milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Edward's been absent the last few weeks.

No one on either side of the door should be that surprised -- as the bestest, sweetest, temptingest, not to mention most stubborn and obliviously noble, snack cake in the whole wide world was chained to a hospital bed in Forks Hospital which made the stalking and counting of breaths, er, we mean the care and and watching over of Isabella Swan as she recuperated from the events in Phoenix his high priority.

Today she was released to her father's keeping. For first time in weeks, Edward hadn't ignored the door with immortal (im)patience, which brought him to the supposed End of Time and Space. Where he's currently looking over a stack of notes and books the Bar delivered with his bottle of mineral water.

The top ones look like floor plans and some others like blank music paper, some not. And the ones falling through the air to the floor are long lists.

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Edward looked over, from reading the leaf inside one of the top books, toward the angel. If not surprised in the presence -- if he could not ignore sound, he really could not ignore the people who's presence was impossible to hear but not to feel, that almost hurt to focus toward -- he might be in the assumption that it registered with.

The edge of his lips twitched. "Those are for Alice. We're stocking a room here."

Castiel looks up with an expression of confusion.

".......stocking?"

"I do not understand."

"We keep a room for ourselves in each of the houses we live in," and there is a pause and a shift in expression when he glanced toward the ceiling and stairs, more than an indication of this place, and it's not quite living and still being included in the example now.

"In it we usually keep the things we find solace in doing." In the solace and freedom of each other. "For Alice one of those many things is art supplies."

"That is sensible, then."

And he can understand (a little bit now) how art might be a refuge of sorts.

Castiel lays the list back on Edward's table.

"I have a room here now."

He says it with an air of admitting to something. Though speaking with Meg on the matter had eased his mind considerably on the subject.

Edward's eyebrow roses, inquisitive in the single act.

That an -- that Castiel would need a room?

"I had come to need a place to store things."

"Several people suggested it."

He is not defensive.

Well, not very much, anyway.

Edward ran one finger, brushing the wood top, and almost said the first thing that came to him to.

"Alice asked for this one."

Once upon a time he'd say he would deny Alice nothing, now he'd been denying her, at least in part, for the better part of a year here. Still was.

A room was the least he owed her.

"Have you gotten used to it?" There's an air of yet to it, and also one of rhetoric-ism as though pointing out his own opinion on the question.

Castiel thinks on the question.

"It is good to have a place to put things."

He'd been moving a cardboard box of odds and ends around the bar for quite a while. This is much easier.

"And to have a quiet place to go on occasion."

In other words, he's getting used to it.

"Meg said that it was a reasonable thing to do."

"Meg is very," there's a pause, with an incredibly vague smirk, "reasonable."

A lie completely when compared to the thoughts it evokes.
Of the secrets he's trusted her with, not being here.

"Very much so."

On this they can agree quite easily.

"She is calming."

"She pointed out that having a room is a thing to be learned as well."

"It is an experience," Edward agreed.

Though whether it was a necessary one he couldn't say.
Here, especially, he hadn't considered it until Alice.

His features wrinkled, briefly.
Analytical more than curiosity.
"Can you -- do you sleep?"

The frown indicates that Castiel was not anticipating this question.

"I do not," he replies.

There is a long pause.

"As to whether I have the ability, I am unsure."

"Do you?"

"We cannot."

It's no longer part of them. The pieces of humanity.
The wholeness. They cling to the tattered remembrances.

There's something that isn't quite wist, while remembering another different, sleeping face, when his voice very clearly, and calmly spoke words he could not have. "That would be an experience as well."

Figuring out whether he had the ability.
Whether he could transcend the lines between.

"I suppose," Castiel says.

"But there are so many other things to experience."

And to sleep when one could be doing them just seems somehow wasteful. But maybe one day.

"You did as a human though, did you not?"

Edward inclined his head. "As often as all those here and everywhere."

"Is it something that you miss?"

Castiel is curious. How much of the humanity remains?

Edward studied the face before him for a long moment.
He's had more time to think on it lately. Because of the her.

"I can't remember it."

"I must imagine that that is disconcerting."

Castiel has never been in the position of not being able to recall the events of his long existence.

"Or perhaps I am incorrect. Perhaps it is a comfort to you. To not have your old existence intruding on the new."

And still, Edward is the prodigy of all of them.

In that while he can not remember his human beginnings clearly, fading more with each swing of the pendulum of time, he will never be able to forget all of what he's seen in his family's minds before they became vampires.

He will remember every nuance they've forgotten for eternity.
All of the glory and all of the gore, twined forever inside him.
Mixed in with all the humanity paraded into his mind each new day.

He started a response twice, something about himself, about his family.

Before ending up at, "Others of our kind never salvage as much as we've managed."

"Because of the way you choose to live?"

The Cullens set themselves apart.

It makes sense that they would be able to keep more.

Edward doesn't shake his head.
It's imprecise to agree or disagree.

"Because we strive to be more than we've become."
To be what they knew at their core they weren't entirely.

Unexpectedly, even to Castiel, the corners of his mouth tug upward slightly. And there is a soft huff of breath that might almost pass for a laugh.

"It is strange."

"You ceased being human, and became vampire. And yet you strive to become more than vampire, by behaving in a manner that seems more human."

"I did not chose this life."
It's almost too easy to just say that.
"No more than I had choice in how I was dying."

But he looked over to Castiel, even and empty of concealment.
"But I would choose this, again, each time, given the choice."

He'd made that choice so recently as it was.
To let Carlisle live free and erase them all.
Or to make all the choices and mistakes again.

Castiel merely nods silently.

He fears again that he is coming dangerously close to breaking his word to Carlisle.

"Alice said much the same thing."

"Alice is special."

There's an air of defense in the even, smoothness of velvet there.

It's not as direct as Jasper would sound, but Alice was one of the greatest foundations of Edward's world. One whom he would not know himself without were she to suddenly not be there.