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]

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?"

[ofthefamily]

"It was all so clinical."

None of them have any idea how many lives can go up in smoke and flame and sewage.

[themidnightson]

"How many lives simply disappear and no one notices."

Edward can appreciate that far too well.
It's still a plague he deals with.

[ofthefamily]

Or the people that you want to have notice (care) can never manage to.

Carlisle shifts in his seat.

"The subjects are interesting; if a little redundant from what I've already covered on my own."

[themidnightson]

The first thought hits more squarely with a force Edward isn't expecting, and perhaps it does wrinkle his expression.




Almost specifically, with a faint shake of his head,

"You are, sadly, still a good deal away from the system that allows for testing out of classes based on what you already know."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle groans. "How unfortunate."

Carlisle will live without that luxury then.

[themidnightson]

"It's helpful now," Edward concedes.

"Not that we worry too much about degrees."

[ofthefamily]

"And how often do you attend university?"

[themidnightson]

"Whenever we want, and many classes can be audited across continents and oceans now with technological advances incorporated toward the teaching systems."

Edward expression shifted toward more non-pulsed.

"Most of the year is spent in high school, though."