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“Why are you doing this to me?”
The words weren't meant for one person in particular, not when every single person in this room that stood before me, chose to betray me. Except Rosalie, which was ironic, in its own sickness. Somehow, my sister could push me to my own death in the same breath she holds my hand in the most senseless of choices that a person can make by withholding her vote in it.
What I do not expect is the sheer weight of grief, upset and anger that hits me all of a sudden. The voice in my mind is familiar but this particular set of emotions, lacing every tendril of the thought that follows it, is so unfamiliar that it moves me from my perch at the top of the stairs, at the same time Carlisle disappears, passing me without once allowing me to catch his eye.
It takes me a moment to realise that it is his anger that I felt, and I begin to feel dread pool in my stomach, a real weight I cannot seem to escape. I realised, for the first time since the end of the debacle that followed my misunderstanding, that my father resents me for it.
The realization makes me pause, unable to comprehend the foreignness of being on the receiving end of Carlisle's disappointment. I throw a glance over my shoulder at Bella, who is simply bewildered at his sudden disappearance, before looking at Alice.
I'll take her home, Edward, I hear her familiar voice in my mind and trust her to follow through with the promise within her words. Go talk to him.
Reassured, or as much as I could be, I followed my father's footsteps, until I reached his study. The familiar sight of him behind the desk was soothed me, having often sat in the chair across him as he prepared to leave for his shift before even the sun had risen. I closed the door behind myself, a futile attempt at privacy in a household like ours and broke the silence first, something I owed him.
“You are unhappy with me.”
“Oh, whatever gave you the impression,” the words came in a tide of emotions and yet, none lingered long enough for me to fully identify them. I had never once heard Carlisle sound so detached. It was as if looking into still water and not receiving my own reflection. He looked up at me and I noticed his exhaustion reflected mine, his eyes just as dark. He hadn't hunted in the past few days, not when I was on the brink of death. “I wish I could say you would understand when you became a father but it is not something that applies to us. But I assure you, most parents aren't exactly thrilled about their children killing themselves.”
The words make me physically flinch, as if he had struck me. Perhaps it would have hurt less if he had hurt me, if he had somehow been a coven leader that used physical force. Or perhaps, it simply hurt, because my father had never once expressed such blatant disappointment at my choices, not even during those years where I left him and became the closest thing to a monster this world had.
“I didn't mean to hurt you,” I returned quietly, unsure how else to say the words. “You know it is not something I did on purpose—”
“Do not blame your very active choices on your inability to live without you mate, Edward,” my father said, his voice carrying the same emptiness, the same lifeless weight I had come to dread. ”You chose to take yourself out of our lives. You chose to put me through forty eight hours of absolute devastation. You chose to make me watch as Esme entirely shattered. You chose to make me watch as Rosalie broke down, blaming herself—”
“Just like the mistake she chose to make?” I sneered, losing my remorse as the familiar disgust clouded my mind again. “If she didn't want to be blamed for something she caused—”
“She wanted her brother back!” Carlisle snapped, freezing me in place. I had never once heard him raise his voice, let alone at me, and the feeling left me feeling as if I had died, just a little. “She wanted her brother back! The brother who abandoned his whole family again! Just the way I wanted my son back after I had lost him all over again!”
The most human of memories came to the forefront of my mind, one from my boyhood, when I had been caught in my father's car, my small feet stretching just far until my toe tapped the pedals and I felt myself recoil under his stare just like I once had under Edward Masen Sr.’s. Except, this time, I was more afraid than I had been at five.
“I didn't choose to leave,” I tried to say, my voice uncharacteristically small. “I couldn't stand it, not a life without her—”
“In that case, I cannot stand a life without my son,” he said, looking at me with such heartbreak it nearly brought me to my knees. “I had not seen you in seven months, Edward. I had not seen you since we left Forks. I decided that you deserved the time you needed to grieve, that you will return home when you are ready. But instead, I receive a call from Alice, that my child, my boy, my first child, had chosen to end his life. Do you have any idea what that did to us? To me—”
“You would have healed,” I said helplessly, in a desperate attempt to subdue him, to quell his grief. “You had Esme and everyone else!”
“My mate isn't a substitute for my child, Edward!” He said with such incredulity, as if he could not believe the words I had uttered. “Neither are your siblings for you! Is that why you think I created all of you? That if I were to lose one, at least I have four more—”
“That is not what I meant!” I snapped back, my fingers curling into a tight fist. My body, brittle from months of starvation, ached under the strain of the simple action. “I could not live without her. I could not continue to exist in a world where she did not—”
“Neither could I ever without your mother,” Carlisle interrupted me, the onyx of his eyes burning with the grief that he had carried for these past seven months, these past three days. “And god forbid I ever reach a point in my life that I experience the grief you did, or should you, ever again, but I beg of you to understand that your mate is not a substitute for your family and your family is not a substitute for your mate. In how many words should I make you understand that we would never be able to go on without you—”
“This is not fair,” I said, my voice smaller than it had ever been. For the first time in my unnaturally long life, I was begging my father to see my perspective. “How do you say this but in the same breath, deny me the relief—”
“I did everything. I did everything to make sure you were happy,” Carlisle said, no longer speaking to me, his mind now flickering through his decades with me. And I was startled by the ferocity of the love and grief he felt for me intermingle with each other. “I did everything. I said yes to everything you asked for, I never once denied you when you asked me to fulfill your outrageous desires. I never said no, not even when you risked exposing us. Just to see you happy, for once, in this life. And yet—”
”I swear I am happy!” I cried out, wishing he would just listen to me but he was lost to his own mind, to his own pain. “I am happy! I had a moment where I was misguided! That is all—”
“People who are happy don't wish to be ripped apart, limb to limb and to be burned!” My father snapped, making me flinch. For the first time in my existence, in my companionship with him, he was refusing to listen to me. “You have made it clear, time and time again, that this life is a curse to you. And I accepted it. I understood why you would ever think of it as such. But you still did build a life with us. You were still our son, our brother, our friend—”
“If I was such a nuisance, then you should have kept me home!” I shouted back, losing the last of my composure. This was the point in a human conversation, where both parties would begin to cry, but there were no tears between us, none to cushion the sharp edges of our words anymore. “If my one choice, my one selfish choice of falling for a human girl was such a menace to the family—”
“Do not twist my words, Edward—”
“—then you should have never let me out of your sight after I left her!” I did not let him interrupt me, not even when my body felt like it was shattering with every word that escaped its confines. Every word, every underlying resentment, now lay between us, as his desk bore the weight of it. “You did not stop me once when I parted from the rest of you, again—”
“Because I was afraid this would happen!” He shouted back, and my hand involuntarily reached for the doorknob, as if my body was ready to flee the room. “I was afraid my control would break you! I was afraid that I would look away for just a moment, and you would escape and get yourself killed because that was what I wanted to do under my father's tyranny! That is what I wish God had given me the freedom to do without the fear of Hell! I did not want you to hate me! I let you go each time because I had faith that you would return to me and you shattered it for good!”
I watched him, as his entire body shuddered under the weight of his anger, under the weight of all the pain I caused him and I wished I could cry. For once, I wished I could shed some tears and free my body of the grief it felt.
“I wish I were as heartless as my father sometimes,” he muttered again, to no one in particular, as he refused to look at me still. “I wished I could be as controlling and as manipulative as those coven leaders. Like Amun is with Benjamin. Or the Southerners or the Volturi themselves. Perhaps, it would then keep the lot of you from running rings around me—”
An involuntary scoff escaped me, a surprised sound that was punched out of my lungs.
“Would you like an award for being a decent person then?” I said, the malice in my own words startling me. “Would you like an award for the bare minimum? For treating me like someone who deserved basic care and compassion—”
“I would like for my son to think about me, about his mother, about his brothers and his sisters before he broke them beyond repair. And I think that's a very reasonable request,” he said calmly, finally looking up to meet my gaze, onyx meeting obsidian, resolve meeting exhaustion. “You are to return to your room and not leave it until I allow you to.”
My eyes widened as my mouth fell open in complete bafflement at his words. “Excuse me?”
“You will go to school and return home at four o'clock sharp every single day. You are not to go anywhere else unless you have at least one of your siblings with you. I'm going to bring home blood bags so you can heal from the mess you've made of your body and you will consume them without complaining. Is that clear?”
“You can't be serious—”
“I unfortunately can,” Carlisle said, looking at him, his gaze empty of anything except authority. “If my son has decided to take extreme measures to harm himself then I must and I will do the same to protect him and this family, including the girl he is mated to because otherwise you will destroy yourself and everyone aforementioned and I refuse to ever experience those forty eight hours again. Go to your room.”
I stared at him, completely out of my depth. I had never once been put in a position like this, never once been punished for my choices. He'd always forgiven me, always given me the benefit of the doubt. Even his thoughts did not give away any chance that he might have a change of heart.
I wondered, at what point in those forty eight hours, did he reach his breaking point.
I slowly, at a slower pace than that of even a human, opened the door behind me and moved to step out. The shuffling of papers and the shift of his leather bag resumed. I forced my feet to move, as if the exhaustion that had just been a burning point in my chest had settled in my bones.
Distantly, I registered a familiar tone in my mind, the voice I was used to rather than the tone, the ferocity that had gripped my father moments before.
But they held no weight for me that they would have ten minutes ago.
I love you, son. Forgive me.