Milliways & Alaska Day 4
Everytime he walked into the bar proper, anytime a new person shuffled, entered, left, Edward would look around at all the faces. He was grateful that it took seven-sixteenths of a second to make the circuit of the room in a glance.
Anyone normal doing so would have looked like they were bobbing uncontrollably.
Anyone normal doing so would look like they were waiting for a shadow to jump at.
He wanted to make sure the first day. But the second day found him doing it still.
He frowned, objectively, at the fact he was doing it, but he still looked for Bella everytime.
He couldn't hear her thoughts and he didn't like that she'd caught him unaware for a third time.
Each time, by the time he knew she was there, he was submerged in her scent, in the unquenchable want to kill her, fantasies of it flooding even once she'd left. Until he was only the monster uncaged from the bowels of his being, watching every single breath she took, counting each pulse of the vein in her neck, how her hands moved and her face tilted.
Eternally damned monster that he was, he could only offer Bella as painless a death a were possible.
He did not want to kill her. He did not want to become the monster he had spent all those decades harnessing. He could sit with humans for days, their warmth and heart beats and scent, without feeling a tremor of want besides noticing a small increase in thirst.
He only had to see her for flicker of a second and it was not even a day from the beginning. He thought only to glut himself.
They'd forgive him if he slipped. If her death were just a regrettable mistake in decades of restraint.
It was a forgone knowledge that did not help the battle to say on top. They wouldn't even tease him about it for a few months. Carlisle would walk into the hospital and announce that he'd received a better offer from another hospital, and was horribly sorry to leave on such short notice, but there were cases that needed his immediate care and expertise.
They would relocate, across the sea in case of the stir up the police chief's daughter's disappearance might cause, and go on with life as normal.
When his mind would calm she'd still be there in his thoughts.
Had she finished the Biology assignment?
The terror in her eyes when she'd glanced at him both in the classroom and in the main office. How she'd curtained herself behind her hair or coiled herself into the wall. Trying to make herself, or himself, invisible. As though that were the easiest way to solve the situation.
Yet hadn't he taken the same tactic? Hadn't he made himself vanish from her tiny human daily life to save her and save himself?
Was Wuthering Heights an assignment in a different level English class?
The anger in her deep brown eyes as her face flushed scarlet and she jumped up, yelling with all her tiny might, only to run away and slam the door. She would have learned to know better than to return to Milliways.
Yet why did that thought plague him? Did he have the right to forbid her presence somewhere so extraordinary?
Did she hate him yet?
This was the way it had to be.
Wasn't it?
Even absent Isabella Swan plagued him.
He would be in the middle of a hunt with Denali members, and errantly picture where she was--in foggy little Forks, facing the day with that determinedly awkward set of her shoulders, while settling into Forks High School, surrounded on all sides by people who wanted something from her that she didn't seem to recognize--and suddenly a blistering heat of possession would claim him.
He didn't want her left at the mercy of Jessica any more today than he had the first moment he'd seen her across the cafeteria.
He didn't want her left at the idiocy of the boys who stumbled after her as the newest shiny bicycle the town had to offer them.
His mouth and his stomach and his mind howled gnashed at these.
They weren't allowed to profane her.
They weren't allowed to damaged and discard her.
She belonged to him and only him. She was made perfectly for him.
Home. He thought about it each day.
They didn't make it easy.
Alice called each day, helpful as ever. Yesterday, minutes after returning from The End of the Universe, she had messaged saying he was a stick in the mud for not returning for months. This morning she mentioned during a phone call, to relay Emmett's newest feat of besting Rose and to get his opinion on details for a trip they both knew she wouldn't consult in planning it anyway, that she was glad he would be home so shortly.
Rose was shouting in the background about a rematch and Esme in the far distance of the house, humming, as she moved things, pausing in mid-note when Alice said what she did. Carlisle gone already, he assumed, to the hospital and Jasper likely settled into a chair in his library with a book, fretting over the next day's trial of being around so many juicy temptations.
He belonged there.
He ached to be back with them.
Alice had said he was coming soon.
He would wait and see if tomorrow her vision changed again.
Anyone normal doing so would have looked like they were bobbing uncontrollably.
Anyone normal doing so would look like they were waiting for a shadow to jump at.
He wanted to make sure the first day. But the second day found him doing it still.
He frowned, objectively, at the fact he was doing it, but he still looked for Bella everytime.
He couldn't hear her thoughts and he didn't like that she'd caught him unaware for a third time.
Each time, by the time he knew she was there, he was submerged in her scent, in the unquenchable want to kill her, fantasies of it flooding even once she'd left. Until he was only the monster uncaged from the bowels of his being, watching every single breath she took, counting each pulse of the vein in her neck, how her hands moved and her face tilted.
Eternally damned monster that he was, he could only offer Bella as painless a death a were possible.
He did not want to kill her. He did not want to become the monster he had spent all those decades harnessing. He could sit with humans for days, their warmth and heart beats and scent, without feeling a tremor of want besides noticing a small increase in thirst.
He only had to see her for flicker of a second and it was not even a day from the beginning. He thought only to glut himself.
They'd forgive him if he slipped. If her death were just a regrettable mistake in decades of restraint.
It was a forgone knowledge that did not help the battle to say on top. They wouldn't even tease him about it for a few months. Carlisle would walk into the hospital and announce that he'd received a better offer from another hospital, and was horribly sorry to leave on such short notice, but there were cases that needed his immediate care and expertise.
They would relocate, across the sea in case of the stir up the police chief's daughter's disappearance might cause, and go on with life as normal.
When his mind would calm she'd still be there in his thoughts.
Had she finished the Biology assignment?
The terror in her eyes when she'd glanced at him both in the classroom and in the main office. How she'd curtained herself behind her hair or coiled herself into the wall. Trying to make herself, or himself, invisible. As though that were the easiest way to solve the situation.
Yet hadn't he taken the same tactic? Hadn't he made himself vanish from her tiny human daily life to save her and save himself?
Was Wuthering Heights an assignment in a different level English class?
The anger in her deep brown eyes as her face flushed scarlet and she jumped up, yelling with all her tiny might, only to run away and slam the door. She would have learned to know better than to return to Milliways.
Yet why did that thought plague him? Did he have the right to forbid her presence somewhere so extraordinary?
Did she hate him yet?
This was the way it had to be.
Wasn't it?
Even absent Isabella Swan plagued him.
He would be in the middle of a hunt with Denali members, and errantly picture where she was--in foggy little Forks, facing the day with that determinedly awkward set of her shoulders, while settling into Forks High School, surrounded on all sides by people who wanted something from her that she didn't seem to recognize--and suddenly a blistering heat of possession would claim him.
He didn't want her left at the mercy of Jessica any more today than he had the first moment he'd seen her across the cafeteria.
He didn't want her left at the idiocy of the boys who stumbled after her as the newest shiny bicycle the town had to offer them.
His mouth and his stomach and his mind howled gnashed at these.
They weren't allowed to profane her.
They weren't allowed to damaged and discard her.
She belonged to him and only him. She was made perfectly for him.
Home. He thought about it each day.
They didn't make it easy.
Alice called each day, helpful as ever. Yesterday, minutes after returning from The End of the Universe, she had messaged saying he was a stick in the mud for not returning for months. This morning she mentioned during a phone call, to relay Emmett's newest feat of besting Rose and to get his opinion on details for a trip they both knew she wouldn't consult in planning it anyway, that she was glad he would be home so shortly.
Rose was shouting in the background about a rematch and Esme in the far distance of the house, humming, as she moved things, pausing in mid-note when Alice said what she did. Carlisle gone already, he assumed, to the hospital and Jasper likely settled into a chair in his library with a book, fretting over the next day's trial of being around so many juicy temptations.
He belonged there.
He ached to be back with them.
Alice had said he was coming soon.
He would wait and see if tomorrow her vision changed again.