Coming into Milliways.

[ofthefamily]

They never gave him a shirt again after Carlisle bandaged up the injured man that had been brought into his cell.

And then the door shifted, the voices growing louder.

Which leads to a blond man, pale with black eyes, standing just inside the door to the bar at the end of the universe.

Carlisle is only holding still because he hasn't figured out which way to run yet.

Comments

[themidnightson]

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.

[ofthefamily]

"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."

[themidnightson]

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.

[ofthefamily]

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_meimei]

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.

[themidnightson]

"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."

[ofthefamily]

"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.

[themidnightson]

"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."

[ofthefamily]

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.

[slayer_fray]

Vampires fighting would normally be something Mel would encourage - doing her work for her, after all - but this is the Bar, and things are different here. Besides, these guys usually obey the Rules and for that she has to afford them respect.

Usually.

She glances at River as she drops out of the rafters, and takes in the bruise and its implications. Her attention for obvious reasons doesn't stay there long, and she inserts herself between the vampires, all confidence and arrogance and readiness.

"Enough."

[ofthefamily]

Not a guard. Where is he?

"Are you here to take me to my cell, human?"

It's nearly polite.

"If not, move."

[themidnightson]

The sound of the collision of two nearly indestructible objects meeting gone even when his hand is still over the spot hit and Mel is trying to get inbetween them. It's there, in his eyes, if not the cool smooth alabaster of his face.

The shock that Carlisle actually had tried. He shouldn't be surprised after watching him backhand River, with the feel of Carlisle's mind. Edward still is. In over century, for all sins, never once seriously.

"I wouldn't suggest standing there."

It's tense, but it's not a threat. It more a want not to have to take down Carlisle if he decides to attack her, too, even given the submissive-threat in Carlisle's words to her.

[slayer_fray]

Mel doesn't look at Edward when he speaks, but she acknowledges it with a slight movement of her hand nearest him; raised, palm down.

If she can't handle a vampire, she doesn't deserve to stand there.

"Yeah," she says instead, to Carlisle. "I'm takin' you to cell."

[ofthefamily]

Finally, reality is starting to seep in to this ridiculous situation.

Carlisle follows the unorthodox guard with eyes cast downward, wondering who would be appearing to him next to gloat over this new development. Stregono benefice è folle ora. Poor thing.

[themidnightson]

He stood there -- as Carlisle followed behind Mel, docile even at the clear opposite of tame; as Carlisle went, eyes down to ground, head bowed and steps evenly set in expectation and resignation; as Carlisle was rounded away to a jail cell; as Carlisle chided himself on his place and sanity; as Carlisle walked away without a look or a thought back.


He stood there.

[river_meimei]

River, coiled on the table-top, watches Carlisle and Mel's retreating backs. There's a stillness about her like a wild animal's, poised for motion in any direction in an instant.

When they disappear down the corridor, her eyes flick to Edward.

[themidnightson]

Edward can hear their steps even once they're gone. Their thoughts even longer, even as everything else begins to wash back into existence on numbing focus. His mind follows Carlisle's all but cringing.

His image flickers through his mind, as other patrons had focused on them and then resumed their same monotony from before the scene, leaving only one last person staring.

He looks without wanting to, considering vanishing momentarily, only to settle dark, heavy golden eyes on her face. Then his lips thinned at the discoloration, and he said, even as he frowned, with a graceful wave toward her face.

"I can see to that, if you'd like."

A rare offer, he doesn't even consider why he makes now.

[river_meimei]

River meets his gaze, dark intent eyes against golden, and for a long moment she says nothing.

(The hard glitter is gone from her eyes, but that alert gunslinger intensity is still in every line of her body, and every thought of her mind.)

Then: "Okay," she says, softly. It's a small enough word that the bruised jaw doesn't interfere much.

She might get it magically healed anyway, depending on who's around. Milliways spoils a girl that way. But this is -- a gesture.

[themidnightson]

A gesture, yes. And a distraction. To keep him from running after them, from -- from what? What could he do now? Would he? Stop him from being put in a cell he does not want and yet goes to of free will's accord? What could he say? Would he be able to? What would he do with him but stare?

How could he not be horrified, and furious.

He doesn't try to touch her when he turns toward the infirmary he knows too well from (his) Carlisle, one hand twisting, briefly at the bracer under the cuff of his long sleeve shirt.

[river_meimei]

The infirmary is Carlisle's to Edward; to River, now and always, it's Simon's.

She slips off the table in a quick, fluid motion. To a vampire this might be slow and clumsy, but by human standards it's the sort of grace that can only come unthinkingly. She hesitates a moment with her feet on the floorboards, waiting not for balance but for her bearings -- River's world will never look quite like anyone else's -- before she follows Edward.

[themidnightson]

...behind the east gate. Volterra.

Edward is already in the infirmary by the time she gets there. Rummaging for things he probably won't need and looking over advanced supplies Carlisle commented on and he'd vaguely listened about.

His hands aren't shaking, but perhaps everything that can be unseen is shaken. Straining still to listen to the most important, singular voice, in this world.

That boy was put here to mock me.

"Sit." It's far gentler than he feels, when she is there.

[river_meimei]

"I'm okay," River says softly. It's almost gentle.

She boosts herself up onto a counter near the door, though. By luck or design, the drawers she's blocking are ones containing surgical instruments Edward won't want anyway.

[themidnightson]

He has to be sure, for Carlisle's sake. Yes. That. When was that last time he?

But it's in looking down at her face, even as he reached out and touched her jaw with infinite softness, pressing the skin as though to press a bubble, checking for displacement or dislocation, that he said,

"You are." For a given definition.

She was still what she was last time.

[river_meimei]

River doesn't move away from the touch. Edward is gentle and careful; besides that, River learned to live with pain years ago.

"It's in the linear threads." This longer sentence is a little indistinct, but nothing too bad. River doesn't appear to notice, or at least to care. "Gonna be. Too."

It's not herself she's talking about now.

[themidnightson]

"I-" Can't leave him here, can't leave him there.

He's staring at his fingers, even though he can see her dark eyes in his peripheral vision, his face in her mind, with the endless sea of other things there hiding.

"It isn't broken." He can't leave him there, downstairs. Can't go home while he's here. Can't fathom the idea of sending him....sending him back to Them. He knows their ghosts too well. "But it'll be bruised for a while."

He turned back to the other counter as he was speaking, without looking to her, to anything but a cup, "I'm sorry." Not for the bruise, and for the bruise, for Carlisle choosing her and it not being Carlisle.

The cup is filled with a medicinal rinse and he grabs a basin, bringing both back. He holds the cup out for her, but she doesn't need instructions. He's well aware of that.