January 1921.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

Carlisle and Edward are walking to the hospital. The second semester is starting for Edward and Carlisle will be in surgery most of the day. A new procedure, and challenging - Carlisle has been attempting to minimize his near-obsessive concentration on it for at least a week.

With only minimal amounts of success.

"...and with any luck, I'll be closing by four."

Comments

[iwouldfollowyou]

Edward was trying, willing himself not to sound entirely disbelieving, trying to reign in the panic that surged at the edges, even as he said. His grip on Carlisle's chin softening as he did though.

"They're clouded. In anyone else," anyone not them, anyone who could age and die and have ailments of any kind, "likely cataracts." At least. "There's nothing else wrong?"

Nothing he'd missed?

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

Carlisle is losing focus on what to try and deal with first, but at least Edward's question is a direct one.

"Not yet?"

[iwouldfollowyou]

"This way." Edward moved him back, toward a chair.

There's some sympathy in the not wanting to usher him back on to the bed much closer. That's just -- it would be too much for the clinging stillness he's trying not to let slip through his fingers like sand.

It really isn't possible or probably, but it's happening.

"I didn't see anything out of the ordinary when it started."

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

"What would either of us have looked for?" Carlisle returns plaintively.

I can barely make you out.

[iwouldfollowyou]

Edward doesn't let go of his hand. There is no shushing, at least not outside of his head. "I'm here." He wouldn't be anywhere else. He isn't sure what he should be doing next even, what he is now.

There isn't even a tool in this facility, this entire city, that could give them even the equivalent of a paper cut. Or at least so he had believed until five minutes ago.

"There must have been something." The frustration is tempering the rush of those ones. It couldn't logically happen just randomly. At least for all he knew, all he'd ever assumed and seen from Carlisle.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

We have to get out of here.

Before anything worse happens.

"Will you go make your excuses? And mine. Please?"

[iwouldfollowyou]

Edward stood up, only to stop when it would require the release of Carlisle's hand. The movement of hundredth of a second, came more like instinct than choice, reaching out to touch Carlisle's hair and his temple.

If there were words with it they never happened.

It was simple, direct still, at getting directive. "Of course." Which got added between to door opening and closing, "Only a few minutes."

Which was the truth of it, too. It was more than easy to get himself out of it. He could pull of looking horrendously dragged under by the surgery, and he could say Carlisle had found him and was taking him back home. It was all believable. They nurse staff had seen enough reason to believe both ends of it.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

Edward.

Carlisle clutches at his own hands in keeping himself from snapping the arms of the chair until Edward gets back to him.

It's all black.

[iwouldfollowyou]

He doesn't have to breathe. He doesn't have any space in his head for anything else (even as the endless pour of always continues to shift and sift and fill, in and out, endless).

The desperate confusion at the edges of his eyes and hands, the nearly stricken too-fastness of his movements, all lend such realism to the countless lies. Rage is so close in a blinding second place.

Edward slipped back into the room, back to Carlisle, placing a hand at outside edge of his shoulder to announce what sight couldn't and sound would have already. "It's done." He took Carlisle's hand, unable to avoid catching his eyes, when he was helping him to stand back up.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

Carlisle wants to be defensive and flinch back and go 'I can at least still stand on my own' but there's no reason.

And he has no clue what will happen next.

I remember the way, just...don't let me run into things, and he sounds so helpless in his own mind that a bitter taste rises in Carlisle's throat at it.

[iwouldfollowyou]

Edward listen to it all expand, sharply forward and then sallow retreat all in the same swing, flashing through his own thoughts. He tries to find some medium between not wanting to let go of Carlisle and not out-rightly guiding him.

Demands and questions and rebuke wait on his tongue. A while.





"We should avoid any run ins while leaving."

The hospital or the street or the whole town.


The first takes some doing, just figuring when they can walk out the door to the empty room. A hospital is full of people. But there are ways to manage it, back halls and doors, away from desks and patients and colleagues of either sort.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

Service entrance by the laundry in the hallway to our left, Carlisle recalls in perfect memory. Should be vacant.

[iwouldfollowyou]

Edward nodded, before his thoughts followed the pointless movement to its being missed and he said, "It is. We can leave in another few seconds."

Fourteen to be precise if the person at the end of the hall kept walking at their casual pace. But they pass fast enough even when he like to divest them from the floor to speed it up.

The empty halls and then walkway turn out to be a good plan, as does the exit. The door opening wide for a gray winter day, bright and only apparent to one of them.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

Carlisle is outwardly silent the entirety of the walk home.

Since he can't run. Not like he wants to and not fast enough to run away from whatever this has become.

[iwouldfollowyou]

Edward isn't sure what worse is, but there's a whole section of his mind and focus, always specifically Carlisle when he is close enough to be heard, that is blanketed in unperceived blackness.

And he isn't sure what could be worse, what could be next.

He's paying more attention to it than anything else.


"Is there anyone or anywhere--" He doesn't even know what he's asking or how to. Only that more has to be done somehow.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

"Never in my almost three hundred years has this happened Edward I don't know what to do," and it's harsh and undeserved and immediately regretted.

Inside the house, Carlisle can remember everything as it was this morning and navigate with an almost-ease.

But he rounds a corner too tightly and clips into a wall. It doesn't hurt at all but Carlisle growls at the wall for the impudence of standing there.

[iwouldfollowyou]

Edward and the house are all he can lash out. Logically he knows that, logically he's very aware of everything Carlisle is thinking and feeling.

But logic has nothing on the scowl the back of Carlisle's head gets. He has to follow Carlisle regardless, trying to hang back a few feet.

"Then maybe I should be asking someone else."

It's flippant though on the fact there are others older.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

And they would all come rushing to my aid, anyone you would ask?

Also flippant, but far more wearied and starting to turn the corner towards fear.

The world got a lot bigger all of a sudden - more confusing, more questions and a lot more things that could jump at you in the dark.

[iwouldfollowyou]

"The Volturi can not be the only semblance of our existence before the 1400's."

Because if they were there would be far more arrogance and grandstanding to that very fact in Carlisle's memory. Because he needs there to be something else. Because this has to stop.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

"To find them you'd have to leave me here."

Which is not what Carlisle is advocating right at the moment.

[iwouldfollowyou]

"Never." It's fast, without the edge hinting at the truest burst of what had made the word leave his mouth unbidden, unconsidered.




Edward leaned against a wall, trying to regain some of minute stability from the first word. "That would be beyond inefficient. If I found them, or whatever this was, and I had to come all the way back here."

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

"Hmh. Efficiency."

Carlisle turns his head to the sound of Edward's voice. "The surgery. If he fails because of me -- "

[iwouldfollowyou]

"Fuck the stupid surgery."

So much for that whole stability thing. The words, more of a dark blur, are as far from kind as the explosion of Carlisle turning his concern toward something had seemed antithesis to this situation when they connected in Edward's head.

Sharply derisive and dismissive. The patient, the doctor and he didn't care. About any of that. Anything anywhere outside of these ten feet of space between them.

[teachyouwhoiam.livejournal.com]

Carlisle bellows back, "Edward! Don't - don't you ever - Good God, Edward, right now that was my last act as a doctor and I have a right to care about it!"

Saying out loud seems to knock the wind from Carlisle's lungs.

[iwouldfollowyou]

He can't take it back. He won't. Doesn't regret--

And then he feels it when the center of Carlisle lurches hard as though the floor, no the very core and center, has given way even more than it had with the blackness.

Even his anger rolls under the impact of that threat.

"Don't." It's almost tremulous, before he is at Carlisle's very side again, as though trying to unripple water. "Don't think that, or say it. It's not. We'll find a way to put this right. I promise."