Apr. 12th; shadows and light, that move on the wind

[themidnightson]

It's day six of Bella's week of being grounded without guest hours for Jacob's spectacle with the bike, and even though Edward has stopped wanting to tear off the child's head and all his limbs for it, it drags. He knows where he most wants to be and can't. He knows that it's insane that so few hours should bother him. He's in near every class with her, and he spends the late nights with her.

But neither is truly a time when they can talk freely. Or for long.
Nor were Visiting Hours. But it's galling to have anything stripped away.

He's home instead, not focusing on that or the time ticking slowly, human minute by human minute away until it's late enough. Laying on the couch in The Closet, head on a pillow, feet thrown over the far end, staring at the ceiling. He's a stillness humans would be unnerved at, but it's the stillness their kind sinks into. Where humans would find it more and more alarming they longer they noticed it, their kind sinks and sinks into it, only more comfortable the less they move, the less they pretend to be what they aren't.

But he isn't lost in that. His stillness is a precision. Told easily by the pen upright in his frozen hand, and the black moleskin notebook left open on his stomach. There are dates and question marks, notes all over it. (In fact, there are several pages. Several devoted to specific names. Some devoted to rough sketches. All of it to only untangling one thing.)

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[betagainstme]

The way she slips into the room is preoccupied. Alice has lost some of her gracefulness in the last few days, instead almost fumbling around as she juggles too many things.

Traumas she won't truly face, training sessions that worry her, futures that she can't quite see, avoiding people.

(It's been easier to avoid her father, than look at him and know she's taken his words to heart, created a cage around her heart and hardened herself into something that can hurt. She's not doing it to hurt him, but to protect him, and she's afraid he would not see it that way)

The door shuts behind her with a soft click, and for a moment, she just leans against the wood, her eyes shut, enjoying the quiet of the room, the presence of her brother, before pushing off and coming to sit on the floor by the couch.

I'm going away this weekend she begins, knowing he's already heard Jasper's thoughts on the matter, surely. But she wants to tell him, anyway. But I've been keeping an eye on Bella double time and I'll still be looking, even when I'm gone.

Already, desperate for him to know she's not leaving him blind. I promise.

[themidnightson]

He can't avoid her. (Can.) Wouldn't be here of all places, their space, if he was. Edward's focus returns to the gold of his eyes. Something coiled and cool, even though he doesn't blink yet. A conversation between Sulpicia and Anthenodora dissipating from the forward view of the smooth strokes on ceiling paint, before Alice's beating concern to his side (Esme humming and dusting, Carlisle in his office, Rosalie fixing the Volvo, Jasper and Emmett playing a video game).

He doesn't need to blink, or move. But he chooses to. More for Alice, than himself.
Blinks. Lets his hand with the pen come to rest on the notebook. "I know."

He'd known this morning. It wasn't hard to figure out while she was at school. There wasn't much she could do to hide it. Not for that long. A short period, certainly. But not eight to nine hours straight. Not that she was trying to this time either. And given the time differential, he wasn't even so -- annoyed? bothered? anxious? something -- it anymore.

He's not the only person who had amends to make for going to Volterra.

[betagainstme]

She nods, reflexively, as if just going through the motions of conversation. Her attentions flit to Felix laughing at something someone said, innocent fun if not for the looming threat and the tourists on their way to their doom.

Flipping through the other's in the guard, through the Trio, she finds much of the same: growing hunger, quiet moments in the tower, the seemingly innocuous lives of the vampire elite. Nothing to tell her when or where or how they'll strike.

Still, she wishes it would be sooner, rather than later, when she's so jumpy about it.

How's Carlisle? She sighs aloud, fiddling with her choker, her newest nervous habit. It seems unfair to ask, when she could go into his office and ask him herself, but that would mean she has to look him in the eye.

[themidnightson]

Edward's mouth twitches for that one and for half a second he almost says it for real, but then;

(he doesn't move; they don't move; they are where they are, but Edward gaze shifts a little toward Alice's shoulder, or the direction of Carlise a floor beneath them; "He'll be fine."


"It's going to take


time.")

Again, he thinks. But doesn't say. Carlisle is always harder on himself than anyone else in the family is. Edward can't and stay standing. Alice is incapable of it already again. Jasper still feels guilty for saying he'd let Carlisle, and all of them, fall apart, die, for Alice. Esme is as sympathetic as sternly unruffleable about the whole of it.

Emmett and Rose are probably glad they aren't engaged in the knot of it.

[betagainstme]

Again, a nod. The corner of her mouth lifts, the barest fraction, at his twitch, yet another tic in their languages to one another.

From the outside, they must seem so strange.

Alice stretches her legs out in front of her, touching her toes in a stretch as she contemplates her next steps. She should train, properly this time. She should sort out her head. She should, she should, she should.

How's Bella?

It's easier, to ask, to see them all from Edward's point of view right now, than to actively seek answers on her own.

[themidnightson]

Edward snorts, in realtime, but the vision still holds, waiting for him to say the words from before, lingering rather than dissipating as he never allowed himself to make the decision not to say them. Instead pressing it gently, extending it like a rubber band, an if-this-then-that gentle domino effect.

(Edward snorts, there, too; in concert with his body; a ripple in promise; out of syncopation with the vision's order; like a stone skipped into the pond; "Since you saw her at lunch?"

The edges of his mouth curl; one tucks in; he doesn't deserve her; he can't help that just the thought of her; her face filling up his head lightens everything; distances Volterra even further; his whole being anchors there; her silent brown eyes, her awkward warm smile,

"Annoyed at Charlie, probably. Doing homework. Or reading that book again."

A beat. The rubber band twists. But holds.)

Pretending that she's a good enough liar he doesn't know she's calling La Push in the hours he's gone, even if the child still hasn't picked up, even more now that there are not visiting hours. Edward can't even decide whether it's uncomfortable to know, or he just wants to shake the dog senseless for stressing Bella out for two weeks straight about it, too.

Even when he hopes Jacob'll never pick up, too. The less of a third problem on their plate, already juggling Victoria and Volterra, the better. If they could put off having the pack be a third problem zeroing in on them at the same time, it would be better for the family. Even if it hurt Bella. She already picked which side of that war she'd be on when she made them all vote.

[betagainstme]

I can have him dealt with, if you'd like.

His thoughts about Jacob had shuffled their futures, laid out a new path on maybe two of them, where the dog was dealt with. But even those are missing huge chunks, foggy and weird, unrealized because they never would be.

Won't even tell Bella. Maybe he just ran away for good.

Alice switches the focus again, though, away from Jacob, and pushing at the edge of Victoria and finding nothing there but the green and brown of any forest of the world. Decidedly unhelpful.

[themidnightson]

Edward half-rolls his eyes at the arm of the chair his shiny hair is brushing against and his sister's head at the edge of his periphery, leaning against the couch near enough if he turned his head, he'd find his face only an inch or two from her hair.

(The same happens there; he still rolls his eyes; it's always a little strange, in himself, outside himself; as himself; but watching outside and beyond himself too,

"And then you can break the treaty before Carlisle or me?"

There's a sigh out his nose. He's better than that.
Appreciates it anyway. Appreciates her.

His voice blurred, the choice not even

"He's just a child, Alice.")

He's another causality of Edward's long line of fuckups that got them all to today. His actions put Bella on the path into his way, and now they'd be tearing it out from her, and from their history.

Edward doesn't even want to think about Carlisle sacrificing the treaty for him without even blinking, without even thinking about it a few seconds. He lets himself watch Alice chase dead ends, her dedication and her frustration twined together against Victoria's absent-presence.

[betagainstme]

Carefully, Alice turns her head to look at him. Really look at him. Taking in his casual appearance, his calm demeanor. He looks like he always does, seems like he always is.

But she remembers two days ago, the damage done to the Volvo, his clipped and controlled speech about the Volturi and what they've done, what they will do.

And how are you? She asks, her eyes searching his face, waiting to see if he's going to tell her the whole truth of it. Really?

[themidnightson]

Alice turns and looks at him, and her sigh becomes him. The network of her making a categorical list about how he looks. That he looks like normal. Or at least the normal from before the last seven months. He wonders if he should take that as a relief.

Instead, he lets his tenuous hold on the vision, on the choice he could still make to say any of those words out loud, slip away. The vision vanishing into fog and steam, dissipating color and existence, as the decision is taken away. And he turns his head, meeting his sister's eyes. Those tired, golden eyes.

Thinks of Carlisle, irritated if he turned his attention to his memory, even in a thirty-second of a report to him. Of Carlisle, swearing. Holding his hand. Tearing out trees. Of Bella, still waking up screaming most nights. Of Alice and Carlisle fighting. Of Alice and Jasper fighting. Of Rosalie's knot of guilt and gratitude.

Of Victoria, and Wolves, and Volturi.

Of wanting to die. Aro. Caius. Rio. Texas.

He can't remember the last time someone in the family asked that. Not in the last twenty-one days. Not in the last three months. The last six. Bella asks with anxiety-riddled regularity, and Meg asked the first night he came home. Her first spoken words to him.

He family doesn't ask. He doesn't ask.
Alice is half-waiting for him to lie.


He's not even sure if he knows staring silently into her eyes.

[betagainstme]

"Oh," she breathes, turning fully so she can place her small hand on his face. "Oh, Edward."

His answer is in his silence. The mute staring into her eyes, as he catalogs memories and thoughts. She knows that's what he's doing. She knows him almost as well as she knows herself. Her other half, the final puzzle piece in her heart.

Her heart aches. For him, for Jasper, for Carlisle and Bella--all of these people broken down and hurt by the last months of pain and strife and she hurts to fix it. She is the sunshine here, the bright pixie light that makes things softer, happier, and she can't do it.

There's too much still foggy, frazzled, wrong. The fights between family members, the words unsaid between others. Too much to fix, when her own tenuous grasp on happiness is fleeting.

She's up in a flash, pushing his shoulders up so she can slip onto the couch under him, fixing the pillow his head rests upon so it sits in her lap, lowering him back down so he's resting on her legs, her fingers in his unruly copper hair.

[themidnightson]

He doesn't fight her. (Except on Bella, and even that barge has sailed now, hasn't it? There's no exception anymore, is there? A return to the status quo in a world made of shattered mirror pieces everywhere.)

He doesn't fight her. Not in so many decades. Her fingers lay on his cheek and it's the first time he feels the urge to pull away, because pity-or-sympathy, he deserves neither. Especially given he got her into another fight with her husband. But she isn't done, because Alice never does anything by thirds. Not if she can go the extra mile, too.

Her thoughts are too much like his, though she's not the reason for any of it, but she's moving even as she's thinking it. Moving him, like he's a too large pillow, and not the person most people give way around even here, especially now. Even as it wears through. It's almost fully three weeks. Time keeps moving. Alice's fingertips slip into his hair and though he can manage not to shift, his eyelashes shiver a little, before he just lets them close. "Sorry."

He's not sure what the word actually slips out for. The fact he has no answer? The continually running one that he doesn't even know if he wants to know? Deserves to know? Has time or space to acknowledge whatever it was if he did? Both for himself, and because he has too much to do, too much he owes to them. That he knows he doesn't deserve their concern at this point, and he can be fine. He mastered that art for decades. Half a century.

He can wait. He always has. They come first. He has to fix the things he broke first. He has to make sure that everything that he's brought down on them doesn't make everything even worse in the future. Whenever they're safe again, he can deal with it then.

[betagainstme]

"Hush," Alice whispers, bending over his head to keep the word just between them. It's the barest of whispers, spoken almost against his forehead, the breath of it exhaled against his skin.

Hush, she thinks at him, curling the hand not in his hair against his arm, squeezing her eyes closed at the terrible weight on his shoulders, on hers.

Both the gates against and the bringers of the oncoming storm. Both trying to fix the things they broke, tiptoeing around the things deep inside of them that only the other can truly see--and he has so much more of it that she cannot see. She thinks of text messages sent back and forth during Rio, of flippant words written to him. Of the terror and pain of yelling and sobbing at him in his room that night soon after their return.

Of words like stormcrow and harbinger and how it's up to them to stop what comes next. Stretched thin, worn thin, bruised and battered.

She's sure he won't take her up on it, but she thinks it anyway: I'm here, if you need to unload. Always, any time.

And fleetingly, before she can catch the thought and think something else--don't shut me out--

[themidnightson]

There's an irony to it. Black as the rest of everything.

For as much as when they are angry or hurt, they comment on the fact he can never say that word, needs to be made to say that word, it's almost like they reject the word even harder when he does. They push it away. Want to pull it out of his mouth forcibly. Alice curling into him, like she could clutch him as hard as stone, telling him to hush. To not say that.

Trapping his one word, and her one word, between them.
Lips almost against his forehead. Words like moths in their net.

Edward shook his head, and for a second in her thoughts, there's the words I'm not, but they dissolve as fast as they form, instinct and impulse, hard-won truth turned lie, undecided by choice, as soon as it's seen in their minds, as he stared up at her, and said (instead), "I'm trying not to."

He hadn't had anyone to talk to for months, before these last weeks.

Even more he hadn't talked to Alice for months before Volterra. Not even when it was just Carlisle he called, or answered the phone to, and even then, just barely. Last at Christmas. His own hands snipping the lifelines to his own sanity. Piece by piece, deeper and deeper, to the ones that gave him breath, existence, until there'd be no way left to float, no one left to sink with him.

She was in that, too.
(The depth of his hubris.)

Things he didn't know how to live without, or deserve.
Alice with her hair a dark cloud brushing his nose and temples.

[betagainstme]

She wanted an apology, a week ago, months ago. But now, when he breathed the words into existence, they hurt more than helped.

She'd been so angry, and now, all she has left is sadness. She doesn't want the apology anymore, the anger and madness gone, just thankful he's there, alive, that the family is together, that for all intents and purposes, they are forgiven.

It's nothing new, Edward and Alice on one side, while the family wonders what's going on from the other. There's no surprise in the two of them holding each other's secrets close to their hearts. There's no questioning at how easily Alice and Edward forgive each other.

It's themselves they can't forgive. Edward, for causing them all pain, for trying to take his life, for nearly succeeding. Pushing them away.

Alice, for lying, for saying such horrible things, for the almost-truth of a life without either of them in her quest to save one of them. Pushing them away.

She stays, curled over him, eyes closed, still and silent.

[themidnightson]

It's the longest they've ever gone without talking. Since 1950.

He's known that. The whole time. But somehow, right now, with Alice curled over him, holding on to him, he feels it more than thinks it. He'd ripped that out of himself. Out of her. They've never even had something that would truly count as a fight in that whole time. They still haven't. And still. All those months. All that space. All that silence.

His mouth goes to open, but the words don't come there. Some loyalties, he can't even apologize for, go deeper than even Alice, and he can't allow himself to even lay down a casual hurt in the most unintended ways anymore.

(He lets the pen go; reaches up to cup the back of her head; sometimes he forgets she's so small; they all do; she fills up so much space; when she's not like this; she does so much; even like this, she does so much;

"I'm not mad you came for me."

"I know I was, but I'm not"



"I'm grateful, Alice.")

[betagainstme]

The vision hits like a punch to the gut.

A sharp inhale, her fingers stilling in his hair, tightening on his arm, perfectly still as if his hand was already on her head, as if he's said the words and made the moves.

He doesn't have to now. The intention is important.




How could I not? There was no doubt in her actions there--as she'd told Jasper, she was not sorry for going. Sorry for how it was done, the words and lies told, but never ever sorry for going for Edward. I love you, it's simple.

[themidnightson]

Edward almost laughs, but his teeth grind down, and she can probably feel the rigor that stiffens hit face. Because it wouldn't be a good laugh. Those words have not always meant that for him under any circumstances. Have never meant actions like this taken on his behalf.

They haven't meant it even from his own lips.
Look what he made of all the people he said he loved best.

But the burst of loathing, of disbelief, passes, as fast as it came, a lightning strike, blinding and then gone again, because Alice is the exception, and Alice has been so many exceptions since the moment she showed up and fill so many space both that he assumed would never and those he never even knew he had. She'd said basically the same things then.

It was a given. She loved him. This was how this was going to go.

(He wants to shake his head; he wants to take it back; he never thought he could get everything so wrong; trying to be so right; trying to do what was right; he never thought he could ruin everything doing that;

they should have had this conversation two weeks ago; they should have had it on the plane; they should have had it when she was screaming at him; they would have if he never left; they never would have needed those silences, those words, the citing truth they still saw right through each other;

he could have lost her; so many times; before she entered the dais;
hundreds times after she did; his hand gentles across the back of her head;

"I love you, too." It's so tired; reticent; a whisper.
"It's a poor excuse, and even poorer apology."

"I never wanted to hurt you, even when I knew I had to be, even when you said I was. It wasn't what I was doing it for. I never wanted it to hurt you, too. Before Rosalie's call, I knew it was only a matter of time before I came back. Before I gave in. Came back to her. Even if she never forgave me."

"But then, she called, and Bella was dead,



and the world --"



There aren't words for it still. This is such a poor apology, even three weeks late, for hurting the person who nearly burned down their entire world, nearly lost their life a hundred times, to save his. They might live until the stars burned out and he would never stop owing her for this.)

[betagainstme]

Her eyes shut against the vision, trembling, her hands frozen in his hair and on his arm, her chest feeling like a weight has simultaneously been lifted and placed there.

His words, so rarely spoken, I love you, too, his frustration of his so-called poor apology. The memory of so many clear paths to death.

Almost of its own accord, her body curls more, until her lips do touch his forehead, pressing a kiss against his hairline. She has always been able to touch him freely, more than any other in the family, and this action comes as naturally to her as existence.

Forgiveness had come from Jasper yesterday, something she desperately needed and didn't even know how much. And now this, from Edward, heals another broken bit in her. Slowly moving the pieces on the board back to their stations.

[themidnightson]

They both make these apologies, and it is their whole heart, both to mean it and to know they can't. Each as important and treacherous as the other. Both I'm sorry and but would do it again, in the same circumstaces. He doesn't say the words. Doesn't know if his mouth could form them if he tried. Wouldn't want them heard by every set of ears not even turned toward them currently. But he does move.

Reaches up to touch her hair. It's a little less graceful without being able to see outside himself, above her at the same time, but his hand finds the side and the back of her head, and his eyes stay closed, while he lets a heavy sigh out. Nothing can redeem him of what he's done (To Bella, to Carlisle, to Alice, to the whole family), but somehow it matters, too.

Alice's words. Alice curled into him.
Alice's lips on his forehead.

Alice still here. Alice still alive.
Alice still loves him, forgives him.

[betagainstme]

Always.


Her lips quirk against his skin at the hand in her hair, at the back of her head, like the visions predicted. She hadn't expected him to actually follow through, but it's lovely. Turning slightly she rests her cheek against his forehead, her hand snaking from his arm to his chest, smoothing out invisible wrinkles in his shirt.

We're okay.

Them. The two of them. They're okay. Together they'll be able to face what comes next--the gates against.

[themidnightson]

Her hand smooths down his shirt between. The buttons and the sweater, at least between here and the abandoned notebook and pen laying on his stomach still. And he listens to the lull of her thoughts, her feelings, the feel of her curled around him. He doesn't even think anyone else could imagine this. He hardly can and he's in the middle of it.

Only Alice could get away with something like this.
Or at least. Only Alice could, and would let herself.

(I love you.
It's that simple.)

Her thought stumbles over her memory at the same time, and he nods. Into her cheek, her lap, the soft, spikey black hair half-covering the rest of his face, and he says the only thing he can, the only part she didn't, but did, too. "Together."

They'll do it together. Whatever it takes, whatever they have to, for the family, for each other. Watch the future. Watch the present. Keep everyone safe. Alive. Together. They'll do it together. The way they're always supposed to, and supposed to be.