ofthefamily | Returning home.

It's easiest to tell when his family is doing it.

When they become the cacophony instead of the lull that soothes his thoughts, both unmissable and unfocused upon. When they pull upon noise to drown themselves out, the one act carnival trick with many languages, and can not help calling his attention to them even more precisely with their cloaks.

But they have the right. He doesn't even need to remind himself.

"Downstairs, in the garage." Going through a pile of cd cases.

He appears at the entranceway a second later, near to a pant and staring at Edward as though they hadn't seen each other in years.

"Hello."

Edited 2009-07-20 13:50 (UTC)

Edward looked up through the tinted windshield, hands still full, eyebrows raising. The question is in his facial expression, the tiny no true wall to their heightened vision, even if his voice matches the word.

In a smoother, calmer clip than Carlisle's had been. "Did you need something?"

"Come over here please."

The Cd's are forgotten, placed on the floor in a flash and he's out of the front seat. Striding over to Carlisle with an expression that was moving further and further into concern of how not alright Carlisle might be, as golden eyes studied the face it had known longest.

He stopped a few feet from Carlisle, one hand raised, palm up, half-questioning.

Carlisle stands stock still for three seconds, taking in the man in front of him.

So young.

So very not.

Carlisle moves forward in a rush, wrapping his arms around Edward's shoulders and turning his head to lean against him. The hug tightens to keep Carlisle from a tremble.

Edward stilled. Not for the sudden rush of movement. He has no fear of Carlisle, that Carlisle might wish to hurt him purposely. And still he is not expecting it -- not expecting what it evokes in, and from, him.

But the tightness of Carlisle's grasp, as though it isn't even tight enough still, close enough or hard enough to be real, and his own pride, amid other things, pushes him past the memory. To press his palms, one against Carlisle's back, and one crossing up against his shoulder and the nape of his neck, and hold him where he is.

Edward voice crossing confusion and concern into a sharper place for all of its quietness. "What happened? Are-" milliseconds pause and change. "Is everyone alright?"

"Everyone is fine."

Behind his curtain: You're still here. You still die. How awful of me.

Still against Edward's shoulder and facing away from what Carlisle expects to be a very shocked expression, he steadies his breathing but sounds even firmer for it. "I can't -- "

Say it out loud, Carlisle.

It's close enough.

"You are so...important." Carlisle pulls back finally, hands moving to each of Edward's shoulders. "I can't even explain myself."

Edward isn't sure what he's supposed to say or do at that.

Hold Carlisle close, because he dove in for, requested Edward to come to him for -- whatever it was or why; let him pull back, when he does -- Edward's hands slipping their iron purchase, weightless in shock, to let Carlisle move himself, to settle at his sides.

One falling away at the knife sharp confusion and suspicion and whyhowwhat could have. When brittle silence, more so all along the insides of him than in the lack of speech, is the only answer.

He can't stop himself, even when Carlisle knows he should.

"I've never regretted turning you; I couldn't let you die there. I'm not perfect but I swear I have never thought ill against you or -- "

Edward has to put his hands over Carlisle's mouth.

He can't define why, only that the panicked light in Carlisle's face and his eyes in digging into him harder and faster than the words -- and the words are doing a good enough job already of battering at things best left on closed doors and unspoken acknowledgments.

"Stop."

Beat.

"You aren't making sense."

Or he was making too much of it.

And he wasn't sure he wanted more of it.

Of course.

Carlisle starts to lose some steam when Edward's hand stops his speech. He's grateful for it. The last thing he needs to do is blurt out what he saw. Who. Edward will know eventually.

"I'm sorry."

That's it, isn't it? That Carlisle's sorry?

I'm sorry nobody remembers you like that but me.

He wants to run away. From those words which escape against his palms. From Carlisle saying them for what he's saying them for. From the fact it sits on his tongue, banging at his teeth to say it's fine or he shouldn't, a million innocuous apology brush offs from decades counted in one endless day, a life together.

Carlisle apologies too often. Edward too infrequently.

He pulled his hands off Carlisle's mouth, with a half warning look as though he might do it again. He wouldn't but its in him to look sharp from the tattered edge those two words pluck at as though to unbind cloth from a few loose strings.

He doesn't fight free from Carlisle's hands even though his own settle, one in his pocket and one at his side, when his shoulders give a graceful shrug, his voice far calmer than he expected it would manage,

"One person more than before. Better that than none."

Better that it was you.

"It is never better to be alone. Never."

Carlisle is settling, regaining himself. (Lying to himself better.)

"Are you going to ask me again what happened?"

"I have always been alone in this."

There's a motion of his hand upward, meaning specifically his gift. It's not a complaint. It's not even pitying or heavy. Eighty-seven years is far too long to carry it like a weight. It is the air now, weightless and insubstantial and necessary to how he lives.

Even when Carlisle has turned it into an iron weight. Even Alice is only in so far, never in his mind, if ever in the land between their gifts, where no other can go but the other. Carlisle reminded him of that, too. A reminder he can bare without burdening either with the complicated truth of it.

He doesn't shift. He already thinks of the Bella thing as a divider enough, being reminder there are other immovable lines between his family isn't pleasant. Even when they invoked on the confessions of the twined coil of selfishness and selflessness.

"Do you want me to know?"

Edward is not certain he wants to know what would send Carlisle running to him, spouting all of that, still curtaining himself behind an endless assortment of distractions.

Carlisle is already shaking his head.

"You have to tell me you want to know."

"Will it matter whether I do or don't in the end?"

Edward gave him a look that lacked in accusation what it made up in an tiredness that alone could be carried in his eyes, of all his body.

"Could you hold it in a box, from which it would never whisper, for eternity?"

"It matters to me. Even if it's unnecessary, or futile.

"It matters to me what you want."

What he wanted --

It's fine; it's gone anyway

Not her!
-- was not a matter for casual debate, nor something he expected.

Not that anything about Carlisle right now was. Casual.

"Why right now?" Edward closed his eyes for a millionth of a second, before they opened again. Quiet, caustic and uncertain of what would come, only that it would be even more, more than this was already, only that then whenever Carlisle was done, he would once again walk away. Back to the office or work or Esme.
You most certainly are the kind of man who would give himself stitches
"Fine. Tell me." He even reached up, to place the hand not tucked in his pocket over Carlisle's wrist on hand holding his shoulder on the same side. "What upset you?"

Edited 2009-07-20 16:11 (UTC)

Immediately the curtain draws away to a boy, no older than six, playing at chocolates on a Milliways booth table and smiling to Carlisle's eyes.

I met him. You. Him. You. I was there and he walked up to me when I said hello and it was you. I could have stopped him from going back but I couldn't. I couldn't lose you like that. This you, here, I need this one and I can't have you leave me like that even if I could save your human life I just couldn't.

It's easier than it should be.

To let that face filter into his mind. Removed as any human child he might be watching. To hear a name that is almost his, conversations that might have been precursor to his earliest pristine memories.

To imbibe all the details of Carlisle's analytical mind's memories. To want to tear from the silent image memory the thoughts of the unknown portent. To pull all the inconsequential details of his first inconsequential story book.

It's easier than it should be.

In the wake of Carlisle's pain. In the wake of what is an erupting font of guilty Confessions. The writhing of self-assessed wrongness and possession. To reach up and place his hand against Carlisle's jaw and bow his forehead against Carlisle's.

"I know."

He's still here and real and he can't seem to shake how wrong it still feels. Carlisle swallows hard when Edward reaches for him, knowing he should say something but there is absolutely nothing that comes to mind.

"I shouldn't have -- I should've just left."

"You wouldn't." He'd stay until the last second.

And Edward, bereft of that life and all but the lasting purposeful attachment to it over being a monster, still tried to rack grayed and frayed human memories. Wisps of humanity. Even human adults struggled to remember the briefest of childhood interactions.

Was it him? Has it been? A decade before even.

But there was so little in the brackish lack.

"It isn't as though you harmed him. You made him laugh and fed him chocolates and talked to him." Things Carlisle might have done with any hospital bound child, or child of coworker -- and yet the depth of why was different.

A sad smile.

("I am going to be as tall as the mountains. So I can look over the whole world and the oceans and everything and not miss things.")

Carlisle fingers the wrapped chocolate still in his pocket.

It's childishly encompassing, boastingly innocent. He can't think of time when he'd ever say something like that, the words or the way, but then he can't think of being a child. Children said things like that, didn't they?

Things crowd his head -- you can't keep that forever and he's gone now? Words that are smaller than the depth of what washes through him, things to turn his concern to, even when he is, personally, more relaxed for the lack of the first cacophony, the wall placed between them removed.

Instead Edward, resigned to the confusion and the care of him, pulled Carlisle back to him. To hold him close and hug him. Carlisle would the person to feel raked over the coals by the chance encounters of that place. How often it continued to amass things.

How could he not flip the image of that little boy against his mind over and over, the word son slipping from lips, not his, in memories, not his, both avaricious and rejecting.

To that mind an angel and a demon in such a small face.

Thank you.

Carlisle is just...standing there. Edward's arms are around him still and Carlisle is focusing on this Edward here. The one that he traveled with, the one who stayed (and came back) and stayed again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for being home. Thank you for being with him. Thank you for understanding. Thank you for asking. Thank you for letting him tell. Thank you for not pushing. Thank you for not brushing it off. Thank you for not brushing him off.

Thank you for not being six. Thank you for being seventeen, and one hundred and four. Thank you for making it through those three nights. Thank you for making it through those five years. Thank you for being the first domino. Thank you for opening wide the world. Thank you for staying. Thank you for not running away. Thank you for coming back once you did. Thank you for never leaving again.

Thank you for being seen. Thank you for seeing. Thank you for being the face and mind he expects. Thank you for caring and care-taking. Thank you for the touch. Thank you for the hug. Thank you for not belittling or bisecting. Thank you for accepting the unacceptable, unchangeable, regardless of understanding, again.

Thank you for dying.

Thank you for living.

Edward let out a breath, too thin and insubstantial to be a sigh. "Always."

That does it. Something clicks over and Carlisle steps back of his own volition this time.

"I'm going out for a run, I think. I want to feel a bit more normal before Jasper gets home."

Feeble, but plausible.

Edward nodded, letting his hands fall to his sides again, against a cavernous plethora of silent thoughts when Carlisle both moved and spoke.

It takes a second before; "He'd appreciate that, if he knew."

"I can't imagine this'll stay quiet for long."

Alice.

Exhale. "I should..." he trails off.

"It'll be fine," Edward said, one corner of his quirking. "I will be."

"Yes. Good. Alright."

Carlisle stuttersteps for a moment, but turns and heads back into the house from the garage.

The chocolate sits on his desk for quite some time.

Returning home.

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