Calloused
In the week leading up to the unknown green-eyed teenager’s arrival, Alice makes Edward hunt daily.
Her thoughts tell Edward she’s worried he will want to drain the human, convinced that the teen must be his mate. He will admit that her visions have hinted at the idea. However, Edward is determined for it not to come to pass. Visions are subjective and Alice’s especially are volatile, constantly evolving.
Even as he stands here, making the decision not to engage with the human, he can see her visions changing with his determination. Being involved with a human is stupid and risky—two things Edward has never deigned to be labeled. He will not risk loving a human because he knows they would wish to stay together forever. Edward can think of no greater pleasure than to watch someone he loves die; to watch as they experience life and love, as they age and change, evolve into something more than he or his family could ever comprehend.
Alice’s visions never show that version of the teenager. They never show him aged and happy, wrinkled in a chair on a porch. In every vision the teenager looks the same. His emerald eyes always end the vision looking straight at them. For that reason, and that reason alone, Edward decides not to get involved with the human.
There is one vision that Edward wishes won’t come to pass more than the others—one of the teenager in the forest, sprawled on a patch of flowers and grass, smile on his face and death in the air. That one in particular is disturbing. Edward knows that patch of land. He knows it like the back of his hand, and he wonders what action might lead to a future where someone would look so peaceful in death. Edward doesn’t want to know. His only saving grace is that there is no blood in that vision—no bite on the teenager to indicate he was drained by someone, drained by Edward.
“Stop fighting it,” Alice whines from the backseat, her hand curled in Jasper’s. “I can’t see what will happen.”
Visions flick through her mind, vague and murky. They’re at a table together. The cafeteria. The teenager sits and looks at them all with a frown. The next has the teenager in a classroom with Edward, sitting next to him in Biology. Edward looks pained. The next has the teenager in a home, staring blankly at a wall with odd music in the background, sitting still until the sun goes down.
“I don’t think it’s my decisions you’re seeing,” Edward replies. He’s sure his own decision is made and locked—he will ignore the human as much as possible. Avoid connections even with Alice’s inevitable interference. “He seems quite content to stay home.”
Alice cocks her head. You call that content?, her mind questions. Edward shrugs, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
“What is it? I hate when you guys do this,” Emmet grumbles, sinking down in the front seat. “If Rose was here she would agree.”
“It seems the teenager may desire to stay home.” Jasper explains softly as they pull into the school parking lot.
“He’ll be here,” Alice says determinedly and Edward watches the vision in her mind, of the teenager pulling up to the school on a motorbike. He sighs heavily and parks the car.
They’re earlier than usual. A planned decision to try and glimpse the teenager before school. Alice signed up for the school welcome committee six months ago, laughing at their confused faces back then. She didn’t know the reason why she was signing up, just that she had a vision of her doing so. Alice enjoys living to the whims of her visions. It’s not like Forks got new students often. In fact, they are the most recent new students and it has already been a year since they moved to Forks.
Edward stays sitting in the car as the others clamber out. He closes his eyes and meditates slowly, cutting out the focal thoughts he can hear from the noisiest minds at the school—Jessica Stanley and Mike Newton being two of the most obnoxiously loud. He slows his thinking until the thoughts of the teenagers nearby are buzzing in the background. A noise he can choose to focus on if he wants to. His peace doesn’t last long. A motorbike rumbles towards the school and Edward drops his head back onto the headrest.
He should have stayed home with Rosalie. She had the right idea, skipping so she wouldn’t have to deal with the drama of the new kid. Edward would be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t curious about the green-eyed teenager. That curiosity, though, was a horrible thing. He shouldn’t be curious. He should have crushed that months ago, when Alice had her first vision of the teenager. Edward decided not to engage with the teen—and he is determined to stick to that conviction. So, why had he turned up today?
He can read similar thoughts rolling in Emmett’s head as he watches Edward through the car window. If even Emmett is questioning him, then Edward is assured he’s an idiot. He hops out of the car, ignoring Jasper’s small smile at his volatile emotional status, and leans against the door to wait for the teenager.
It isn’t just the Cullen family waiting. After a minute, even the humans can hear the rumble of the motorbike and an excited whisper breaks out through the crowd, their thoughts jumbling into a cascade of anticipation. Apparently there had been a rumour of a new kid starting, stemming from someone whose parent helped sell a plot of land, another whose mother works in the school office. Small towns don’t allow for surprise guests.
“He’s almost here,” Emmett says with a clap on Edward’s shoulder. “How’s it feel, brother?”
“Shut up,” Edward hisses, shaking Emmett’s rough grip off. Emmett only laughs in response.
“He’s here!” Alice exclaims as the motorbike swerves dangerously into the parking lot, slowing instantly as the teenager likely scans for a spot to park.
Likely?
Edward pauses. Jasper can feel Edward’s confusion growing with each passing second and he turns to his brother, noting the way Edward’s hands are gripped tightly and his eyes brows are furrowed.
“What is it?” Jasper asks.
Edward tries again, waiting for the teenager to rip the black helmet from his head, releasing a puff of black hair, curls tangling over each other into a stylistic mess. Edward picks up a vague sense of a thought—an unusual name, Hermione, and a spotty recollection of unhappiness, resignation.
The teen’s green eyes roam across the students ogling him with an exasperated-sounding sigh. As his eyes skim over Edward for a second, his thoughts disappear with a sharp edge, as thought slammed behind a door. His siblings watch with him cautious eyes.
“I can’t read his thoughts,” Edward says quietly, frowning even more.
“What, really?” Emmett looks impressed. “Nothing at all?”
“I…I don’t know. I thought I could for a moment, but I’m not sure. It’s like there’s something blocking me.”
“Maybe he has a natural block on his mind,” Jasper muses. “Didn’t you say Chief Swan was the same?”
Edward nods slowly. Chief Swan is notoriously hard for Edward to read, but it’s not impossible. With Chief Swan there’s thoughts there, floating in the distance, unclear but understandable, key emotions and feelings easily defined, intent not hard to recognise. With this teenager it’s different. There’s nothing there. Not a thought. Not a feeling. One second they were almost there, the next they were gone, as thought sealed tight.
The teenager dumps his bag on the ground and fishes for something in his pockets. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, tapping one from the case with expert ease, only pausing to flick his lighter angrily four times when it doesn’t light. It finally sparks and the teenager takes a hasty drag, like that of a much older man, leaning against his bike and crossing his ankles, eyes darting around the parking lot as though surveying the property and it’s people.
“Ooh, a bad boy,” Emmett jokes.
“I didn’t see that coming,” says Alice with a frown.
“You can’t see everything, sweetheart,” Jasper reassures her softly.
The teenager’s hands shake slightly as he brings the cigarette to his lips. Edward notices callouses on his fingers, thick and rough over the sides of his knuckles and in the crevice near his thumb. It’s an unusual collection of callouses, one Edward has never seen before. Perhaps he’s only noticed them now because of who they’re attached to—the teenager from Alice’s visions; someone he cannot read; a boy who breathes his cigarette in as though it’s oxygen and he’s asphyxiating. Edward wonders why those calloused hands shake. He wants to know why the teen’s heart rate is increasing every minute he stands there, even with the nicotine sifting through him.
He catalogues the teen in ways he often does: messy hair, slight stubble, scuffed and worn-in leather-like boots paired with near new looking clothes, all fitting as though tailored to his shape and height. The motorbike is shiny yet old, antique, and the way the teen rests his free hand on it shows he cares for it. Edward wishes he could shuffle through the teenager’s mind to find out why. His eyes are the brightest green Edward’s seen in his entire damned existence. They gleam from beneath the teen’s rounded glasses with a depth of haunting emotion to rival Edward’s own.
A fact, going off of Jasper’s thoughts as he feels out the teenager. He’s traumatised, Jasper thinks to himself, as he feels the warring within the teenager. Something horrible happened to him. He’s so…dark. And Edward can feel it. Can feel the darkness Jasper senses in the teen’s mind—James, Alice’s thoughts supplement, as she sees the future of asking for his name—wrapping around the teenager, gripping his neck, curled in his chest. It’s heavy and oppressive over him. A grief and longing mixed with disgust.
Edward barely pulls himself from Jasper’s thoughts and emotions as Alice’s voice cuts his attention. She’s cornered the teenager and begins babbling about the welcome committee. James, she calls him, and he looks disgruntled at the thought of being welcomed anywhere.
“Er, yeah. That’s me…James,” he says, but he smiles slightly just at the corner, and he huffs under his breath as though his name is humorous.
“Oh, I was right! You’re British!” Alice winks back at them, a wicked grin crossing her face for a millisecond. “How fun!”
The teenager’s eyes sweep over, following Alice’s action, and he narrows them imperceptibly.
“Fun, right,” he replies slowly. Edward tenses. His hands curl into fists.
“What is it?” Jasper asks, rigid next to Edward’s growing unease.
“I don’t know what he’s thinking. Why did he look at us like that?”
“Relax, brother.” Emmett shuffles his hair. “Did you not see those glasses? Poor guy can barely see.”
And he’s right, of course. Emmett the intellectual. Always calm and collected in the face of logic. Except he’s not—that’s Edward’s role, and the fact Emmett is taking over makes him uneasy. Edward doesn’t know why such a thought didn’t occur to him. He’s so used to knowing why people act, when and how they will. He’s never had to live…guessing.
Alice is already bouncing towards the school office, James reluctantly in tow. Jasper drowns in James’s emotions: nostalgia, love, grief and mourning. It’s such an odd crush of emotions that even Jasper struggles to reconcile the warring feelings, to breathe them deep and release their overwhelm. Edward focuses to block Jasper’s mind. He’s struggling enough without the extra input of James’s obviously unstable emotions.
“Come on,” Emmett says, pulling the two out of their stupor. “Let’s head to class.”
Jasper and Edward trail after him like ducklings, both trapped in their own thoughts about the green-eyed James.
----
It’s when Jasper sits at the cafeteria table alone that Edward realises Alice is doing something she definitely shouldn’t be doing and knows that he would strongly dislike. He glowers at Jasper who simply smiles in response. You know I can’t stop her, he thinks and Edward chooses to pretend he doesn’t hear that thought.
Not that he doesn’t expect Alice’s meddling in some way. Of course he does. It’s Alice, for goodness sake. But he had hoped she would consider his feelings, at least a little. To give him the chance to adhere to his own desires of ignoring James.
Through the hum of lunch gossip Edward can hear their approach—Alice and James, walking slowly to the cafeteria through the main hall. Edward hones his hearing to their conversation, letting the thoughts and chats about James spawning from the teenagers surrounding them to drop out of his mind like static.
“You’ll like it here, James,” Alice says just as she opens the door to the cafeteria. “I’ve seen it.”
And then James stops dead. His face pales and his heart rate triples, his eyes begin darting around the room as if the walls are beginning to close in on him.
“What do you mean?” James breathes out slowly and looks at Alice.
Edward can feel his brothers tense nearby as they tune in to the scenario. Jasper feels out James and instantly pulls back from him, from the turmoil in his emotions. The rage and fear lacing down the teenager’s spine. Edward feels sick.
Alice is jumping through visions, each one worse than the last. Several just end in darkness. Those are the worst. The best options end with James walking out. The vision of him sitting at the cafeteria table with them has disappeared after whatever has triggered the teen. Edward is slightly happy that it has, but he’s wary now, worried for his family—he’s unable to read James’s mind and feel his intent, to understand why he is reacting so harshly. He wants to know why several of Alice’s visions end in darkness as though blocked from even her.
“Nothing,” Alice says, choosing the future with the calmest ending. I don’t understand why that made him upset, she thinks, turning her head sightly to glance at Edward. His futures have been all over the place. Edward doesn’t need to ask what she means, because she drags the visions forward as though thrusting them towards him, and Edward is sinking in visions of James dying. He’s in the forest again, in the flowers; he’s in a bath bleeding out; he’s on the tarmac, motorbike wrapped around a tree. There’s gaps in the visions, blank spaces where information should be or a different future was likely forming before something blocked it.
“I just think you’ll really love Forks. We didn’t really like it when we first moved,” Alice continues, gesturing towards the table calmly, almost like she hadn’t just shown Edward fifteen visions of James killing himself. “But now we really love it here. I think you will too.”
Emmett’s hand drops onto Edward’s roughly, gripping his fingers and peeling them back from the edge of the table. The bench creaks under their combined strength.
“Let it go, Ed,” Emmett whispers harshly. “You’ll snap the table.”
Jasper interferes, sending out a wave of calm to Edward with a frown on his face.
“What is it?” Jasper asks under his breath, stabbing a fork into his prop lunch salad.
“Alice’s visions,” Edward replies softly, finally releasing the table and closing his eyes tightly. “She had so many. All of James dead.”
There is an uncomfortable silence in which Edward listens to his brothers consider asking which of them murders James.
“Not from us,” he replies to their thoughts. “Not from me. From himself.”
“Sorry, Alice. I’m not that hungry. I think I’m going to go for a walk outside.” James replies and Edward almost stands up, almost follows him out of the cafeteria until James turns around and says, “I’ll see you later.”
“Alright, James,” Alice replies, sounding downtrodden as visions flash through her mind of James, stumbling around what looks like an antique sitting room with a fireplace, falling across a chaise lounge with a glass of whiskey in his hand. Edward supposes drinking is better than killing oneself, so it seems James’s future improved slightly in the talk with Alice. Maybe.
She sits at their table and they fall into a grim silence, Edward frowning at Alice for interfering and somehow making everything worse, and Emmett and Jasper unwilling to break the silence.
It’s only when lunch is almost over that Edward sits up straighter turns to Alice and says, “Didn’t James have a scar in your first vision?”