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"I got you something."
Edward's head lifted slowly from the hushed utterance, spoken as if it were some terrible secret, and gazed at you over the top of his clear spectacles. You stare back with a timidness he is not unaccustomed to, arms bent at an odd angle to keep whatever it is you're holding shielded from sight. Your foot scuffed against the shag carpet resting at the base of the mattress, shy, lip twitching oddly at the left corner of your mouth. Little idiosyncrasies he'd cataloged over the past two months.
Edward was certain he no longer believed in God and all his so called wonders. God had proven himself time and time again to be a faulty mirage. A placebo that hopeless and aimless fanatics swallowed down without concrete evidence; no knowledge of if it would truly be capable of curing them. As if there weren't an infinite, hidden guarantee to suffer unfathomable consequences for such blind faith. God was filthy. God was the first to leave him forsaken, to cast him out; abandoned the moment he'd left the womb.
No.
Edward had no more space left within him for spiritual betrayal.
But you..
You, who had light that followed and nipped at your heels. Incessant little hands of the breaking dawn gripped your clothes, traced each contour of your features. Melted your eyes with its rays of molten honey and gold. Sunset, a horizon's gleam that stuck to your back, morphed into an aureole just at the crown of your skull. Edward surmised you were a testament of self-restraint. His own form of personal idolatry - a warped blaspheme given physical shape to test what little humanity he had left writhing in him.
Dangling on a chain right before his very eyes, effulgent and offering vindication, if only he'd just reach out and take it -
Edward is quick to pull his gaze away, temporarily smothering whatever creature raged behind his sternum. More than half his childhood spent in and out of foster homes, and not once did any remnant of them stick. Nothing worthy, nothing that offered him such effortless reprieve. Only suffering.
Suffering, suffering, always suffering.
So why? Out of all lines of possibilities and factors. No matter how he worked the equations over in his head, Edward never could have predicted you. The logical center of him was incapable of forming any rational sense of comprehension.
Edward's appearance into your life appeared revitalizing. Edward; a catalyst, a skeleton key.. and you were so adamant in the way you clung to him. Unprecedented. An anomalous sensation of warmth that split him in two and broke his bleeding heart open upon the rubble at your feet. Left him pathetically alive with his first configuration of longing.
No, Edward couldn't.. understand you; so infinitely foreign to him.
For as long as he had been alive, he'd been nothing. Nobody. Gone unseen, unnoticed. Unloved. Long since grown into a deep, nauseating satisfaction and acceptance of the fact - wore it like an impenetrable armor.
And you? He didn't know what you were.
A lost, straying lamb, perhaps. Unwanted in the flock you'd been unlucky enough to be borne into. So so very lonely.
Afraid. Looking for a hand to hold.
Edward had come to the undeniable conclusion the moment he'd passed the threshold of the house that your family was.. unbalanced. Misshapen, contorted limbs with gnashing teeth and tainted blood that pumped through veins incapable of love. You may as well not exist at all in the eyes of the people who plagued these halls. In the scarce instances where you did..
There it is again. Something fierce and unforgiving wanted to crawl up his throat. Tick, tick, ticking timebomb of a fool you are, Edward. You can't save anyone. Ever. You know how this goes - You've played the game, had the rules drilled through your eye sockets since birth. You are incapable of being anyone's saviour, useless -
Stop. Breathe.
Edward had bore the same sickness with a cognizance no child should. Perhaps that was where the new weakness bred. An Achilles heel he'd been unprepared for. Linked now, to you, he realized. It filled him with an intense surge of bemused frustration.
"Edward? ..Are you listening to me?"
He blinked. Once, twice. Watched warily the way your countenance seemed to puddle back into a solid force before his very eyes. Illuminating. Edward's silence seemed to have made you antsy. He could see the path of thought as it formed, the distress that brewed with potential of his repudiation. You hadn't handled the perceived notion of his lack of attention with much grace. It should annoy him.. your persistence, yet - Guilt rose in him like a tide; unraveled with odd, unignorable pulsing. Live wire thrumming and strangled around his neck. A bizarre sound of confirmation left him hastily, accompanied with a quick, stiff nod.
Your features fell through an array of different emotions too quickly for him to properly analyze. You watched him. Eyes that resembled a deer caught on the road; something kicked, a creature left shivering, wanting - Then, the corners of your mouth warbled upwards. Tentative, untrue. Were you still afraid? Your focus dragged away, found its home on a long since browned stain etched into the carpet at your sock-clad feet. Edward almost wanted to reciprocate the action, but didn't. He found, now that he had finally allowed himself to look, he was incapable of not doing so.
"It isn't exactly like the one you wanted," You began carefully, apologetically, with a shift of shoulders. "But I.. I know how long you've waited- Wanted one, I mean. In the way you talked about it." Edward's head tilted, though he remained meticulously placid, feigned with an air of indifference. Any giveaway of his inner turmoil would be the way his thumb pressed harshly into the cup of his palm. Trailed, examined; tried to memorize the palmar creases and folds. Inside. Inside.. The engine stammered to life. Heaved and breathed, echoed in the back of his mind. The start of - Beginnings. Uncalculated uncertainties. Warnings. Hope? Edward never enjoyed being left in the dark, and now there were cracks forming - blinding light that spilled in through the hard shell of isolation. The disruption of routine jarred and rattled the cage, internally startled that a buried self of him wanted to welcome it.
What are you doing, Edward?
Breathe. Listen.
You revealed, and cradled the camera between two hands with a delicacy Edward had never seen a human extend an inanimate object before. He, abruptly, had to remind himself to breathe properly. Not too heavily, not too loudly. Fought with the quick influx in shaped pinpricks of shame that begged him to scurry and shrink into nothing. He suddenly felt very stupid; painfully mortal. A feeble and rabid animal locked far away from everyone else all his life. Revulsion toward himself had grown so prevalent, an unworthiness that reeked of bitter bile and motor oil.
Realization. It halted Edward in his panicked tracks, sliced through the confusion just barely.
A gift? Was this a gift? Did you get this for..
Him?
Edward stared, wide-eyed, at the object you rested in his lap. Bewildered and furious, appallingly endeared, heart beating rapidly. He couldn't stop the way his mind began reeling, hardly registered the fact that he had balled his hands into tense fists at his sides. Why, why, why? Why? It was all he ever seemed to ask himself anymore. He didn't deserve this. I don't - I don't deserve this. Why would you -
Of all the misfortunate souls that existed in the cesspit deemed a city, why were you extending such goodness upon him?
You, evidently oblivious to the violent tangent of disorientation, watched him. Maybe Edward had been better at hiding than he originally believed.
Shh..
Inhale; not too sharp. Exhale; not too shallow.
It should infuriate him, the way you kept looking at him. Expectant. Blinking owlishly with eyes full to the brim with such innocence, hopefulness. Edward might admire it, if it weren't so pitiful. Your naivety was dangerous, malleable in the wrong hands. That very in-culpability of yours, lily-white, made the snarling thing rattle in its prison. It screamed, wailed and pled with him;
LET ME -
Like a clap of lightning, a feeling struck Edward. The shattering urge to touch - to extend. Want; not so unknown to him. A want to run the pads of his fingers across the visible worry of rejection that clouded your laugh lines, wrinkled your brows. He would dissolve your ache in sulfuric acid, if you asked it of him. Calm that panic. Snuff out the cruel beast that whispered inadequacies and doubt and negation in your ears.
Protect. You have to protect them.
Edward would protect you -
Edward's fingers instead trailed awkwardly across the mechanism, eyes downcast as hair fell heavy into his field of vision. It blanketed his face, a simple mask that obscured the reverent expression that marred his visage. Though, he could still make out your face just through the curtain of his bangs. He swiped the pad of his thumb over the embedded cracked lense. The camera was small, dial setting worn with peeled white lettering. The body itself was dented, collapsed in on itself as if it had been dropped multiple times throughout its lifespan. Edward was unsure if it even still worked. But still, still -
YOU HAD REMEMBERED.
REMEMBERED?
WHO HAD EVER TAKEN THE TIME TO MULL OVER SOMETHING IN THEIR HEAD THAT HE HAD SPOKEN? TO CATALOG IT AND KEEP IT FILED AWAY IN THEIR MIND FOR LATER? THOUGHT OF HIM IN PASSING? RECALLED HIS EXISTENCE? WHEN HE WASN'T EVEN PRESENT?
NEVER. NEVER IN HIS LIFE.
NO ONE HAD EVER THOUGHT OF HIM. WHAT HE MIGHT HAVE LIKED OR WANTED. DESIRED.
CRAVED OF THEIR OWN WILLINGNESS TO KNOW HIM ENOUGH AND HARBOURED TERROR HE WOULD REJECT SUCH AN OFFERING.
REJECT YOU? HOW FOOLISH. HOW COULD HE?
THE FIRST. MAYBE THE ONLY.
WHY HAD HE ALLOWED YOU TO WORM YOUR WAY IN? ALL THESE DEFENSES HE HAD BUILT, YOU'VE BARELY GRAZED YOUR FINGERTIPS AGAINST THEM, YET THEY ARE CRUMBLING.
SPLINTERING.
WANING.
WHY?
Breathe. Breathe.
"Where did you.." Edward's voice broke the stifling atmosphere, but fell flat. Unfinished, open-ended. The question was clear, despite his ineptitude.
You offered him such mercy.
"It's a secret."
And he could practically taste the burning blaze of your smile, despite, paired with your quick response. Edward would store it in his pocket, keep it safe; a memory for a later day. A rainy day, he felt. Thick with the growth of reborn greenery.
There was a dread so ancient in Edward, disproportionate to his body. Yet wave after wave of crushing possession consumed it all, fought and swallowed - everything.
Keep it locked up tight, Edward. Just beneath the skin. Just beneath. Don't let it peel back, expose the nerves - BURST!
So awfully viscous, the everything that flowed through him.
Edward's head lifted slowly, face still as stone. As if he had come to some revolutionizing decision. His eyes -
Oh, how his eyes reflected wildly; the fire inside.
Edward remained deathly silent as he reached forward. An act in which he had never committed to before. Not once. Now, now he would. There was a visible tremble in the edge of his fingers. It would be a first. A first of many, he promised. He was filled with a sadistic sense of gratification when your expression stuttered, clearly startled by the unexpected movement. A faded vermilion heat spread across your cheeks as his hand met a lock of your hair, curled against the base of your collarbone. Edward crooked his index, twisted the strand and watched it cascade across his pallid flesh. How soft. How you glowed -
He wouldn't say thank you; it would be a disgusting simplification of what exactly warred through his chest. The moment. The epiphany. You. Oh, you.
Edward could finally see you.