Carlisle and Edward.

[ofthefamily]

A couple of days have passed since the incident in Milliways. Rosalie is furious at the recklessness of everyone involved, while Emmett is more aggravated that he wasn't called upon to help, though voicing that opinion gets him smacked in the back of the head by Esme.

Carlisle has been quiet in the meantime, but he comes home from a shift after the children are home from school and waits until dusk to ask Edward to come for a run with him.

Comments

[themidnightson]

He comes without a word, or a sound, from the other side of the house, where he'd been with Alice. They only need a look, the brush of fingers without even looking to each other, a language that is and isn't, less than stable and more than perfectly understanding.



Edward appeared not too far from where Carlisle was seconds after the invitation. If it really could be viewed as one to Edward.

[ofthefamily]

It's rare enough that Carlisle goes out on a run with one of the children without inviting everyone along anyway. Even without Alice telling them, the family knows what Carlisle wants to talk about.

Even still, they cross the river before Carlisle bothers to think about his topic, let alone speak about it. "I need to know who I attacked."

[themidnightson]

Edward continued apace for a while before his mouth would open. The things he could (wouldn't) keep from Carlisle. The unchangeable nature of it now. The choices none of them would take back.

"It didn't get that far."

Edward can't decided for himself if he's being charitable or honest. It could have been so much worse if he hadn't stood up and gotten in the middle -- become a literal monochromatic distraction. His eyes before all else.

[ofthefamily]

"Tell me who, Edward. Now."

[themidnightson]

Edward doesn't even startle or tense for the way it's said. He's been listening to this tone and it's ambling start, stop, suddenness in every flavor for days now.




"River Tam."

[ofthefamily]

"Oh, Christ," Carlisle moans. Any speed in Carlisle's wanderings slows to a walk with the news. River is such a wisp of a thing --

[themidnightson]

"She's fine."

Fine since he'd handled it then, and fine because she has better resources at her disposal than that infirmary and her brother.

"You only-" Except Carlisle would never view it as only, would he?

[ofthefamily]

Not in a million years, and his expression proves it.

"I only needed to be locked up. As a danger to everyone else."

[themidnightson]

Edward's expression and posture didn't change, even as the first two responses slammed through his mind and against his teeth. Things that were true -- too true -- that didn't need sharing.


At least not today.


"Part of that was my doing."

[ofthefamily]

"Good. God only knows what I might have done otherwise, in a place such as that, from that time..."

You may have known about that time from my journals, Carlisle offers slowly, but to see it -- firsthand? And for Alice and Jasper to see me so --

What? Weak? About to snap into pieces?

It's unconscionable.

[themidnightson]

"They saw far less of it."

Though for the way he's talking about it in his head, he means both linearly and the fact that so much of what was happening was inside Carlisle.

Even for the short time that Alice could lose all of them, all of forever, and Jasper could feel it, too. When they could stop him from making a potentially monumental error.

"You'd been in there half a day by then."

[ofthefamily]

"Who else saw me?"

[themidnightson]

"It happened fast enough few people had the chance to. Everyone you already know was there, and Meleka-" said rather like addressing a child's half forgotten presence.

Yet it was impossible to, because she had had strongly encouraged in him the breaking of all time lines as though they were butter to be sliced through for the right reasons. "-was on shift then."

[ofthefamily]

"Oh good. Who better to wrangle the vampire," Carlisle snarls at himself more so than Edward.

[themidnightson]

"She didn't touch you."

That line itself is hard.

Because -- no. No, that was Edward.

And Edward had been crazy sure after River.

[ofthefamily]

maybe she should've. kept my children away.

[themidnightson]

"You don't mean that." At least not entirely.




The ways this conversation would be worse with every single person in the house if they found out Edward had known and simply walked away, simply kept everyone out of it.

[ofthefamily]

"I don't?" Carlisle offers, genuinely incredulous. "I wanted my children to see me falling into the life that I tell them to work against? I'll keep that in mind when I can't get the image of attacking people out of my head."

[themidnightson]

"I needed them."

[ofthefamily]

Damn it all, Edward; I want to be mad about this.

It's thought in Edward's general direction in a huff, but the sentiment flies away in the next second.

"I know. You shouldn't have had to see me like that either." You I almost wish the most hadn't been exposed to that.

[themidnightson]

There really isn't a comment to that.



There wasn't a moment he truly could have turned away after Carlisle had hit River. If he's being honest with himself, from the moment he heard the voice, there hadn't been a chance.

[ofthefamily]

"Esme is pretty serious about wanting all of us to not want to go to Milliways anymore, you realize."

[themidnightson]

"She still thinks it is a choice."



If it had been a choice from the beginning Alice and Edward never would have needed to make the decision to tell their family because being there, against their will and/or without them, had been hell.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle shakes his head.

The biggest threat there about this was me. Unless her reason to stop me from going is out of concern for them, then it is invalid.

[themidnightson]

"The way she sees it," There's a cooling edge of his tone. Esme worked things out logically usually once she wasn't emotional. "She just almost lost us."

Edward shook his head.

He can still perfectly see the empty future.

The one that drove him, and Alice, to a choice.


"We did almost lose all of this."


And Edward




Edward almost threw it all away willingly.