Back in Forks, March.

[ofthefamily]

Everyone is back.

Well. Not entirely - Carlisle assumes Edward is with Bella, at present. But Esme has been keeping herself occupied by forgiving Carlisle his self-imposed exclusion from events for the past little while. (Alice continues to regularly stop by his again-office to make sure he's 'not boring himself'.)

He thinks the flicker of movement at his open door is Alice.

But the hair is too blonde.

Comments

[bright_daughter]

It is. Far too golden and white.
As is the trace of light that follows it.


Vanishing twinkles following off to one side in the doorway.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle does not really have a choice but to follow.

He's sure that if he said that aloud, of course, someone would argue with him. Perhaps Stella herself. But no matter.

Carlisle stands from his desk and walks out into the hallway - looking for the light from the hallway that wasn't from the hallway at all.

[bright_daughter]

He will remember one day that he asked for this, too.

She is a Celestial. The Third Arcana Set. Specifism blurred in self.

The flicker of light is at the far end of the hallway. Past the doors that lead to the room for Alice and Jasper, for Emmett and Rose. A trail of light wrapping just barely around the handrail for the stairs, where the soft sound of padding feet, that cause no friction, are fading away.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle doesn't walk quickly. Not in his own house. She would not have appeared if she did not want him to follow - wouldn't walk so fast as to leave him behind.

"Star?"

[bright_daughter]

You can not speak in absolute's to Arcana. They know better.
But it is almost worse to speak with imprecision.



There are others in the house who stop, to listen.
But there is no new sound throughout the house.

They consider coming, but are not drawn.

This is a favor furnished only for one.




A spectacle of light, the edge of fingers, or trail of starlight, always just beginning to fade from the furthest corner of newest area that he entered. Leading onward, inward, deeper into the house itself.

[ofthefamily]

There is a separation now - between the house he knows, and the changes that happen because She is in it. Leading him.

[bright_daughter]

The last pathway is a simple hallway. Straight.
There are places where one might turn.
But even there, they seem obscured.



Before the wide open door at the end of the hallway.
A coat closet that has gone seven months unused.
A gateway to old beginnings and new endings.
Beyond it a world unlike this one.




And before it a girl, if she ever could be called that, whose very little outline of a shape, fades like insubstantial smoke in the wind even as he's rounding the corner. One upon a time, a Star fell and a Doctor helped her. And he received a token. A drop of starlight, rare and true.


Let him remember. Let him.

Look up into the sunlight and see.


And if Carlisle meant his first child, and she sat with that man, Carlisle still never named him. Never pinpointed his request as being for Edward Anthony Cullen. And there were more lives and loves at risk, more people who needed to remember, to look up into the sunlight and see, after the fall, than one boy.

[ofthefamily]

Milliways. He hasn't been back in -- well. He spoke to Meghan.





Not trusting Her leads to...all sorts of unpleasantness.

"Cazzo."

The door to the closet shuts behind him, Carlisle far away.

[themidnightson]

Carlisle isn't the only one who can make that claim.



It takes only the single word, even at the smallest whisper among all the voices thoughts of the room, for a pair of gold-shot black eyes to raise and locate exactly where it came from. To still completely, with a singular utterance.


The name of the girl across from him.

[ofthefamily]

Edward's voice, after months of hearing nothing? Is quite noticeable.

But beyond a look up to the spoken word, Carlisle does not indicate any sort of inclination to move forward.

Star has it out for me, I know it --

[themidnightson]

When Meg looked over to Carlisle, Edward didn't move. When she looked back to him, Edward didn't move. Stock still, staring at Carlisle only, as though everything has been obliterated suddenly. It might as well have.



He looked over to her. Once. Barely half a second and back to Carlisle again, almost unable to have. Still there. Then back to her, a reluctant shift of features barely forming before she stood up and walked away from him.



Then, Edward looked back again. To the Door. And Carlisle.

[ofthefamily]

Not here.

If this universe is demanding that he be here for a reason, right this second? He's at least going out back. Semblance of privacy and all that - there's fewer people out there now given that it's the bar's late-autumn.

He doesn't even look to see if Edward would follow.

[themidnightson]

It's ironically the opposite of what Edward said when he first came in. He'll never have that. Even the semblance. His eyes followed Carlisle across the room, before lingering back to the Door.

Two hours. From ten minutes.

She was still waiting. Asleep.

Edward made himself stand up and turn away from where and when he'd said he could. For a third time. His fingertips pressed against the table light. No indentation, no quiver. But somewhere slow, turbulent notes. He supposed he owed that to Kate.

He raised it, his hand, intending to do something else, perhaps, run it into his hair but it never made more than a couple inches to his side. Then he walked across the vibrant, boisterous room, and out the door where Carlisle has gone.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle has not stopped walking. There is the lakeside coming up quickly in front of him, the Carribean waters to his left up ahead, and he heads in that direction.

An outcropping of rock next to the primary beachy area serves as a bench.

(Stop running, Carlisle.)

[themidnightson]

The sun had long set now. Not that is mattered. Everything was as clear to them in the night as it was in the light. The same as they could cross all of this space in seconds. But neither of them do.

He tries not think through those steps, guilt and fury don't go well hand in hand. Even if he can't hold on to either them long enough.

Edward stopped about ten feet from where Carlisle had chosen to. Quasi-aware that if he wasn't wanted there at all, he had lost the right to force his own presence. This wasn't the house.

[ofthefamily]

"Hi."

[themidnightson]

That was where they started?




At least is was a start. More than he'd yet managed.

Where were all the words he'd had minutes ago.
Not that he'd had a million for Meg at first.
But he's managed something to start.


Carlisle's start was simple.


He'd meant to say evening. But he'd ended up, submerged by all the noise still, even out in the open where only the wind and waves blew, saying. "It never changes here."

[ofthefamily]

"I'm not sure that's true. Out here has seasons as well."

Maybe not so severe in the warmer parts of the lake, but sunrise and sunset shift, just like in their world.

"You were with Meg?"

Carlisle's still looking more at the lake than Edward.

[themidnightson]

Edward nodded, without thinking about it being unseen.

"She's well." He'd owed it to her. Somehow had ended up saying far more out loud or to her than intended. Except between Aro and Meg, and the energy it took to even think about skillfully lying with each sentence something had to give.

It was either the truth or not talking at all.

[ofthefamily]

"I'm glad to hear it. I should try and catch up with her as well."

To prove that he's not a complete zombie anymore.

[themidnightson]

He should, too.

They'd barely touched on her life.
He'd barely remember that he should.



Then Carlisle had appeared.

"She'd appreciate that." His fingers stayed at his sides, seams, as he studied the waves. "She's been watching for the family." Whether she was aware or not.

[ofthefamily]

They're lucky in that regard. They all are. To have people that care.







Carlisle isn't even trying to actively block Edward from his thoughts. Not right this second at least.

He just honestly does not know what to say, and all of the emotion in his thoughts is proving...difficult to articulate.

[themidnightson]

If only that were new.



It's only the waves and the wind and, "You didn't mean to come here."
It doesn't verge on being a question, but it is still and quiet.

[ofthefamily]

"Stella m'a forcé."

Star made me.

[themidnightson]

"The Door goes both ways."


Carlisle was the universal proof you could always avoid what others forced upon you, if it was what you truly wanted to do, or be. That wasn't changed. It was probably far more strengthened by standing in places he'd never thought he'd end up and now never could forget knowing all of. Even just at days.