ofthefamily | In the cells.

The blond and the dark-haired girl may be the couple, but the girl and the other boy were speaking. The looks he recognized, even if Aro's touch is not needed here.

"If you are speaking of me, aloud would be my preference."

"Do you wish to return so quickly to the confines of Aro's rule?" Alice turns her head back toward Carlisle, her expression carefully blank. Inside, she's a turmoil that only Edward and Jasper can comprehend.

She resists taking her husband's hand for support. It would be a weakness to show Carlisle.

"Your attempts to goad me are both childish and" unneeded "ineffective."

Carlisle's tone is clipped and heavy since he has no room to effect the trio on the other side of the door. He can't do anything to them.

Carlisle steps closer to the invisible wall between them anyway, knowing where the wall starts to lean his hands against it. As if he could push through it towards them.

"I cannot act against myself here," Carlisle seethes, a curse to the girl if not in so many words and trying so hard to keep images of his early time in France out of his head and failing. "Aro believes himself to be aiding me. Keeping me from Marcus and Caius. The vanguard."

Carlisle finally exhales, dropping his hands.

"It is to die here or die at their hands as I try to escape. I haven't hunted in near a month by my count."

The last part is whispered as if to even speak of escape would bring Carlisle's adversaries to this new cell he has found himself inhabiting.

Carlisle is cursing at Alice. Alice might not be able to hear it as well as the intention slams into him. But this does not change the fact it's happening.

"He never helped you."

Fuck politically, historically, correct sentences.

He can't even begin to regret how small the reference is to its ill.

"And you, if he heard you disrespect him like that, he would enjoy watching burn," Carlisle spits before pulling back again, finding the furthest corner in which he can withdraw himself.

Maybe me too. Who knows.

That's enough.

They've heard, seen, and said more than enough.

Jasper catches Alice by the elbow, his jaw clenching from the tension in the room as he pulls her away. "We're done. Let's go." His gaze, darkening by the moment, darts to Edward. "You too."

From that boy to an inference of being burned.

It's amazing Edward manages to only have his gaze shift to the cell finally. To that known face, with it's black eyes and it's different mind. Torn between the response to a threat and a nearer slight than any hands and teeth could ever make and all the other already present dilemma's this created.

He looks over to Jasper a few seconds later than he should.

The cell almost gets a second look, before he nods. Sharp.

He'll follow them out when they walk.

Edited 2009-09-14 11:18 (UTC)

Alice's step forward is cut off by her husband's grip. She's never been angry at Carlisle like this before. It takes conscious reminding that this isn't her father. Not this man.

She lets Jasper pull her away, calming herself before looking at him, her eyes full of an apology.

Her hand shoots out and she takes Edward by the hand, dragging him after her and Jasper, though she's sure it's not needed. She needs it.

Jasper gets them to the stairs before turning on them both. His expression says it best: That was stupid.

Edward needs the hand.

He can't even figure out that it is for other reasons than that he hadn't actually moved at all until Alice tugged him as she walked away. He doesn't even let go of it when he leans against the wall, tilting his gaze up.

He doesn't need to see it.
He can hear Jasper loud enough.
Even with the unending Carlisle around it.
As for Alice's hand, he just doesn't let go.

He does after a second, looking, over faintly narrowed eyes, but the sentiment of why he looks that way isn't directed at Jasper at least. "You still think we should leave him here now? It only took him five minutes in the door to be put down there."

Alice opens her mouth to answer her brother, but all that comes out is a gasp. She stiffens, her hand tightening around Edward's, and she leans against her husband.

The vision is blurry and quick: Carlisle returning to Volterra and something happening and then...nothing happening. His future -- and theirs, because they are so connected to their father's outcome -- drops out, disappears.

Alice winces, stiffening a little more.

Anything Jasper may have been feeling is immediately replaced with concern, his arms wrapped around Alice to hold her up. "What? What did you see?" Not even waiting for an answer, his gaze darts again to Edward, "What'd she see?"

Edward's hand is a vice in his sisters from the moment it starts.

He has been waiting for this, simultaneously loses the weight of deciding and at once hates what it shoves her (them) both through -- at least until he can't cognitively keep the thought.

Not grey, not black, not static. An endless nothing, where nothing can end, because nothing begins. Where Carlisle's vitriol is the background and Alice's gasp, Jasper voice is foreground.

Nothing, he means to say to Jasper. Not realizing he doesn't. Alice probably sees it. Because he means to so hard and it just doesn't come out his mouth due to their combined sight. It all ends.

No.

No, and, no, and, no.

"That can't happen." Edward moved, lightening fast, from the wall, two feet, still not letting go of Alice and suddenly rigidly still and tighter. "We're proof of that. This all -- it has to have happened already, if it's happening now. Doesn't it?"

His voice isn't even in a human application now. No one would hear it. It's so fast. He -- They -- but he has to -- Carlisle didn't --

"The catalyst is his going back. But we can't stop that...if he doesn't go back, it happens anyway because he's not there." Alice says, her voice shaking, soft, fast.

She looks up at Jasper. "Carlisle...us...everything drops away because of something that has changed. Him being here is going to mess something up. No matter how big or small, it effects us all."

"So what do we do?"

Despite the turmoil and tension among the three of them, Jasper keeps his voice steadily calm. His sudden defection into wanting to help that Carlisle may be a complete turn around, but this is different. Any threat to his live with Alice needs to be nipped.

"Alice?"

The vitriol-despair top continues to spins and Edward looks down the stairs. His life. His existence is a wash of one singular, solitary, specific foundation. He would not be here if not for that first choice. Or that forgiveness. A million other moments, sharp and fast, blending, blurring into that voice.

That man's voice.

Carlisle's voice.

"He has to go back. " It's not even near steady. He's not avoiding that voice. He's literally trying his best to block out everything but his siblings to hear it now. "He has to. We have to--"

He was going to say we have to send him back but it died in his mouth. It died on something worse, something brighter and darker and simultaneously, wanted in the worst, visceral fashion for the last many hours.

Because it's Carlisle.

Then and now and whenever inbetween.

"We have to make whatever happens--not."

Edited 2009-09-14 15:11 (UTC)

In the cells.

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