In the cells.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle is still sitting here.

It is the strangest cell he's inhabited yet, but it's still a cell and he has no visitors.



But no tests.

Carlisle enjoys the reprieve.

Comments

[river_meimei]

The sound of quiet voices in the corridor: River, and a Security member. Not long, she says, and I'll say hi. There are walls.


The door opens, and River's head pokes around the doorframe. She slips into the room, but barely; she leaves one hand on the frame, and her body inclines a little towards the door. There's a hesitancy to her approach, but strangely, no fear. She looks more as if she's intruding into a stranger's house, and uncertain of her welcome.

There's no trace of a bruise on her cheek.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle hears her without watching her. Her smell is muted through the invisible wall.

I was wondering when someone would appear.

He doesn't say anything aloud, but he does shift so that he looks at River instead of the opposite wall.

[river_meimei]

"I didn't," River says, seriously.

As often, she's forgotten to make the antecedent clear.

Lower -- more carefully, which with River means not success so much as visible effort -- she adds, "It's not in the repertoire."

[ofthefamily]

"How is your jaw?"

The question seems more about assessing damage than concern for the girl's well-being, but at least it's civil.

[river_meimei]

"I'm okay."

She looks it, too, and sounds it; there's no slurring to her words, and no care or wincing when she opens her mouth.

"You're not," she adds, just as serious, and this not-really-question does sound like concern.

[ofthefamily]

There isn't much Carlisle can do to contradict the human's statement, so he chooses not to address it.

"Why are you here? I haven't done much to...engender your interest."

[river_meimei]

"Got walls."

River brushes light fingertips along the doorfreame, over the edges and angles of painted wood.

"Inside."

To the far wall: "I remember."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle blinks at the small girl as if she were speaking a language he had yet to study in the libraries.

He shouldn't listen to her. She sees Carlisle, sees in him, and nothing from this can be good.




"You're a prisoner of Them too."

[river_meimei]

River studies him for a moment in silence. Her small young face is sober; there are shadows in her dark eyes.

Softly, "Never was."

"Not any more."

[ofthefamily]

"They will always know where you are," Carlisle is shaking his head before River finishes her reply.

He's seen it before -- humans that the Volturi trust, befriend...it never ends well.

[river_meimei]

There are replies River could make. She doesn't say them.

Instead, she takes one slow step closer, and then a second. Her hand falls away from the doorframe with absentminded grace; her bare feet touch down silently (by human standards), toes spreading against the floor.

She doesn't look away.

"And you?"

[ofthefamily]

"If I were to ever leave?" Carlisle snorts heavily. "Most likely. There will be a point where I will have to fold. The question remaining is how."

Carlisle plays at imagined and concrete dirt under his nails; he is far less than medicinally hygienic at present. "Perhaps this was my use the whole time. Entertainment." With a fractured sort of chuckle, "The healing power of laughter."

[river_meimei]

River twitches a little; not quite a flinch, but close to one. Her fingers twist at her sides, pressing against each other and against the air.

Low, "You know better."

[themidnightson]

People come and go. They notice and they don't.


He's standing now, short of the doorway, but he's lost count of the reasons why the people, who aren't rightly deserving of any title as such, deserve to be rendered into a million pieces and eaten in gouts of flames.

[betagainstme]

Alice walks in, hand in hand with Jasper, a strange expression on her face. There were some pretty strange visions that hit just as she walked in, of Edward and Carlisle and cells and...then spinning around Volterra.

She's not sure what it all means, just yet, though she doesn't like the way it looks.

She tries not to think or worry about it...if only for Jasper, but a cursory glance up at her husband shows he already felt her change of emotion. She winces apologetically. "I don't know it means, just-"

She shrugs.

[keptherwaiting.livejournal.com]

Jasper squeezes Alice's hand, trying not to frown over the multitude of varying emotions coming from her. Though the slight worry she feels worries him. "What'd you see?"

[ofthefamily]

what is next i wonder -- they refuse to kill me but i do not know why -- i have not fought them for weeks

[themidnightson]

There is no snarl, only the tightening of his hands.

Even as Alice and Jasper's thoughts, and voice, slipped suddenly into the same space. Hallowed and specific after so many years, recognizable, like a clear bell, among all of Milliway's chaos. The fact that Alice's visions actually show him in Volterra makes him nearly grimace and still he can't regret the choice knowing he shouldn't have let it gotten even to there.

He looked to the door and the cells area.

Half a second later, he was at the top of the stairs, at the edge of the bar proper, eyes focused on his siblings across the din and crowd and bar of things. "We have a problem."

[betagainstme]

Alice opens her mouth to answer Jasper when Edward appears. She scowls at her brother. "Really? I noticed. What's going on?"

Her voice is tinged with annoyance and just a teensy bit of anger. Mostly at the visions of Volterra Edward keeps spinning out of her mind.

[keptherwaiting.livejournal.com]

Alice scowling at Edward is never good and that frown Jasper had been attempting to hide makes a full appearance now as he meets his brother's gaze. "What did you do?"

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle is exhaling needlessly in his cell, letting his thoughts scroll across his mind in angry fire tones.

They can't make me stay here
Have to leave
Have to hunt
Revenge on Them could I do it?
No. Can't.
Just leave.

The circling in his head seems...habitual, which may be the worst part of it.

[themidnightson]

He isn't -- wouldn't -- they're here now.

He won't have to decide what to do on his own.

Which makes all his decisions up in the air, muddled.



Edward's jaw tightened at Jasper's assumption as much Alice's snap, even as Carlisle's thoughts and the Milliways chaos continued to roll through him. He deserved that he supposed, given Bella and Milliways, but it didn't keep his palpable relief at their arrival turning frustrated at the triviality and reaction of both.

"Carlisle," He turned sideways in the doorway to the stairs. "-is in the cells." His gaze somewhere about a wall, as if he might see through it to Carlisle since he can't stop hearing him. "A different one, from a different time."

[betagainstme]

What.


The thought is in her mind the moment she says it, and she just knows that the Carlisle he speaks of is one from...a bad time. It's quite obvious.

Alice stares between her husband and her brother, feeling dizzy at the spinning futures. "Let me see him."

[keptherwaiting.livejournal.com]

Adamant would hardly begin to describe the tone that Jasper directs not only at his wife but Edward as well. He knows how they feel, his impulse was to go to Carlisle directly too, yet as soon as the option was voiced -

"No."

[ofthefamily]

Somewhere else, Carlisle starts pacing.

He's trying too hard to figure out the circumstances of his latest move from one hold to another. The human girl. The boy --