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

[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."

[ofthefamily]

"Everything I know better I would trade to go hunt on my own again," Carlisle snaps, but even that's not true.

The last century won't be a waste. It can't.

[river_meimei]

River's body cants forward with a frustrated snappishness to match his, and her chin lifts sharply. "That's the point."

[ofthefamily]

"Are you trying to get on my good side, child? Don't you know better?"

[river_meimei]

River's expression is, for a moment, purely and eloquently teenaged.

(Even if she hasn't been technically a teenager in a few years.)

[ofthefamily]

I'll take that as a no. Good.

Carlisle unfurls himself to standing, breaking six feet but not by much. Marcus always called him il gigante del nord in his one attempt at humor around the oddity in their midst.

He strides forward to the invisible wall barring him in, reaching up to drop one hand against nothing at all.

"You know I owe them. In a way."

They educated him. Gave him a sense of history when he'd been turned and left to fend for himself a scant number of years before the Great Fire.

He doesn't owe them all of this.

[river_meimei]

Softly, "It's an accounting. In the columns."

Her head cocks; one corner of her unbruised mouth curls, gentle and humorless. "How much?"

[ofthefamily]

"If I hadn't come here I'd probably still be hiding in the French woods somewhere. My very own rendition of la bête de Gevaudan," Carlisle smiles humorlessly. "I learned here without having to steal or hide or pretending to need to sleep."

[river_meimei]

River breathes in, and out; her gaze meanders across the transparent wall of his cell, and returns to the general vicinity of Carlisle's face.

"Everything's got a price."

It's ka.

The question is whether it's worth paying.

[ofthefamily]

"And the price of their kindness was this." A gesture to the cell, and to Carlisle's own black irises.

The reply is flat and factual.

[river_meimei]

"You're paying."

Sometimes it's hard to tell if River's asking or stating. This is one of those times.

[ofthefamily]

"They're stronger than I."

[river_meimei]

River's face says, in another brief and almost-teenaged grimace, you should know better than that.

"That's in the rules."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle's patience starts to fray at both the look and the retort. All River gets in response is a low growling sound.

[river_meimei]

Carlisle is a vampire, a pure predator and inhumanly fast and strong. Cell or not, River ought to be looking at least a little intimidated at that growl; there ought to be a flinch, however stifled, or a renewed light of wariness.

All she looks, though, is frustrated.

"That's the point," she says again, every word stressed. There's too much effort in her enunciation, as if she's working to say every word.

"Got the rules. Time to change it. Under the sensors."

[ofthefamily]

"Vai via."

Go away, human child.