Twilight // stay (if there's nowhere else to go) (Carlisle/Edward, PG)
Title: stay (if there's nowhere else to go)
Author: cherryroad
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing/Characters: Edward and Carlisle, can be taken as pre-slash.
Rating: PG.
Summary: He's composed and serene, and nothing a human being - a person - a non-dead creature, if he can describe Carlisle as such - would be in this situation. Definitely not what he feels like right now.
Word Count: 1414.
Notes: For twilightprompts, prompt #01 of the sixth list, waterworks. My claim is Carlisle/Edward. First of a series of five installments, each according to one prompt, if things go as I plan. Constructive criticism is definitely welcome - I haven't written fanfiction in a while, and I haven't written from a male character's point of view in an even longer time.
*
He's composed and serene, and nothing a human being - a person - a non-dead creature, if he can describe Carlisle as such - would be in this situation. Definitely not what he feels like right now. And yes, all right, they are in different positions: he has just been transformed, while Carlisle has lived like this for centuries, now; but Carlisle looks barely a few years over his age, and it's hard to realise that, humanly, he would have the status of an elderly man.
It's really hard to imagine Carlisle as an elderly man, particularly when he tells Edward that he swam across the Atlantic and he can see him, the muscles in his back tensing as he leaves more and more water behind.
He's composed and serene when he dreams; he's composed and serene when he explains to Edward what they are, what he is now; his take on feeding on human blood, his vegetarianism of sorts. He's composed and serene in his thoughts, his worries don't get out of hand; but Edward can hear his fear of him turning into a monster, and he's the one who snaps first.
"I am already a monster! I'm supposed to be dead!", he shouts at Carlisle, and he wonders if vampires can cry. If Carlisle, in his composure and serenity, ever cries.
He doesn't. Not now, anyway.
"You're not a monster, Edward. If you had to be dead, you would be dead. We don't exist against nature - no-one can exist against nature, you have got to understand that."
"I feel soul-less", Edward answers, suddenly, unexpectedly even for himself, and he can hear a rush in Carlisle's thoughts, unfinished sentences and ellipses and a bunch of words - God and suicide and persecution and morality and this was wrong, wrong, wrong - how could I turn someone else into this? and there's something behind, something that Carlisle hides and avoids and Edward doesn't quite get yet.
What he gets, however, is a clear, defined, absolute Stop listening to my thoughts that makes him jump back with its force.
"I can't", Edward says, and it's supposed to sound apologetic, but he doesn't feel a need to apologise for doing something that he can't fight against, something that he only wants to fight against in case it gives him death or humanity back, and it sounds sarcastic and cruel and Carlisle, composed and serene as always, thinks You can in that annoyingly hopeful way that he has of thinking, his back already turned, and then slams the door like he means it.
He probably does.
*
It's not rage, Carlisle knows. He wishes he could feel something like that, but his external negative emotions have long been declared missing. Violence and agressiveness are a different part of his life, the part that hunts and kills and feeds on animal blood.
It's not rage, and it's not quite annoyance, and it's not anger or hopelessness or even sadness. It takes a while to figure it out, because he hasn't had any expectations in a really long time, but when he does, he metaphorically bites himself.
He's disappointed. And the worst thing is that he's not disappointed in Edward - how could he, being the way he is? - but in himself for believing that something as mad as this would work.
He wishes he could just sleep and leave his worries on the warm end of the pillow.
Instead, he goes hunting.
*
Edward is trying to sober up and consider his options when he stops hearing Carlisle. He wasn't paying attention, before, but the humming was there, the constant intent of trying to keep his mind blank so it won't be read, and having several thoughts at the same time. Three days, and he's already quite the master at confusion. Edward wonders if he has had experience with having his mind read before.
Before the sound fades, he catches Carlisle's despair need to sleep, or to have something of the sort as a vampire, and then it's gone, he's gone, and he doesn't really know where to. Vampires are fast, he has discovered; incredibly so; and he figures Carlisle's maybe walking around some mountain, or maybe even swimming back to Europe. It crosses his head. It's stupid, but it's not like he knows much about Carlisle, so he can't really speculate more accurately.
He spends an hour in a clearer silence than before, a silence bothered by an insomniac wife and a cheating husband and children rolling around in bed in the towns nearby, voices that he can easily tune off, care nothing for, and he paces around the room, wondering what to wonder about.
There is a something from his human life - something that isn't as physical as other things, such as being sleepy or hungry or thirsty for anything other than blood - that he can keep. He realises this when the insomniac wife begins agonising over having given her old piano to the town's school.
He gets inside, and he carries it back to the cabin in the woods where Carlisle and he are staying for now, and he plays till he loses track of time and morals and song.
It's back where he took it from the next morning, but Carlisle isn't back in his radar yet.
*
Outside of his medical career, this is possibly the first time, as far as he can remember at the moment, that mathematics have truly proved practical or necessary in themselves. Hunting and hiding he can and does by instinct; if it's vampirical or human he doesn't know, but it is instinctive and he has never felt a need to think about those things, about feeding and self-preservation; and now he finds himself calculating distances and speed and how far exactly this kid he transformed is able to use his - gift, or however it can be called - so he can get far enough and be able to come back instantly, be close, although, truth be told, he doesn't know how they could communicate in an emergency.
He kills a wolf and a deer and goes back to the cabin and tells Edward to go hunting by himself for once, that it is about time.
"If you want to be independent", he says to him, and it's not bitter or sarcastic - it's a suggestion like any other, with an afterthought that hears Please don't kill any humans, something that he cannot hold back.
There is a silence, a silence for Carlisle, and then Edward sits down on the old couch and says,
"I don't want to be alone forever."
*
"Stay with me, then", Carlisle answers, and Edward realises he has just taken a decision, even if it was unconscious, even if it was temporary, even if it's just the only thing that he can do. He's used to feeling safe, and the only safe option here is staying with Carlisle. For some reason, the way Carlisle cares and worries and feels disappointed in himself makes Edward believe that he can be trusted, and that he's not going to impose anything on him.
It's actually the safest he has felt since the moment he realised he'd caught the influenza, he finds, although he's not sure what the reason for that is. Carlisle seems to treat him like a protegé of sorts, and Edward's still a teenager and he likes knowing that there is someone to take care of him still. He would never admit it out loud, of course, and he's glad Carlisle doesn't have his same gift; he's not some dog on a leash, and he will never tell him that, of all the ways he could have been turned into an inhuman creature, this one doesn't seem too bad, at least not when compared to the bits and pieces he has picked up from Carlisle's mind of his own and other transformations he has witnessed before.
"Okay", Edward agrees, and smiles, and feels kind of cocky. "After all, I don't have anywhere else to go."
After all, to tell the truth, he doesn't have anything else to lose, and that's maybe why he feels so safe - somehow death and this seem to be on the same level, although he's sort of looking forward to seeing what life as a vampire may be. It's scary, but it's also revoltingly interesting; something new.
In any case, he's glad that there is no need for him to swim across the Atlantic.
Author: cherryroad
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing/Characters: Edward and Carlisle, can be taken as pre-slash.
Rating: PG.
Summary: He's composed and serene, and nothing a human being - a person - a non-dead creature, if he can describe Carlisle as such - would be in this situation. Definitely not what he feels like right now.
Word Count: 1414.
Notes: For twilightprompts, prompt #01 of the sixth list, waterworks. My claim is Carlisle/Edward. First of a series of five installments, each according to one prompt, if things go as I plan. Constructive criticism is definitely welcome - I haven't written fanfiction in a while, and I haven't written from a male character's point of view in an even longer time.
*
He's composed and serene, and nothing a human being - a person - a non-dead creature, if he can describe Carlisle as such - would be in this situation. Definitely not what he feels like right now. And yes, all right, they are in different positions: he has just been transformed, while Carlisle has lived like this for centuries, now; but Carlisle looks barely a few years over his age, and it's hard to realise that, humanly, he would have the status of an elderly man.
It's really hard to imagine Carlisle as an elderly man, particularly when he tells Edward that he swam across the Atlantic and he can see him, the muscles in his back tensing as he leaves more and more water behind.
He's composed and serene when he dreams; he's composed and serene when he explains to Edward what they are, what he is now; his take on feeding on human blood, his vegetarianism of sorts. He's composed and serene in his thoughts, his worries don't get out of hand; but Edward can hear his fear of him turning into a monster, and he's the one who snaps first.
"I am already a monster! I'm supposed to be dead!", he shouts at Carlisle, and he wonders if vampires can cry. If Carlisle, in his composure and serenity, ever cries.
He doesn't. Not now, anyway.
"You're not a monster, Edward. If you had to be dead, you would be dead. We don't exist against nature - no-one can exist against nature, you have got to understand that."
"I feel soul-less", Edward answers, suddenly, unexpectedly even for himself, and he can hear a rush in Carlisle's thoughts, unfinished sentences and ellipses and a bunch of words - God and suicide and persecution and morality and this was wrong, wrong, wrong - how could I turn someone else into this? and there's something behind, something that Carlisle hides and avoids and Edward doesn't quite get yet.
What he gets, however, is a clear, defined, absolute Stop listening to my thoughts that makes him jump back with its force.
"I can't", Edward says, and it's supposed to sound apologetic, but he doesn't feel a need to apologise for doing something that he can't fight against, something that he only wants to fight against in case it gives him death or humanity back, and it sounds sarcastic and cruel and Carlisle, composed and serene as always, thinks You can in that annoyingly hopeful way that he has of thinking, his back already turned, and then slams the door like he means it.
He probably does.
*
It's not rage, Carlisle knows. He wishes he could feel something like that, but his external negative emotions have long been declared missing. Violence and agressiveness are a different part of his life, the part that hunts and kills and feeds on animal blood.
It's not rage, and it's not quite annoyance, and it's not anger or hopelessness or even sadness. It takes a while to figure it out, because he hasn't had any expectations in a really long time, but when he does, he metaphorically bites himself.
He's disappointed. And the worst thing is that he's not disappointed in Edward - how could he, being the way he is? - but in himself for believing that something as mad as this would work.
He wishes he could just sleep and leave his worries on the warm end of the pillow.
Instead, he goes hunting.
*
Edward is trying to sober up and consider his options when he stops hearing Carlisle. He wasn't paying attention, before, but the humming was there, the constant intent of trying to keep his mind blank so it won't be read, and having several thoughts at the same time. Three days, and he's already quite the master at confusion. Edward wonders if he has had experience with having his mind read before.
Before the sound fades, he catches Carlisle's despair need to sleep, or to have something of the sort as a vampire, and then it's gone, he's gone, and he doesn't really know where to. Vampires are fast, he has discovered; incredibly so; and he figures Carlisle's maybe walking around some mountain, or maybe even swimming back to Europe. It crosses his head. It's stupid, but it's not like he knows much about Carlisle, so he can't really speculate more accurately.
He spends an hour in a clearer silence than before, a silence bothered by an insomniac wife and a cheating husband and children rolling around in bed in the towns nearby, voices that he can easily tune off, care nothing for, and he paces around the room, wondering what to wonder about.
There is a something from his human life - something that isn't as physical as other things, such as being sleepy or hungry or thirsty for anything other than blood - that he can keep. He realises this when the insomniac wife begins agonising over having given her old piano to the town's school.
He gets inside, and he carries it back to the cabin in the woods where Carlisle and he are staying for now, and he plays till he loses track of time and morals and song.
It's back where he took it from the next morning, but Carlisle isn't back in his radar yet.
*
Outside of his medical career, this is possibly the first time, as far as he can remember at the moment, that mathematics have truly proved practical or necessary in themselves. Hunting and hiding he can and does by instinct; if it's vampirical or human he doesn't know, but it is instinctive and he has never felt a need to think about those things, about feeding and self-preservation; and now he finds himself calculating distances and speed and how far exactly this kid he transformed is able to use his - gift, or however it can be called - so he can get far enough and be able to come back instantly, be close, although, truth be told, he doesn't know how they could communicate in an emergency.
He kills a wolf and a deer and goes back to the cabin and tells Edward to go hunting by himself for once, that it is about time.
"If you want to be independent", he says to him, and it's not bitter or sarcastic - it's a suggestion like any other, with an afterthought that hears Please don't kill any humans, something that he cannot hold back.
There is a silence, a silence for Carlisle, and then Edward sits down on the old couch and says,
"I don't want to be alone forever."
*
"Stay with me, then", Carlisle answers, and Edward realises he has just taken a decision, even if it was unconscious, even if it was temporary, even if it's just the only thing that he can do. He's used to feeling safe, and the only safe option here is staying with Carlisle. For some reason, the way Carlisle cares and worries and feels disappointed in himself makes Edward believe that he can be trusted, and that he's not going to impose anything on him.
It's actually the safest he has felt since the moment he realised he'd caught the influenza, he finds, although he's not sure what the reason for that is. Carlisle seems to treat him like a protegé of sorts, and Edward's still a teenager and he likes knowing that there is someone to take care of him still. He would never admit it out loud, of course, and he's glad Carlisle doesn't have his same gift; he's not some dog on a leash, and he will never tell him that, of all the ways he could have been turned into an inhuman creature, this one doesn't seem too bad, at least not when compared to the bits and pieces he has picked up from Carlisle's mind of his own and other transformations he has witnessed before.
"Okay", Edward agrees, and smiles, and feels kind of cocky. "After all, I don't have anywhere else to go."
After all, to tell the truth, he doesn't have anything else to lose, and that's maybe why he feels so safe - somehow death and this seem to be on the same level, although he's sort of looking forward to seeing what life as a vampire may be. It's scary, but it's also revoltingly interesting; something new.
In any case, he's glad that there is no need for him to swim across the Atlantic.