. Carlisle could. For him.

Like he didn't quite know how to hold the thing he needed most,
once it was placed in his hands, both certain and blisteringly defended.

"Okay." Edward cleared his throat, and blew a breath out. That word repeated, but this sounding more normal. Even. Bland. A page break. A new chapter. Hands pushing into his jeans, like he wasn't insanely aware of the weight on his right wrist and trying not to touch it. "That was it. Just those two."

Beat.

As though acknowledging that was never true. "For now."

[ofthefamily]

A short nod, and the first approach of a smile since before Edward came into Carlisle's office. "For now."

Home? Alice must be losing her composure about all this by now.

[themidnightson]

He thinks of Alice. Alice, in Volterra. Alice, on the phone with Jasper. Alice, still keeping things from him. Alice, and all Alice has done for him. Sacrificed. He hears the words Carlisle gnashed at him. His daughter, and a human. She used Bella. She abandoned even Carlisle, lied to Jasper, with no promise of a good future. She swore Bella to Aro. She'll never apologize for it. Not and truly mean it all the way. She won't apologize for picking him.

It's something too big for Edward to hold, too.

He can see it. But he can't touch it.
Not even his fingertips. Not even The Closet.

He'll try. But not right now.

Carlisle's word are enough, and too much already, now.

Edward nodded, and started walking, back in the direction Carlisle had been going when he'd stopped. Toward the soft rabble at his edge, that both knit and unknit something in his chest. Even when he desperately wanted silence, he didn't want to be without their clamor, all in the same second.

"You would think she had cause for concern or something."

Edward makes it light. Not as though this is inconsequential, anything that could be joked about, but as though he might be able to make it lighter. The family cares. About this. It tucked into a corner of his mouth. It tried. He tried. Even if it feels so rusty it could snap. The ghostly echoed whisper of a twitch. Something so big it could only be touched but lightly, something the whole house held its breath about. Save one; and he was grateful in her count, too.

None of them would ever be what they are without Esme.
He never wants to know, to think of that.

[ofthefamily]

She did, Carlisle thinks, but it feels like a knee-jerk reaction rather than something directed at Edward.

They are close enough now to the tree line abutting the house that when they walk through it, footfalls in the driveway, Carlisle looks up at the window to the kitchen. He can't see her, but Carlisle practices a smile for her anyway.

[betagainstme]

She’s not waiting for them at the door, not wanting to bother. She’s stuck on Edward’s question to Carlisle and she’s trying her best to not let that show on her face. Her fingers grip the kitchen counter and she breathes in shakily.

Alice should talk to him. She should talk to Carlisle. She should talk to Jasper who she has all but abandoned these last few months. She should—

Plaster a smile on her face, when Carlisle and Edward walk through the door. Which she does, and she slips out the kitchen and into the hall, as they enter the house. “Hey.”

Upstairs, Emmett’s voice echoes as he complains about whatever sport he’s watching. Jasper’s reply is sarcastic, yet entertained. At least they listened to her hissed act normal.

She moves to the stairs, climbing a few of them backward as she looks between Carlisle and Edward. “Worried us, when you left so quickly.”

[ofthefamily]

"I know. It wasn't my intent."

Now's not the time. Alice isn't ready, and Carlisle isn't either.

But when he walks past her to find his wife, Carlisle drops a kiss on the part in Alice's hair.

[themidnightson]

Edward would agree on Carlisle's part for Alice's words. For how quickly Carlisle made the decision and dashed out his office (for how quickly Carlisle is already looking past them). He would not count, sitting in that office chair, being made to wait through five human minutes, when they lived in hundreds, even thousandths of a second, as quickly.

There's a steady glance in her direction, unavoided, questions asked and answered even before that glance is met. He knows what he knows what he knows what she knows, and sometimes he's glad they aren't always made of anything like words.

[ofthefamily]

It's easy enough to find Esme when they both want to be found, and the book Carlisle knows she is only pretending to read is put off to one side.

"And how are you, my dear?" Esme broaches first. It's the usual question, even if it feels a little small.

Carlisle smiles, timid but real, and grabs Esme's hand. He'll tell the whole story later - or fill in any gaps Alice didn't share.

"I called Edward an idiot."