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]

"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.

[ofthefamily]

"Because of me."

[themidnightson]

"Conjecture."

By which means he doesn't care and Alice's racking her brain and memory of those moments for days had produced no real answer either way.

[ofthefamily]

"You didn't go to Volterra for your health."

[themidnightson]

He could make two very tasteless joke. Could, but doesn't. Possibly even because he can't. It's a weightless whisper in his mind.







"I would choose your wounded pride over your death every time."

[ofthefamily]

"But I had survived already! Didn't I? I did it, Edward, or else I wouldn't have been here for you three to exist!"

It's exasperated and loud, Carlisle thankful he had managed to hang on for so long to his thoughts about this until they could be private ones.

[themidnightson]

"They would still exist."

He didn't make Alice or Jasper. He gave them a family, but he didn't make them. They would still be somewhere, elsewhere, even in the hypothesis.

[ofthefamily]

It's sometimes easy for him to forget. Alice and Jasper don't feel any differently usually from those of the family Carlisle did turn.




"Tell me I fought." Tell me I didn't just give up.

[themidnightson]

"You were there." It's faintly reproving.

It isn't a story. He can say this now, because it was.

Once upon a time -- days ago -- it was a story of life before him, before all of them, before all of this, to be told with all the other stories of bygone eras. And then, with the click of a door handle the perspective skewed entirely.





Carlisle already knows this all. Carlisle was there.

"You wanted to, but I stopped you."

[ofthefamily]

"You say 'I was there' like I recognize everything that happened." Like my entire comprehension of what happened has not changed.

Carlisle wonders idly whatever happened to Gerard and falls silent for a long moment.

"I had a family watching over me before I learned I wanted one. The years I spent before you alone but not understanding why that even bothered me -- it's a lot to process."

[themidnightson]

It is.

It really is.

[ofthefamily]

Because Carlisle can't deal with too much more silence:

"You didn't think to plant any subliminal messages in my head, did you?"

[themidnightson]

"Because it's worked so well the last few decades."



He'd have started with never call me boy.

[ofthefamily]

"I was much younger then."

Which leads Carlisle to another question. Tangential, but:

"Was it...helpful, do you think? To see me so young?"

[themidnightson]

"To me?" The lingering question look references the implied to them?.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle just shrugs. To let Edward take the question where he wants to lead it.

[themidnightson]

Edward prefer the here and now. Where Carlisle was sane, and only expelling the expected amount of vitriol as befit the current situation. Not a century's worth of it.



"You were far more-" there's an uncertain to the term coming. "-open."

[ofthefamily]

"Angry, you mean to say?"

[themidnightson]

"No." Open isn't right, but angry is too topically obvious. "Ebullient, maybe." For being both the anger and the rebellion to throw it everywhere.

"Less tightly control in how you spoke or thought."

Everything except in how he moved.

In how much he'd give up.



There's an odd shift of facial features.

"Also, proximity without awareness."

He almost frowns for many things.

[ofthefamily]

"Being around humans? I imagine I ran off at the mouth quite a bit."

At Edward's second commentary, Carlisle's eyes narrow questioningly.

[themidnightson]

He's not quite up to clarifying he meant at Jasper, Alice and himself. Or more specifically, Jasper and himself. Since Jasper looked the part of Volterra.


A note that had struck home.




To the second; "In nearly a century I'd never known what it would be like if you didn't know I was listening."

Besides the like minute and half of panic in his birth.

[ofthefamily]

That is enough to give Carlisle pause.

I am sorry for that, Edward.

[themidnightson]

"No damage done."





Or at least, in the most honest of answers, they'd come through far, far worse than this before.