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[themidnightson]

The house had never seemed small, but left to pack it and watch over Esme --

I need to do this. If someone had treated you this horribly I would ha-- please, Edward.





"Go."

-- while Carlisle is away, he can't tell how there was such ample space anymore. The rooms tumble into each other and he's distracted by her thoughts, as much as by her every move and step, even as his hands continue, monotonously, to pack boxes.

Comments

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme is restless. She's still getting used to this new state of being, but for some reason, she cannot stay still.

So she's wandering the house and trying to stay out of Edward's way.

Finally, though, she stops in the door way of the room he's currently packing. "Is there anything I can help with?" she asks.

[themidnightson]

Edward was still before she'd managed the question.

Hearing it first in her thoughts at least he managed his first response of wanting to say no, that she was already in the way enough, before the words were a musical lilt out of her mouth. She's trying to help, though, and wanting to, and none of the things that are his annoyances rank up in things she is at fault for.

He looked over his shoulder, and nodded toward a bookcase across from him with flat boxes leaning against it. "I was going to do those next?"

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"Okay," Esme says, moving to the bookcase. She picks up one of the flat boxes and tries to figure out how to put it together.

It's a rather unsuccessful venture.

And she's aware enough that she senses tension coming from Edward, but she's not sure how or if to address it.

[themidnightson]

Edward chuckled, not meaning to, watching the stumble with the boxes through her eyes. He hadn't meant for the sound to happen but he pushed himself off the ground and walked over to her.

"Here," he said, quietly, folding section in and looking for the extra tape roll. "Like this."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme favors him with a nervous smile.

"Thank you," she says. "I can't say that I've ever had to do this before."

When her family married her off to Charles, her brothers had handled this part.

[themidnightson]

No. She wouldn't have, would she.

Wouldn't have ever had to do this on so many levels.


"It's fine," he said, even quieter this time. He finished the last section in a flash of quick movement she wouldn't miss. "There you are."

He stood back up as fast as thinking about it, turning back to his own boxes and piles.

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme begins packing books in neat stacks in the boxes, wondering if she would develop the speed and reflexes that Edward has just exhibited.

There are so many questions she wants to ask about her new life, but she can't bring herself to speak.

[themidnightson]

Edward pursed his lips, adding another sheaf of miscellaneous papers to a general office box. Endless silence wrapped up in the sound of her so clear racing thoughts, curiosity and hesitation and courtesy.

"You can talk if you want." He tried to make it errant. "I won't mind." Or at least he's trying to convince himself he won't let himself mind outwardly.

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

The offer startles her and she drops a book.

"I... I have a lot of questions," she admits. "But I wasn't sure if you would want to answer them."

[themidnightson]

The honesty means the box in front of him gets the smallest rye flash in and gone quirk that isn't and isn't not a smirk. He didn't shrug, confirm, deny, or look over, but started on the contents of a drawer.

"First one?"

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"How long have you and Carlisle lived like this?" she asks, methodically organizing the books in the box.

[themidnightson]

"Like this--" he echoes, smoothly, looking over at her with faintly raised eyebrows. He glance shot about the room as though questioning whether she meant the disheveled half-packed surroundings.

"Or," he doesn't finish the second simply letting his gaze come back to her. He made the attempt of a normal conversation, a normal ignorance of intent, even as his expression became inextricably serious as he thought about how to cover that.

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"As... vampires," she says, the word still feeling foreign on her lips.

[themidnightson]

"Three years," Edward said with an appearance of ease, as he went back to the box. "For Carlisle, it has been much longer."

Honest without betraying whatever Carlisle would want to decide on what she should or shouldn't know about his past. "That was when he found me under similarly debilitating circumstances."

How many times Carlisle had thought now that it was the same.

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

That surprises Esme a little. They are so comfortable with each other, that she assumed they have been together longer.

"Have you... adjusted well?" she asks.

[themidnightson]

Edward didn't respond for about half a minute. The only sound coming from him the shuffling of one drawer's contents into the box and then the opening of the next. Carlisle thought he was doing phenomenally, but Carlisle wasn't an unbiased source on the topic.

Edward thought--well, what he thought probably wasn't exactly consumptive either, so he settled for the second train of thought. "I like to think I have more good days than bad ones. I wouldn't have it undone. It's opened up more of the world to me than I could conceive of."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme nods. "It's a lot," she says.

Which is over-simplifying things, but true nonetheless.

"What condition did he find you in?"

She's subtly asking if he was an attempted suicide like she was.

[themidnightson]

"I was dying of influenza in a hospital in Chicago where he'd come to work," Edward said, simple and remote, without being detached. He'd been dying even the first time he'd met Carlisle, the then Dr. Cullen.

He still felt little of that time. He could see it pristinely through Carlisle's shared memory, but his own was gray and grainy and thin as sand.

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"He fixed my broken leg when I was sixteen," Esme says, the memory of that day and her reaction to the handsome young doctor very clear in her mind.

[themidnightson]

Very, very clear.



Edward cleared his throat lightly, one hand lingering on the lip of a drawer. The other was rubbing the side of his neck. "There is something else you should know, too, since you've decided to stay."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"What's that?" Esme asks cautiously.

[themidnightson]

"After; when I woke up, things were different for me--" He was speaking in a slow, smooth, even tone. It's possibly just as much informative as it is a subtle warning and apology. Except it's acceptingly unrepentant.

"I could hear the thoughts of the people around me."



And those not so close to around him, too.

But that was more specific than she needed now.

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme stares at him.

Oh, God, does that mean he knows about Charles? And why I was on that cliff? Oh, please no no no.

Then another horrible thought hits her.

"Does that happen for all vampires?"

[themidnightson]

"No." Edward shook his head, listening the self-reflexive horror. The rightful reaction to the wall of her privacy having been shattered. "It's just me as far as Carlisle knows, though there are others with different gifts like it and far different from it that he's met."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"So you... you know everything about me and my past."

There's a heaviness in her voice at the statement. She wonders if Carlisle knows, if he will want her to stay once he finds out.