A/N Edward and Serena two/three parter (haven't decided yet!)...
5th October, 1969
The people moved around him like shadows. Nobody spoke to him, looked at him, seemed to notice him at all. He was invisible to these people; they came, they saw only the person in the bed and then they left. Which was fine by him. He didn't want them being nice to him – there was that strange, cat smelling woman who'd tried to be nice to him and he'd hated her. Later he'd heard the nurses muttering about the lady being Socially Serviced but he didn't really understand that. Anyway, he was far more concerned that they looked after his mum than that they paid attention to him. She'd been ill for a long time – months, he thought – and he needed her to get better because he needed to go back to school if he was going to become an astronaut and walk on the moon. Also he didn't like staying with Auntie Maud. She smelt even worse than the horrible lady, and had whiskers coming out of her chin, and said that she thought that the man walking on the moon was just puppets which was stupid. Annie didn't like it either, he could tell even though she didn't speak. When she made her squawking noise and pulled her funny face he always knew exactly what she was saying. Usually it was that she hated Auntie Maud and Broccoli. He loved Annie. She was the only person who'd ever listened to him talk about the moon. Everybody else was too busy fussing over mum, or deaf like Auntie Maud.
'Edward' a nurse looked at him and he glanced up, surprised. They had been here for hours and nobody had spoken to him. 'Would you like a soft drink? Or maybe a bar of chocolate'
'Yes' he replied, thinking that it was a stupid question; did anybody ever say no to a lemonade? 'Annie's not allowed one. She's too small'
'I know' the nurse smiled, reaching out her hand for him to take. He didn't because he was too old for that, and instead he reached out and took Annie's hand as she unsteadily got herself to her feet. He had been teaching her to walk for weeks now and she was getting good at it. He followed the nurse down the corridor and as they got to the end he looked back, just to see that mum was okay, but he couldn't see her through the crowd of shadow people.
ooooo
'Edward, do you understand what I'm saying?' the cat smelling woman was there again, her arms folded across her chest. He glowered at her. He understood perfectly what she was saying; he wasn't stupid. Mum had gone to heaven, or somewhere, and she wasn't coming back. He understood that, it had happened to his gerbil before Christmas, and three of his goldfish. He also understood that Auntie Maud was too old to look after them – that was a good thing – so they were had been taken to a place called care. Annie was going to something called a Foster home and he had been taken to a place called Sunshine Hall, but as they pulled up outside he knew that the name was misleading. There was nothing sunny about this place at all and the horrible cat-smelling lady was waiting for him here.
'Yeah. Go away' he mumbled, sitting on his bed and hugging his knees.
'Is there anything you'd like me to get you. I think there are some books about space in the library'
'No' he replied. Space was stupid, so was the moon. Aunt Maud was right; it probably was puppets like Thunderbirds. No, he had decided that he wanted to be a doctor. Not one like the shadow people from today, but like the one from last week who'd come in and made mum's pain go away.
ooooo
In the six months that he spent at Sunshine House he learned a lot of things. He learned to fight with bigger boys, he learned that the kind of doctor that he wanted to be was an anaesthetist, and he learned that he wasn't going to see Annie again. Apparently she'd got a new family now, with a new mum, and a new brother, and even a dad. He asked whether he was going to get one, but he was almost pleased when they avoided the question and eventually said no. He hated Sunshine House but he didn't want a new family. He wanted his mum and Annie, and if he couldn't have them then he didn't want anybody. At least if he was on his own then nobody could leave him again.
8th February 1995
'Well say something…' she looked at him, eyes wide and expectant, and waited for him to say that it was fantastic news. He knew how this was meant to play out. He was meant to take her in his arms, spin her around and tell her how wonderful and clever she was. Sure they'd never planned any of this, but they were well qualified and well off, and more than ready to have a baby. And yet, he knew that if he told her that he was thrilled then he would be lying. He had decided a long, long time ago that he was never going to get married or have children and until now he had never even come close. He had managed to live for twenty-five years without letting anybody get close enough for him to notice their absence then they moved on. In five years at medical school he had managed to successfully avoid making any lasting friendships, and since then he had drifted from place to place, never staying anywhere long enough to put down roots. The longest that he'd been anywhere since medical school was in Boston, where he'd stayed for a year, and now he realised that it had been a mistake. Spending six or nine months in a place was fine; he could leave and nobody would even remember that he'd been there, but a year was apparently the magic number. A year had been long enough for him to fall head over heels in love, and for her to do the same, which was something that he'd never intended. In fact, he'd done his level best to sabotage it as soon as it became apparent that they had somehow fallen into a relationship, but she was nothing if not determined. She bore the brunt of his moods, and his irritability, and his absolute refusal to speak about anything that had happened to him before 1980, without complaint. She loved him unconditionally, and the problem was that without realising he had learned to love her too. He loved her enough that he didn't want to break her heart by running for the hills. He had considered it often enough, he even had an escape package all set up, with his passport, cash and the bare essentials that he didn't want to leave behind, but he'd never managed to use it. Once he'd gotten as far as the station but turned back, another he'd hired a car but ended up using it to drive to her house instead of heading for Canada as he had planned. And now his indecision and inability to leave had brought them here. After a lifetime of desperately trying to leave no trace behind him he had left his mark in the most indelible way possible, and on the only person that he'd loved in a really long time. He wanted to be happy, but he couldn't; it took all his energy to force a smile, never mind to say something. 'Edward?' she added, her voice faintly pleading and desperate.
'I, uh…' he scratched his head, thought about it for a moment, and then realised that he had no alternative. He could run for the hills in the night, although he probably wouldn't, but right now he needed to give her what she wanted because she was right on the edge of falling apart. '… Come here' he held his arms out and took her in his embrace, holding her tightly and breathing in the familiar smell of her shampoo.
'You're angry, aren't you' she sounded fretful and upset, his act not fooling her for a second. She knew him too well for that.
'Angry? No, never' he kissed her forehead, able to sound completely sincere because the one thing that he could never be was angry with her. If anything he was angry with himself for getting into this mess. 'I'm happy, really I am. It's just a shock'
'I know' she held onto him a bit more tightly and rested her head against his chest. 'And I know that it's bad timing. What with Australia…'
'Ah yes, Australia' he sighed. Australia had been his grand plan, his last attempt at making the best of the mess that he'd gotten into. He had suggested moving to Australia because he was pretty certain that she wouldn't want to go, and their relationship would never survive a distance of 10,000 odd miles. He had been stunned when she'd said that she wanted to come with him, but now he doubted whether it would happen.
'I can't go, Edward. I need to be at home'
'I understand' he sighed, and he did. She had the family that he couldn't ever remember having, and if she was going to have a baby then it was only natural that she was going to want to have them around her. 'It's fine; nothing's set in stone'
'You'll come with me'
'Of course' he sighed. It was, in fact, his worst nightmare. He didn't want to have the happy McKinnie family shoved down his throat, and he knew that when they got back to London he wouldn't fit in with them. He didn't know how to fit in with a family, and they had no reason to like him. In fact, they had more than enough reason not to, what with the whole knocking up their only daughter scenario. And yet, he agreed because he didn't want to hurt her, at least not yet. Sooner or later he would, he had no doubt, but he would give her as long as he possibly could before breaking her heart. He cared about her enough not to kick her when she was already on a precipice. 'I love you' he told her, and he meant it. He did love her, more than anything, and that absolutely terrified him.
ooooo
She sat on the sofa and watched him glowering at his medical journal. He had pretended to be happy but she wasn't stupid. She knew horror when she saw it and it had been written all over his face. He'd covered it well enough, and eventually he'd taken her in his arms and said all the right things, but he'd been trembling and she knew that her plans hadn't paid off. It had always been a gamble but she'd weighed it up carefully before she'd flushed her pill down the toilet. She loved Edward, and he loved her, of that she was certain, but she was also certain that he was holding something back. Edward was a man with no roots, and that bothered her. She couldn't do anything about his family, or lack of – she didn't know what the story there was, but she'd seen the darkness in his eyes when she'd asked and she didn't want to go there again – but she could do something about now. If their relationship was going to have a future then she needed all of him, and in order for that to happen he needed something to stop him blowing away wherever the breeze took him. She'd tried to be enough to anchor him herself but she'd always known that she wouldn't be. Even when their relationship moved from fuckbuddies to the golden couple of their class at Harvard, even when they'd moved in together and started making plans, there had been a part of him that she couldn't touch. The baby had been her last ditch attempt to give him the security that she was sure that he needed. If only he had a family, and a reason not to move around every few months, then surely that would be enough for him to stay with her. The problem was that now she had him, but for the last few hours since she told him he had been like a caged animal.
'What are you thinking?' she asked, hooking her legs over his knees and arching her aching back. She always wanted to know what was going through his head because he was a closed book, and right now what she really wanted to know was whether he was still going to be there in the morning.
'Thinking…' he echoed, as if the word was the difficult part of the question '… I was thinking, why don't we get married'
'Married?' that she hadn't seen coming. She had dreamed of it, for a long time, but his reaction to the news of the baby had scuppered any vestiges of hope that he would ever ask.
'Sure. If we're having a baby together, we probably should. I mean, we love each other and there's no good reason not to…'
'Well that's romantic' she rolled her eyes, but she already knew that she would say yes because it was all she wanted.
'Sorry' he looked stricken, and she immediately regretted her joke. This was a big deal for him – possibly bigger than the baby, because it was a decision that he'd taken. The baby was forced on him, but in asking her to marry him for whatever reason, he had tied himself to something. That was a massive thing for him.
'No, I'm sorry' she took his face in her hands and kissed him hard 'I love you and of course I'll marry you'
ooooo
He watched her sleep as he packed his bag. She was so happy; she'd spent all night on the phone to England, telling practically everybody that she knew that they were getting married and having a baby. She was brimming with excitement, and that made him hate himself all the more for what he was about to do. He didn't know why he'd asked her to marry him, probably because it was what she expected and he couldn't bear seeing disappointment in her eyes, but even as he'd done it he knew that the wedding would never happen. This was the final straw, the thing that would send him running for the Mexican border as fast as he could. She could have tonight being overjoyed, although he felt bad for the fact that she'd told everybody because it was going to make it worse for her, but tomorrow she would be heartbroken. His only saving grace was that he wouldn't be there to see it, and that in time he'd learn to convince himself that whatever they'd had had never been real. He would forget her, and their baby, and the fact that he'd hurt her, and she would move on. She would go back to her supportive, loving family, and she'd have the baby – or not, he didn't know – and she would find another man. One who deserved her, and wasn't going to break her heart like he would.
'Edward, what are you doing?' she opened her eyes and looked blearily at him. It was 5am, she should have been asleep for hours, and yet she had caught him red handed. 'Are you packing a bag?'
'What?' he glanced at the duffel in his hand and frantically tried to think of an excuse because the one thing he couldn't handle was seeing her crumble when she found out that he was gone. He needed his last memory of her to be a good one; he couldn't bear to see what happened afterwards. 'Oh, this. No, I just thought I'd head to the gym before work'
'Oh, okay' she managed a weary smile, her hand creeping over her mouth. For a second their eyes locked and then she sprang out of the bed and dashed for the bathroom, not even managing to slam the door before she fell to her knees. It was his moment; he could leave now, and he'd be long gone before it dawned on her that he hadn't gone to the gym. And yet he couldn't bring himself to do it. He emptied the contents of his bag back into the drawer, threw the bag back into the wardrobe and followed her into the bathroom to rub her back.