Golden: 1819.

[ofthefamily]

An old face. Calmer, older, and yet all the same unchanged.

At least he's not running for his life, now. And he knows where he is.

For Carlisle Cullen, this is always a good start.

Comments

[themidnightson]

"It's not slipping to protect yourself."






Did he just use Carlisle's words on Carlisle?
And at so many decades past do they still count only as his.

How many other members had they said it to. There were differences. Between a mistaken death, and protection of self, of the family. And death was a hazy area of choices (and or mistakes. A word he hated.) For Esme. For Rosalie. For Emmett. For Jasper.

For the family as a unit, against a world against them.

He still means the words even with his thoughts.

[ofthefamily]

"Maybe." Carlisle remains unconvinced, but he smiles again regardless. He's here. He doesn't need to kill the mood any more than he already has.

"Do I ever get a handle on what language to use when? My head must sound like a grammar book."

[themidnightson]

A little sardonic, and focus unmoved to the new topic.

"It depends on your mood."

[ofthefamily]

The two vampires spoke Catalàn.

Carlisle grimaces.

"One of these decades I will bring you happy topics."

[themidnightson]

There's a flicker. It's hard to tell what it was.
It tugs his mouth out to the side only


"You'll certainly try."

And maybe the honesty of it is why --

"English I think becomes too normal. It's the way of the world, of every day speech and thought. Tertiary nature. You'll learn many more, but you come back to French and Italian when you're frustrated." Beat. "Or unable to focus far enough."

[ofthefamily]

It took me a good three years to not have a heavy Italian code-switching in my French.

[themidnightson]

"I would not have learned any of them, if not for you."

At this there's more a gesture with his fingers toward his head, that shivers in the part seconds, before he simply uses the movement to scrub his fingers through his hair, palm grazing his temple and upper cheek.


It might be a lie, but it certainly was the impetus for speaking it.
Which was not the same as how he understood it long before then.

[ofthefamily]

Et d'entendre les pensées; ça aide tes études de langues ou pas?

It's an easier topic of conversation.

Very human; small talk.

[themidnightson]

Edward considered.


The question...and it's implication....and the answer.





He's still trying to piece it together when he says, "It is complicated. It's --" He wants....to be precise.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle can wait, with an easy smile on his face.

Edward's kind of entrancing when he's thinking about something.

[themidnightson]

"It's different for me. I've watch you. And the others. It's easier for all of us, because we have no ability to forget the books or lessons or any conversation had, previous or post learning the language, but hearing it, my way--"

There's a small shift to his face, trying to equate. He needs. His eyes land on his lap. He chooses a simple example. Hoping it will suffice. Looking back up.

"Je veux lire un livre." He holds up the book. Not talking about it.

"Before I even know what the words themselves mean, before I've studied it or tried to think about wanting to, I already know the meaning. People think as much in words as they images and concepts and sensation toward the statement. There's a book and a flicker of memories, or equating images, toward books themselves and ones open, ones being read, the placement. Toward the act of reading, and the kind of reading before them or that is sought."



Which is another way of saying -- he sort of has the master cheat code. Again.

[ofthefamily]

Eventually:

"You're such a cheat!" With a bright laugh.

[themidnightson]

"You'll be fond of that one day." Edward smiled smugly. It's one of the perks. One of the very few that came with it. "I don't even think you think about it anymore."

[ofthefamily]

"I think I would grow to love that, you're right. It's a...rather intimate form of companionship."

[themidnightson]

It also means the lies they tell themselves, and the ones they tell for others, are mutually worn. But Edward's amused expression, when he nodded just briefly, doesn't shift for the thought.

(It is a very old truth now. All of them.)

[ofthefamily]

"Hmm."

Carlisle doesn't have much to add, here.

So he sits.

Because he hasn't run in near a decade.

[themidnightson]

It's all in circles and loops anyway. He's calmer. Quieter. As much as Carlisle mind ever is or can be for him. But it's different from the tension of the last visits, the circumstances of them. There is no need for that kind of panic, that division, that holding.

It's good for Carlisle.

If the only parallel thought it brings up is that Carlisle would need him less.
But wasn't that a foregone conclusions, given Carlisle's future and Edward's past?


Somehow still it's a sore thought. Again. Differently, but again. He manages pleasant, at the foreground to the precursor of one of the people he learned it for.

"Where will you go in America? Near another school?"

[ofthefamily]

"Possibly? You're the one who said I could go anywhere."

[themidnightson]

Edward shrugged, slight and graceful, lips tugging lopsided. "I like to travel."

[ofthefamily]

"Maybe I will too. Eventually."

When it stops feeling like he's still running, just a little slower.

[themidnightson]

"There's all of time to figure that out."

He won't begrudge that Carlisle does have a love of travel in him, they all seem to have a yearning toward and for it, but Carlisle always immensely happier, calmer, long term, settled somewhere, doing what he's always done.

[ofthefamily]

And yet I fidget in lectures.

[themidnightson]

"It will pass."





Edward's lip twitched, faintly upward.

"Even if I didn't believe you much when you told me that either."

[ofthefamily]

"Their interpretations of the causes of the Fire were frustrating."

[themidnightson]

Edward raised an eyebrow, looking far too amused already. "Oh?"