ofthefamily | Coming into Milliways.

A young woman -- tangle-haired, in a light sundress of the 26th century, human through and through -- is perched atop a table near the door. She's cross-legged, and bent over into a comfortable huddle to study the tabletop, her folded arms resting on the wood.

When the door opens, she glances up.

She's the closest person to him -- human, coloration and smell and no vampire Carlisle's ever met hunches over that way for any reason whatsoever.

this has all got to be a trick another human another test

Carlisle is trying to find a piece of clothing he can steal for himself at the very least.

River straightens sharply, even as her shoulders hunch and tighten; her hands, flat to the table now, stiffen as if to clench on nothing.

Low, "No tests."

Her dark eyes fix on Carlisle, wary and intense and not quite sane. She doesn't even blink at the inhuman black of his own. "Promise."

Carlisle's unnecessary breaths turn to pants.

English, here. Room filled with humans and other that Carlisle doesn't understand and she's trying to say that it isn't a test?

In response to a statement he is at least mostly sure he never said aloud?

"To whom do you belong?"

She's so pale. Fragile. Carlisle is guessing Marcus.

English, in the flat drawl descended from American accents that don't exist yet. River is very still, except for the tiny shifts of her fingers.

"To me."

Soft, and certain.

Don't lie to me, human. Everyone belongs to Them here.

River meets his eyes in silence.

She says nothing; only holds his black eyes, without flinching or cowering or doing anything but breathing slowly.

The other humans with whom Carlisle has interacted never look him in the eye. Especially as he hasn't hunted.

Stay out of my head.

It was impossible to miss him.

His entrance, his thoughts, the very way he moved.

Impossible the way it was impossible for humans not to breathe.

But it wasn't Carlisle. It was -- but it wasn't.

Edward couldn't look away, couldn't move for fear of gathering his attention.

River's shoulders tighten slightly; her hands curl slowly in on themselves.

"You're talking."

"Neutral ground. No rats in the keyholes."

Carlisle can't really seem to focus on anything besides the girl on the table and he doesn't want to step forward towards her but it doesn't feel like he has a choice in the matter.

He needs to hunt.

And she keeps lying to him.

Carlisle's hand raises and comes down in a hard slap against the side of the pale girl's face, low to strike at her jaw.

She lied.

River's reflexes are fast, right up at the limits of human capability, and her talents give her an extra few seconds' warning. But she's still only human, gunslinger or not, and Carlisle's speed is well into superhuman.

His hand hits, a sharp marble-hard strike, before River's barely begun to flinch away, and it knocks her sprawling across the table.

(For an instant, as she slams against wood, there's a hard lethal glitter in her eyes that any predator would recognize.)

The lie slips.

Carlisle's almost happy for it.

The joy -- which isn't joy, but relief and caustic snapping -- sends Edward across the room in the breath of one hundredth of a second, books and wine glass and chair forgotten, for grabbing Carlisle's offending arm.

"Don't."

The word is a hard command, even when he doesn't mean to speak, and when he isn't positive if it's for the feral surge from not-his-Carlisle or the answering glint in River.

This is stupid. He knows it even as it starts, but what could he do really? Leave Carlisle to attack her? Why hadn't he said anything about being here previously?

Carlisle wrenches his arm out of the - vampire, too strong to be otherwise - grasp, twisting against the new presence who would order him down for a hum

gold

Carlisle's about to move against the new arrival (guard? no uniform) when a look to his eyes nearly shuts him down.

What is this new work of yours Aro? Carlisle pleads in his mind, now momentarily still.

River presses up enough to watch; enough to be ready to move.

Her eyes flick between them -- watching, waiting, listening.

(There's a red splotch on her jaw that will turn into a wide purple bruise soon. Blood is filling her mouth from where the inside of her cheek cut on her teeth; she keeps her mouth closed, though adrenaline or pain has made her breathing quick.)

The scent of fresh blood fills the air, her lips are pale doors before it. Edward is faintly reluctantly glad for the innocuous disinterested way it calls to him -- not like the scent that calls for his demise each time he gets too near it.

Carlisle fought him, as Edward mirrored his moves as he made them. It was a bonus to have gotten to wrestle and spar with him for decades. But recognition wavered Carlisle into shock, more in his thoughts than his actions. But also for the name addressed, for the nearness and expectedness of it. Aro. Aro. Aro.

Volterra at it's height. It takes the air from his thoughts.

"What is this place? Why are you dressed so informally?" Carlisle hurls questions at Edward before thrusting one pale finger towards the girl who is bleeding from the inside of her cheek.

Carlisle can't recall the term for that part of the body in English right now and he growls aloud for no reason the newcomer should be able to discern.

"Take me back if I may not get answers here."

Oral mucosa.

This is not his Carlisle.

The words crowd his mouth, and his mind. The staggering silence and cacophony of things to say, or reactions to the flood of Carlisle's unstoppered mental vitriol. His century old memories are pale compared to these emotions.

"You are not in Volterra."

But he'd never spoken nor shared coming here before.

Carlisle leans in, picturing how hard he'd have to punch the vampire in the face to launch him next to the human girl when he snarls.

"Sono in la mia testa, giovane." As if he didn't already know that.

To the girl: "Go wash out the blood in your mouth if you want to survive here."

River

you cannot command me

(That's where leaving matters)

says nothing.

Perhaps it's because of the blood in her mouth, and the starving vampire an arm's reach away; perhaps it's because of her bruised and swelling jaw; perhaps it's because in this moment, she has nothing to say.

"No. You aren't."

It's terse, reeling in the reaction to watching himself be attacked in Carlisle's mind. Being sized up in a fashion that has never realistically happened with such truly violent intent. Readying himself to spring or dodge if he has to.

Even when he reaches out, uncertain what he means to do with his hand or where to put it, just trying to reach out, to keep his voice calmer and easier -- "I'm not one of them."

"Do They think I am an idiota to actually believe you? Even if they did find a way to make you appear as I did."

Carlisle refuses to look Edward in the face. Once was enough; Carlisle knows his own eyes do not look like that anymore.

"They didn't make me."

There's a rigidness in it, scathing hated for the idea of it, even as he looked away instead of Carlisle -- he can't, shouldn't, say, You did, he knows that -- when his hand finally settles around Carlisle's forearm, even as his eyes found River's hard ones briefly.

How was he supposed to think of something, what was important then. He shook his head looking back to Carlisle, struggling for finite's. Against Carlisle being unwilling to even look at him (a feat not managed in his existence even in the early hours of his prodigal return).

"A man of science would believe the evidence in front of him."

There's an anger in it, not at Carlisle, but at them, at this Bar and the situation it keeps throwing at them each extra day. Maybe Jasper and Rosalie were right. But he couldn't think of that just now, with him like this -- the way his head exploded in a million angry, violent directions distracting his every sensible wisp.

His hand tightened unintentionally, "Stop letting them win."

Carlisle turns tightly inward at the insult

I'm not

bringing his right fist to his chest to make his elbow into a point to bring across Edward in a strike.

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