ofthefamily | Coming home from work; Volterra; Family

Were in Milliways.

Jasper pushes open the door to home, trying not to seem too suspicious as he glances into the hall and then holds the door open for Edward and Alice.

Other than the permanent grimace he has from the itch of new bites, he looks normal, the red cloak disposed of and any other evidence washed off at Milliways. He's doing his best to keep it together and is more than anything relieved to see everything as it is when they left.

Alice is remarkably unscathed even after being so distracted during the fight. She still feels worn down though, and if she were human, she'd likely try to sleep for a month.

Instead, she just wants to curl up with a book and read. She leans against Jasper.

Edward closes the door behind them whisper silent, even if the boisterous company in the room that had been beyond the door was hardly that.

His eyes are still very dark and his manner quite reserved, except for the now-and-then making sure that her siblings are as good as they can be given what they've all just seen and done. There's even the smallest press toward a frown when he is inundated with only the sounds of their house and their family.

Milliways looks the same, just the way home does.

As though it hadn't happened or changed for what had.

They're home - a fact that brings a smile to Carlisle's face as he walks up the stairs towards his office, and a smile that disappears as soon as he witnesses their collective demeanor.

"What happened."

Jasper risks a glance at Edward - what do they say? do they say anything at all? - as he wraps an arm around Alice's shoulders and takes a half step in the direction of their room to evade.

"There was an incident. We took care of it," is pretty much all he can say at this point.

"No repercussions," Alice whispers, not looking at Carlisle. "Everything is fine."

Edward's grateful Jasper chose to say something, but he's more relieved for the soft words that come from Alice. The futures are back to normal. Their family and the long road the spins into eternity, where the details shift but the days, and their life, is concrete.

For once Edward's expression doesn't even twinge when his own becomes muddled and unclear with Alice's dual path for Bella.

His eyes shifted from Alice, at Jasper's shoulder, to Carlisle with what appeared like an easy shift. To focus his eyes were his thoughts both wouldn't and already had, reflexively from the moment the door opened.

To what Carlisle was, and was supposed to be, when the memory of what had been still rang so loudly.

Very slowly and for once, Carlisle wishes he had a rougher tone to use.

"What everything? Why do you three look like you've taken a stroll through a warzone?"

Jasper grimaces at Carlisle's choice of words and pulls Alice even more into his embrace, acting the shield again. He glances at Edward, then at the top of Alice's head.

"We left Milliways through another's door. We had no choice," he starts off slowly. At least, the choice had been there up until they met Carlisle in the cell. Maybe he should have fought harder at them going to see him in the first place.

"We had to help - "

You? Him? He's not sure how to say that part.

It's the sudden raise in Carlisle's voice, as well as the suddenly terse silence of her house, that has Esme appearing in the same hallway everyone else is in not even a second later.

She thinks if she had a heart it would shudder at when she looks across the three of them, gravitated toward a point locked together. As it is her center clenches and she wonders what has gone wrong this time.

What had that place done to her children now?

Her voice is softer, from the door. "Are you alright?"

Followed shortly by a concerned -- "Maybe the living room is better than the hallway for this."

Alice curls against her husband, her hands clinging to his arm across her body. She's breathing heavily, like she'd be crying if she could, and then suddenly she stops breathing at all as her golden gaze snaps up to look at Carlisle's.

His face is the one that has always shown kindness to her...but his words in the cell of Milliways still ring clear.

"It was you. We had to help you. From...it was you from Volterra and everything was...so wrong. Going so wrong."

Edward can feel the snap in Carlisle possibly before Carlisle can even make it to the first even vaguely clear thought. Alice gravitates to Jasper around her, as Esme is torn between who suddenly needed her more.

Edward stands there on his own. Like he always has.

"It vanished."

Speaking in the second Alice stopped, as though maybe their sentences were only one point, one message, one reference and response split between the two of them, like they might have been given the line for each other by some perverse accident.

"All of this was gone."

This...doesn't make sense. Alice doesn't lie to Carlisle, but this is -- No. Jasper with wincing of actual pain, Alice distraught, Edward closed off and --

No!

"No -- I would remember! How could I have been there so many centuries ago and not remember?" Carlisle's voice raises again to nearly a shout - unnecessary given both the proximity and the abilities of his children, but the shock of it. It's impossible.

Already Carlisle's brain is running through what he could have forgotten, overlooked, "I would remember -- "

"You weren't you," Jasper adds simply, his gaze darting to Esme who now stands in the hall with them. He takes a deep breath before this can progress any further than it already has. "Esme's right: We should go sit down."

How anyone can wonder why Esme isn't fond of Milliways is beyond her, especially when the stakes and situations there seem to keep ramping.

Her reasons are scrawled across all of the faces before her. Alice huddled into Jasper, who winces even when he's holding her that tightly. Carlisle near yelling disbelief. Edward's, even greater than normal, detachment.

"Now." She says, in a tone that is more than half direction rather that request. Compassion with the understanding that requests in panic are not listened to, while direct orders often times were.

Alice is the first to move, near wrenching herself from Jasper's grasp as she moves to the living room, to the couches. She huddles in the corner of one couch, eyes closed.

She knows there's going to be yelling and she's so worn thin, she's not sure how much of it she'll be able to handle. As everyone moves into the room behind her, she looks up at Esme.

"We did what we had to, to protect the sanctity of this family."

Edward is far too calm, by way of being anything but it in such a precisely controlled state. Carlisle's panicked voice (thoughts) raises and the only sign of change in him at all is some tension around the edges of his eyes.

Carlisle's voice and thoughts (and hands) have thrown far worse at him in last forever. Directly. Specifically. Maliciously.

He's turned toward the living room, without having followed Alice yet, when he says the words neither reject nor acknowledge Jasper's or Esme's to Carlisle. They have an unavoidable flatness to them.

"Gerard wasn't in Volterra that night."

Gerard wasn't in Volterra that night --

Red-orange hair that looked closer to red-bronze in the dark of the tunnels.

Carlisle doesn't hear the growl coming up out of his own throat and he forgets to bother voicing all of the emotion that is crossing his mind in his anger and confusion. "Are the three of you completely moronic? How dare you risk yourselves like that - to - to Volterra?"

it wasn't Gerard and myself it was myself and my family it makes no sense

"I could have - we could have lost all of you in this. Just - how dare -- "

Edited 2009-11-11 01:34 (UTC)

"And we could have lost it all anyway if we didn't intervene," Jasper interrupts, trying not to become too affected by Carlisle's own anger and confusion.

He joins his wife on the couch, sitting not too far from her, yet giving her the space she needs. He folds his hands in his lap with a frown.

"Alice saw... She saw you not making it on your own."

Esme reached and stroked the side of Alice's raised face. Her voice defended them. Them -- their action, and them -- their family. And still in that face, her beloved cheerful daughter, defending both, was such utter, warped exhaustion.

There are words for how wrong it comes off because of that. Esme only stepped close to the edge of the couch, directing Alice's head against her side, as her fingers slipped through the short black hair and she could not help looking back to Edward and Carlisle and Jasper.

Gather the facts. Find out what the hell has happened now.

"What state was I in when I appeared in the bar?"

He's the only who knows the answer to that question.

Edward, standing next to door, who didn't choose to speak up at Carlisle's tirade of reaction. At least these ones were sane. At least he recognized all of them through it.

"It was fall of 1809." He says, with a force of weight he didn't realize could come from his voice, stating beleagueringly in the tone of you know the answer to that already.

From the one person who saw that part first hand; the one who had read all of journals through those years. Who already avoided telling his siblings exactly what Carlisle did before getting jailed.

Alice sighs carefully against her mother's leg, taking a deep, shaking breath as she curls closer.

She gets up on her knees, so she can wrap her arms around Esme's waist, and bury her face in Esme's side. There is safety in her embrace.

"You didn't believe any of us...you weren't...you."

Esme is looking none too pleased.

One hand cupped over Alice's shoulder, and arm wrapped around her back, holding her daughter tightly to her when she turns her face as though to hide in Esme's body.

"It's done now?" As much as it can be when her husbands' rightful tirade is falling on the already weary, beaten faces of their children, who in trying to explain don't seem to be reaching any more relief.

Edited 2009-11-14 14:13 (UTC)

"Of course it is - I'm standing here. Because my children had to come rescue me?"

It's still loud, sounding incredulous and just the tiniest bit ashamed.

"Did I attack anyone. What damage control do I have."

Jasper reaches over to his wife, wrapping his fingers around her ankle in a comforting touch, the least he could do. "There was a girl in Milliways. I'm not sure who..." He doesn't mention the insults that were thrown; there just isn't any reason to.

"I took care of it."

It's very clear and still and quiet.

Even in a room where everyone will hear it.

So there was damage.

Carlisle nearly feels sick.

"You never should have seen that."

"Maybe not."

But they did, and Carlisle fretting over it won't change that. Jasper would try to pacify him - all of them, really - if he wasn't so damned weary enough as is, his head spinning.

The best he can offer is a hand on Carlisle's shoulder, another comforting touch without much strength behind it.

She wants to know what else.

What else isn't Edward saying. What else has Alice hiding against her. What else has Jasper looking so weary, so wounded. But they're all saying so little, standing up for him more than their selves.

She wants to wrap her arms around her husband and remind him that he's safe here. That they all are. Except -- Volterra. Her children were in Volterra, with the Volturi.

Two hundred years, and only minutes, ago.

She wants to burn that closet down, too.

"What's done is done," Esme said, trying not to hear the weary note in her own voice. She held out a hand for Carlisle, still holding Alice to her. "Their home and safe now."

Her hand still at her side raised to run her fingers into Alice's hair. "But it might be wise of us, when everyone else is calmed down, to revisit whether it is worth the risks our family keeps falling into, being in that place."

Edited 2009-11-17 15:39 (UTC)

What slows Carlisle down is Alice.

She looks so tired.

(Because of helping him. Carlisle will deal with that later.)

For now, he reaches his hand into Esme's to squeeze it I'm here, I promise before placing both hands on the crown of Alice's hair. He gives her a kiss there and a quiet "Ca y ira, ma fille" and exhales.

There's nothing else for it now.

Alice sits up at Esme's words, her face almost crestfallen at the idea of losing Milliways, even after this. But she keeps to to herself, for the most part, knowing she'll little support for her cause now.

She stares up at Carlisle, before standing and throwing her arms around him, burying her face against his chest. "Tu m'as manqué, Papa."

Carlisle's hands stay pressed against the flat of Alice's back, eyes meeting Jasper, Edward and Esme all in turn.

Quietly then, "Unless there's anything else I need to know, I'll...find you all later." He tilts his head towards the sofa in Esme's direction, wordlessly asking her to sit with him - Carlisle will stay with Alice until she lets him go.

Looking over at Edward before he leaves, I'd like to speak with you first. Later on.

Edward's response is simple, and unchanging from the last few minutes. His eyes stayed on the quartet of his family, touching each other, in the center of the room.

His gaze rose to meet Carlisle's for a brief half second, at the address more than the dismissal. Before he looked away as he turned and walked out of the door that was still far closer to him than the rest of the room.

Staring after Edward, Jasper turns back to the others with a frown before touching Alice's shoulder gently.

And in a whisper that Carlisle and Esme will hear anyway, says, "Alice, hon, I'm goin' to our room. You come up when you're ready, alright?" Not wanting to pull her away from them until she is.

He glances apologetically at Carlisle before trudging out after Edward.

Esme kept her forearm on Carlisle's lower back, around him embracing their daughter, watching first one son and then the other vanish off to wherever best they thought it would be to deal with this.

With the quietest of noises, Esme turned her hands to urging Carlisle and Alice to sit down on the couch. They could take this one of time and as they could, handling the damage.

She murmurs that she'll be up there soon to her husband. She wants nothing more than to find some comfort in his arms...but she's too frightened to move from her position here.

Her heart seems to seize with the terror of the future she foresaw. It's something that scared her more than she told her brother or Jasper.

On the couch, she leans her head against her father's...her hand in her mother's. For now, Alice needs her parents. They're here. Everything is okay.

She just needs to convince herself it's real.

Coming home from work; Volterra; Family

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