𝕀'𝕞 𝕓𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕣𝕦𝕝𝕖𝕤 𝕟𝕠𝕨.

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

2020-07-04T18:48:20Z

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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April 7th, 2006; Right after the New Moon Epilogue

2020-07-01T21:39:55Z

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?"

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The Stormcrow & The Saint, Redux

2020-06-28T03:30:39Z

She hasn't been paying attention for minutes now, and he's listening to the way it's ratcheting in her brain. He wasn't trying to. He's left this alone. For the most part. As much as he could. He's done enough damage. To all of them. But he knows this part of Alice.

It's hyperbolic, to say he'd known this even if he were dead.
He is dead, and he recognize it. The spiral.
Getting tighter, faster, drowning out her class.

He manages to resist for about thirteen minutes, but then he just can't.

Because she might be sitting still, facing forward, but if she were human, he'd worry about the chance of hyperventilation. It's not. That. But it's. Important. Something she isn't even talking about, but she never stops thinking of it.

That term, and Edward's refusal to play nice with her futures.
Both of them in an endless whirlwind, buffeting her between one and the other.

From: 360-339-2730 (Edward)
--------------------------------------------------
Breathe, Alice.
--------------------------------------------------
11.23 am Tues, Apr 10

The irony is not lost on him.

It isn't even that not breathing will do anything to her. But she can't freeze up entirely, like home, here, either. And part of that is breathing but in an entirely different way. Even though she won't need telling it's not so much meant that way, even if both apply.

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Early 1952; University of Toronto

2020-06-27T16:07:15Z

Edward would like to be enjoying his class on the primacy of communication in the structuring of human cultures and the ramifications thereof on the human mind. He's actually quite interested in The Toronto School of thought, and with little more reason than that, he'd been halfway to another degree since they settled here.

Ancient Greek had provided a good challenging distraction, and the idea about its impact on psychological communication systems and social states, intriguing. It rarely lost his interest, even when his peers and professor's distractions, both on him and not, could be incredibly tedious at times. But it wasn't any of those today, and he wasn't paying enough attention to be able to focus.

He wasn't even paying loose attention to the fixated pleasure of Esme's architecture class on burgeoning urbanism a few buildings away. All of his focus was settled on one point.

Jasper.

Weaving his way through people passing between classes, studying, in groups here and there. Testing his ability to be around large groups. Whether he could manage what the rest of them seemed to do without too much of a struggle. Which had Edward watching Jasper, both himself and through the eyes of those passing him, more than the professor writing notes on the board in front of him.

The slow ramp of struggle with the temptation, that was expected, and, the unexpectedly sizable mounting weight of every new flood of emotions from every new person, hundreds of them, everywhere, more with each passing hour as midday brought in the biggest crowds of the day even in winter.

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1951; I can't be far

2020-06-20T18:44:39Z

The first time they play together, it's not planned.

Maybe Edward has given in, maybe he has said, finally, that he needs her. It doesn't give Alice everything still. It's given her a beginning. It's given her finally the space to stop pushing desperately for ever inch she can dig out of him. To try and move more at his pace. Because he did say it. Because it's been easier. There've been so many easier days. Conversations. But there are so many places she still can't follow him.

(Yet.) And that still gnaws at her.
Especially when she's trying to sit on her hands.

"You're thinking too much,"

Edward's voice was quiet enough that it is under the register even of the Beethoven he's playing.
He hadn't even opened his eyes the whole way to say it, hadn't looked over at her as he did.

"I know," Alice half-huffed, half-whined. As if she couldn't control it. Then, as though she realized how it sounded, washing her pout away with an embarrassed, annoyed grimace, whispering something that is more a plea and a promise -- "I know." -- her thoughts suddenly tumbling desperately not be sent away, to have ruined the moment, being let this close. "I know. I'm sorry."

She is trying. Even as she is shoving her hands even further under her, fingertips digging into the cloth of her skirt. As though it were possible. In the small space of the piano bench to move at all without him feeling. To choose anyone it without him seeing it in her thoughts. She is trying.

(She gets carried away.

He's trying less and less to pretend he isn't envious of that.)

When Edward decides it, there's no hesitation. Even though he's never done this. Not in thirty-three years. Not with Carlisle. Or Esme, or even Rose, even though it's among her many 'timely' accomplishments from her human life. He does it in the same second he decides it, and the vision happens even as he plays the opening notes.

(He's getting better at that, too. Her visions.
Figuring out how to watch, how to see, how to give, how to take.

And even so very, very rarely how to hold something from her until.)

He hears the quick surprised breath in her nose. The confusion. The certainty she's wrong. The strength of the cut-quick desperate want. But she doesn't move her hands, digging harder into her legs. She hasn't touched his piano since she apologized. She knew he loved it like he loved few other things. She'd seen that in her visions. She hadn't understood how much more than that it was until she saw it in person and not in her mind. When he stopped the first call part, she didn't move, didn't breathe again.

It's only, Are you sure? Are you? I don't want--
Tremulous. Terrified. Desperate to run into it, too.

Edward glanced toward her, but there weren't any words. He couldn't say he was sure. Not, and not be lying, and she already knew that. But he did need her; and he'd never shared this. Not with anyone. Not this way. Not even when he'd given all he was. It wasn't part of him he could. Like all the other things he couldn't, too. It felt long, but it was probably only a second. Before he looked away from her eyes and down at his hands, and started the beginning section against, swaying just the smallest bit to nudge her shoulder.

Watching himself, and through her eyes, as a single of Alice's fingers very gently started tapping the single first key. The two of them trading off, and then blending the two pieces into one as it called for it.

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Late 1950; i'm inbetween the moon and where you are

2020-06-18T14:51:56Z

It's the first time he's sat down at the piano, since.

He slides in and out of the times when he's playing often, and when he doesn't play at all. It'd been spotty the last year or so, but he'd felt even more averse to the thought of it after watching her playing his piano in Carlisle's thoughts. As though it hadn't been enough she'd blown in taking everything else, from every other member of their family to his bedroom.

She'd decided to take this, too.
Like nothing was sacred. Nothing was his.
She could plow through and just take everything.

It's been a few months. It shouldn't still bother him now.

They are a known, at least as much as anything is this early. He has little reasons to rely on her visions, to believe in the unknown quantity of her. And yet. It was her vision that flipped back and forth, back and forth, back and forth (especially once he could see the changing eventualities in her visions; stealing even his choices from him, giving him only options to chose from, to reject, to fight), when the urge struck him.

When he found his fingertips playing against his leg,
the couch while reading, more than once,

thoughts turning into notes
more than words and images.

He gives in. But it is that.
Giving in. Frustrated surrender.
To the pull. To her options. The cage.

He almost hates how easy it. His fingertips touch the keys, soft, reverent, and then it's gone, it's all gone, and him with it. Everything else leaving his mind except where his fingers moved, and the sound they produced. His eyes closing as he followed a familiar piece.

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March 22th, 2005

2020-06-04T03:32:00Z

[OOM: Two days after this & this. The same day as this, just a little while after this.
Slotting in a few days before this, as well. Because Alice is magical.]

Going home is hard.

On the one hand, it is hard to leave Bella, sleeping in her bed, fretting with sudden, deeply asleep, plaintive panic, each time he so much as took his hand away. On the other, when he couldn't allow himself the excuse any longer, the tearing reminder, turning toward home is just as hard, too.

Edward slipped into the house quietly through the window to his room. The timer in his head a metronome against granite, ticking every irritable, ragged second she's out of his sight. He already knew where everyone was miles ago, and he can tell the moment their attentions shift toward his direction at the sound of the friction on the wall. The click of the window. The sound of steps in his room.

But still, he needs a new set of clothes to return to school tomorrow.

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For Meg's Sicktimes

2012-03-17T22:19:38Z

It's been a pretty average day on the other side of the door. The everything that is still the school day the way it is right now. Saying goodbye to Bella at the end of the day to run an errand for Esme.

He'd meant to spend sometime writing, except that end of space and time showed up in hos own bedroom. Which was surprising enough, given that they had a permanent door to it downstairs.

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