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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[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.