The Coda

[themidnightson]

I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it,
I'm crawling on your shore.
~*~

She's already there when he leaves Carlisle.

He can hear her waiting, that contagious silent cage.

It stops him at the closed door to the Freaks Closet, staring at it without being able to miss it's finite details of miniscule paint cracks and places where the dovetailing doesn't match up perfectly, and never seeing it at all. He could still walk away. His awareness waited on Alice waiting on him.

She was the only one who would understand, but still she wasn't in his head. No one ever had been. And now not no one but specifically someone, specifically Carlisle, had. But he was still all alone. And alone again. And breathlessly aware of what alone was in a brand new way. He didn't have to walk in. Alice would understand. He could just run until this explosion inside of him finally broke free, finally settled. Carlisle or Esme would handle the school.

He raised a hand, fingertips glancing the door, head bowed.

Comments

[ofthefamily]

"I can't," Carlisle overhears from the hallway.

That, and the heavy, jagged exhalation Carlisle recognizes before it. It's unnatural and heartrending and Carlisle shouldn't be hearing this.

It wasn't that long ago when he could have. Carlisle squeezes his eyes shut with his hand against the wall separating him from his children.

"Carlisle?" Esme's voice calls from a different room.

"...Coming, dearest."

[betagainstme]

Alice tightens her grip around her brother, her eyes shut as she holds on to his shaking body, listening to Carlisle's fading footsteps.

Her mind is abuzz with whispered apologies, promises it will be okay, things she wouldn't offer before, things she doesn't want to offer now. They're flat and lies and yes, life will return to normal, but normality isn't what Edward wanted.

She pulls away, just enough to tug him toward the couch, murmuring a quiet "c'mere" as she moves.

[themidnightson]

Even alone, he's never left alone. Alice is touching him and his family are all within a distance to hear them hearing him. But its not going to stop. Not for his desperate orders to his own body, not for Alice's whispered thoughts, or her flickered visions, or the pain his slip causes in his family.

And suddenly converse to every thought in the last hour, when he stops and drops into a lazy crouch next to the couch, the kind that would still make a ballerina jealous of its grace, and buries his face against whatever it is, he doesn't even look--

All he wants is to see absolutely nothing.

[betagainstme]

She sits heavily on the couch as he moves next to it, fingers moving through his hair as he buries his head against her leg, a quiet heaviness settling over them.

Alice can only offer herself as a silent and soft wall against everything else. She calms her mind, thinking of a song, passages of books, anything but their father and his loss of a power.

[themidnightson]

It's stupid, but he struggles away from her hand even while he sighs because of the gentleness. Only in the next second to shift and bury his face in her lap, wrapping his arms around her waist. To notice how tiny she is, and how terribly, wonderfully, unbreakable when he clutches her with all of his strength from that position.

The piano never would have made it if he'd stayed in the foyer.

He doesn't care that Alice see's. Alice see's everything. He knows the depths of Alice's agonies as though they were his own and trusts her with his the same way she's done with hers to him. It takes a while but he calms against the gentle lull of her ministration both in and out of his head. The disconnected shuddering and sobbing subsiding and, then sometime later, after, even the deadly force in his hands on her.

Until he's listening, quietly prostate, to what she's saying as much as what she's not.

[betagainstme]

Through it all, she just holds on, lets him clutch her as hard as he needs to. She feels no pain from his hands, he would never hurt her anyway. Her fingers card through his hair, even when he tries to pull away, her hand sliding to his neck and shoulder when he gets closer.

Every movement he makes, every shake and shudder, she moves in accordance to. They are connected, perfectly, her always shielding him, protecting him from the world as he so very often does to her.

When he finally settles, she rests her head against the couch's back, humming an annoying tune she heard on the radio in the morning, her thumb rubbing circles on his back, her eyes shut.

[themidnightson]

It is an annoying song.

Even if it is better than the Rachmaninoff.


Which makes him wonder if he could-- It's series of flickers that stopped startling his awareness long ago.

(She would follow him; her hands would stay on his shoulders; his fingers would press straight through the keys before the two minute mark was reached, on purpose, black and white keys shattering like ice chips.)


There's a huffily annoyed exhale into the cloth against his face and he turns his head to the side, fingers clenching briefly in reaction to so many things. Anger and destruction would be so much easier right now. Especially if he hadn't spent the last two months keeping himself from such actions.

[betagainstme]

"Don't do it," she murmurs softly as the possible future floats away in front of them. "It would kill Esme. She doesn't deserve that."

[themidnightson]

He almost bristles at her name. The almost is enough to drive in a flood of guilt and remorse. His adoration and protection of Esme is effortlessly timeless. She's the sweetest, gentlest, most loving, member of their family, of all the people to grace his life in memorable time, and it could have been worse for her.



He buries his face back against Alice for a second feeling relieved.

He kept her secret. He did it. In face of all of this; at the cost.

Edward shook his head, voice muffled. "I wouldn't--won't."

[betagainstme]

Her fingers tighten in his hair slightly and she lifts his head up to make him look at her. "I know. It was never truly a possibility. You'd hurt more than just her."

The family would suffer as a whole without Edward's music. Her fingers fall from his hair to ghost over his nose, in a playful tweak as she tries to lighten the mood. Her eyes, however, stay sad. "Wanna talk about it?"

[themidnightson]

Music he hadn't started playing again until this last week.

Edward pulled back slightly at the tweak, having to release the grip of his hands, letting his chin settle half rest against her knee. He gave her a rueful look for it, but he didn't look away. He had little to hide from Alice, before the last however many minutes and even less counting them.

"Do you?"

[betagainstme]

Music that would be sorely missed if he stopped now.

"I will talk about whatever you want to talk about, Edward." Alice murmurs, resting her head against the couch again, smiling softly at him.

[themidnightson]

How was he supposed to even quantify or qualify any of if? Discussing M Theory and it's radical application on the universe, as it relied to a universe that could now hold Milliways, would have been easier.

"It's quieter," he said.

The word was wrong -- he still had all the sounds in his mind, all the voices covering such a large distance -- maybe empty would have been better. But, no, still they were there. It was that he could here the silence and feel the space between all of those sounds and himself. An impenetrable glass keeping him from everyone.

He hugged what bit of her he was still holding on with marginal strength, half distracted from the impulse, as though reassuring himself something was there.

[betagainstme]

It will get easier, She thinks, stroking his hair again, bending her body so her head rested upon his.

There would always be the what could have beens, the sadness that for a short period of time, Carlisle was there...but they would move on. It would get easier. Things would return to a normalcy.

[themidnightson]

"He would've-" Edward said softly, but he stopped. What was the point of would've now? He moved, finally pulling away and pushing off the ground. He needed more space, even though he had too much of it.

He looked around the room, at all their things, casual disarray of their well lived, rarely invaded, space. He's not even sure he's talking to her or anyone, when he murmured. "He would have gotten all of this."

[betagainstme]

She rearranges herself to drape over the couch, watching him move and look around and think, talking aloud.

She doesn't answer him, because she doesn't have one that will make it all...okay. Alice crosses her arms over her chest and stares up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry."

[themidnightson]

He almost cringed, only just stopped himself from snapping at her not to be, but settled for scrubbing his a hand over his face, hard against his eyes and over his nose.

"It'll be fine." It's still and quiet, and the layer of dark sardonic irony is unmissable. Before he looked between his fingers, hard gaze but something almost pleading there, too. "Won't it?"

Because Alice would know.

[betagainstme]

She nods immediately, trying to hold back the hesitation, the quick flash of Carlisle keep his distance from Edward, but she doesn't start humming fast enough to keep Edward out of her mind.

Alice sits up again, pushing her hands into her hair and sighing. "It will be. But it will take time, and...he's...heard this, and he'll avoid, for a while."

[themidnightson]

"Of course," Edward said, very finite note. Everyone's heard this. And Carlisle would want space, because of this.

He should have tried to make it out of the house. How simple it would have been in retrospect. Just to have gone. The smarter decision. But his gaze moved back to Alice, thinking it would have been the lonelier one, too.

[betagainstme]

"You can stop it," Alice shrugs, "You know. Go and find him and make him stop."

Her shoulders lift in a shrug again and she smiles slightly. "Just a thought."

[themidnightson]

"No," Edward shook his head, walking back to the couch, settling for sitting down on the arm opposite her. His tone wasn't angry with the single word, just tired.

He couldn't. At least not without lying through a good half of whatever he tried to formulating saying to tide this off right now. And if Carlisle wanted space, for this, for all of it, he should have it.

[betagainstme]

Alice sighs from opposite him, running her hand through her hair again and shaking her head. "Okay. I suppose it's best if you give yourself time to calm as well."

She stands, moving to grab a pad and pencil and sit in an armchair. "Will you be okay?"

[themidnightson]

"You just said I would be."

It's a sham answer as much as an honest one. He's not but he will be, and he's better than ten minutes back, if marginally. He trusts Alice and her subjective visions unfailingly. It's not like he's lacking for time or the knowledge that it will keep passing.

[betagainstme]

In answer, she just opens the pad of paper and sets her pencil to it, drawing whatever her hand wants her to draw.

Then, let's not dwell, she whispers in her mind. Back to normal, at least here.

[themidnightson]

Edward let himself slip off the arm of the couch onto an actual cushion. His arms hung loose, fingers hooked together at the first digit, and his head resting on the back.

He watched Alice's sketch forming in his mind, as he studied the well known architecture of the ceiling, turning over what was and trying to push out the door what could.




Back to Normal, in the Freaks Closet, of all places.