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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"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.

Perception is not exactly Castiel's strong suit. The defensiveness slides right by.

"I see."

It comes out perhaps more of a question than he intends.

"Each individual is."

Which, of course, calls for very dry pertness.

"Even vampires?"

Castiel lifts one shoulder in a slight shrug.

"I am not precisely sure," he admits.

"You are not human. But you were. And retain some human qualities."

And it is difficult. Having come to know some of the Cullens.

Edward almost shakes his head for the fact Castiel takes him for serious. Carlisle would have simply written it off as him being trite.

"With effort."

As there would always be many things they forgot.
And many things they enacted that were as lie as truth.

"With effort."

Castiel's gaze goes once more to the list.

"What will Alice do with all these supplies, exactly?"

Edward's lips curled into an errant, unnoticed, crooked curve.

"She draws and makes clothes and does whatever comes to her."

"Harmless enough."

So far as he knows.

(Of course, 80s fashion completely passed Castiel by.)

Edward snorted, his lips edged far more crookedly.

"Only until she decides your wardrobe belongs to her."
Which for Edward was somewhere in the fifties.

"I don't have a wardrobe."

Castiel is completely safe.

Edward raised his eyebrow, petulantly amused.

"Don't tell her that."