Recommence ° Edward Cullen[Rewriting]

[023]

Chapter Twenty-Three | It Begins With One

🔷️🔷️🔷️

"This is borderline creepy and that's coming from me." Edward's eyes opened and narrowed in annoyance as Emmett's voice sounded from downstairs. "Weird, I can't remember when I asked for your input."  The vampire snickered as Edward sat up partially, mindful not to jostle Alex although she had barely moved since initially falling asleep.

It was dawn now and the sun was starting to peer over the horizon, gradually chasing away the dark of night. For hours, Edward had laid with Alex, soaking up the peaceful calm of her presence after he had gone so long without it. Until she woke, he was happy to remain where he lay but Emmett was evidently against that course of action. His adoptive brother wanted him to join them on a hunt and though Edward wished for anything but, he also understood that with humans going in and out of the home more, there was no room for accidents as much as there were risks. 

He shut his eyes for a moment, contemplating ignoring his brother but the burly man seemed to have a sixth sense for his misery. "Chop chop, lover boy. I'm growing old as we speak." Edward rolled his eyes as he reluctantly slid out of his bed like a gentle breeze, only marginally jostling Ember whose tail had been resting on his abdomen. The serpent stirred, head peering out from where she had been buried underneath a blanket of Alex's pitch-black hair. "I'll be back soon," he murmured, brushing a thumb down her head as she hissed sleepily up at him, bobbing her head once.

He watched fondly as she slithered onto Alex's chest, squirming around to make herself comfortable in the junction of her neck and shoulder. Throughout it all, the woman didn't so much as stir. "Gonna kiss her goodbye?" Edward blinked, glancing up at the ajar door where Emmett had appeared. "It's not like she'll bite." Unbidden, the teasing quip actually made him chuckle because per his knowledge, there was a definite chance she would.

"Come on," he said, ignoring the sudden urge to press his lips to her temple and instead, turned to usher his brother from the doorway so he could close the door. "Wh—are you shy? Little bro—" Edward shot him an exasperated glance, cutting him off before he could make the feeling worsen. "Bet I'll be the first to find a cougar." Emmett stopped short, his previous train of thoughts derailed as his competitive nature sprung forth full force.

"Game on."

🔷️🔷️🔷️

"Dr. Louis, this is greater than anything we have ever seen." Alex blinked slowly at the scene unfolding before her. She sat atop a colourful foam mat, cross-legged in a room of three bland, white walls and one made of a one-way mirror. The only other splashes of colour aside from the mat and her clothes was a purple table with four chairs, scattered puzzles and a box of building blocks beside her. Pulling the blocks from their container was a young child sitting back on her ankles, seemingly fixated on the blocks.

Dressed in a white jumpsuit with long, black hair cascading down her back, there was nothing out of the ordinary until the girl shifted and metal clanged against one another. Alex's eyes drifted to the twin metal cuffs around her ankles, the young woman following the trail of links to where it was anchored to the centre of the room. "You would think for all the monsters they had created at this point that a child would have been easy." 

Alex blinked, taken aback by the mature voice coming from the child that could've been no more than two years old, and then by the fact that what she thought to be a memory was something different. "Wha—oh." The questions rising in her mind were suddenly answered as the girl glanced up at her with glowing red-black eyes. Whatever this memory was meant to be, both she and the beast were present somehow as the audience. "It's not like you. . . we—like we were ever a normal kid."