A/N: Good morning! I'm off to go play with Cris for a minute this morning. Hope you all have a lovely week. Oh, and… *hugs*
It was Siobhan who called Bella and Esme. She did it as a courtesy, thinking they likely wouldn't want to see her take all of Riley and Bree's things away. Edward and Carlisle found that out later. At the time, they were bordering on catatonic.
They'd gotten as far as the couch, but neither of them had been able to find the will to move for hours. Some very distant part of Edward recognized that he was in shock, but he didn't care. He couldn't care. His eyes and throat ached from crying and screaming. He was just… done. He felt nothing but a deep, raw ache at the center of his chest.
"Come on, sweethearts. Let's get you upstairs," Esme said. Edward couldn't see her. He really couldn't see anything, though he was vaguely aware Bella was in front of him, trying to pull him to his feet.
"I have to take care of Edward," Carlisle mumbled, obviously unaware his husband was right next to him.
"I have him this time," Bella said, grunting as she put Edward's arm around her shoulder. His legs felt wobbly, but he remained upright with her considerable help.
The women got them both upstairs. Bella figured out they could follow simple orders. She put a glass of water in Edward's hands, wrapped his fingers around it. She put something in his other hand. It was pill-shaped. Larger than ibuprofen. Sleeping pill?
Edward didn't care.
"Swallow it," Bella said, and Edward obeyed.
It felt like a rock in his throat. Edward closed his eyes. He really hoped it was a sleeping pill. He wanted to sleep through this. Whatever this was. He wanted to wake up when it was all over. There was no part of him that wanted to live this hellacious experience.
"Lay down," Bella said, her hand on his chest.
Again, Edward obeyed. He felt the shift of the bed, heard the rustle of blankets and Esme coaxing Carlisle beside him. He turned onto his side automatically and opened his eyes. Carlisle was watching him, but in a strange, remote way. Edward stared right back. He couldn't reach his emotions, couldn't feel the love he had for this man, but he knew he would rather be there with him than without.
It should have scared him that he was so detached he couldn't feel anything for his beloved husband. He wanted to be scared. He had to settle for the fact he could still breathe. That seemed to be all he was capable of.
"You can sleep," Esme said, caressing Carlisle's hair and then reaching across him to brush Edward's cheek with her fingertips. "We'll be here, okay?" They tucked them in and left the room, the door closing with a quiet snick.
Carlisle was still staring at him, though Edward could see his eyelids were getting as heavy as his felt. It seemed to take great effort, but Carlisle raised a hand. He took a deep, shuddering breath and began to trace Edward's features with a gentle touch. "Edward," he whispered.
Edward used the very last of his energy to close the distance between them. He draped his arm over Carlisle's waist and studied the details of his face.
He was afraid, Edward realized dimly. It was a fear so large it couldn't be contained by his body. It loomed over him, around him, threatening total consumption. He'd lost too much today, so much it had changed his perception of the world. He'd lost his children, his parents, and a whole life he'd cherished. If this coldness that had taken residence at the center of his chest stole his love for his husband…
Shuddering, Edward let his eyes drift closed. He had no fight left in him. With whatever tiny shred of hope he could muster, he wished that when he opened his eyes again, at least the love would be back, bringing some warmth to his frozen world.
~0~
They stayed in their room for five days straight with the blinds drawn. For the most part, they were silent. They stared off into space more often than not, but sometimes, they stared at each other. They sat on the small couch tucked into one corner of their room-Edward had to try hard to forget how many Saturdays Riley had sat there, babbling cheerfully while one of them dressed Bree for the day-and each watched the other. They touched-tentative brushes of hands over knees, arms, face. It felt better to be touching Carlisle. Not good; just better than not.
Bella and Esme made sure they were rarely alone. Someone was always there - Emmett and Rosalie, Garrett and Kate. They cooked-though neither Edward nor Carlisle ever ate much, just enough to keep their friends off their backs-and kept the room tidy. Emmett brought them bourbon once, and Edward drank too much of it far too quickly, driving himself to a drunken stupor. One of the women must have gotten angry about it-Carlisle had only looked at him sadly-because Emmett never brought them booze again.
Their friends seemed to have picked up on their need for silence. Occasionally, though, they tried to bridge the gap.
"There has to be something we can do," Esme had said the day after they lost their kids. "Some recourse."
"She's right. This is bullshit," Bella said. "There has to be some appeal process or you could even sue them."
Edward had slammed his palm against the wall. "There's nothing. We're fucked. There's no undoing this."
There really wasn't. As a private agency, the foster service had every right to do what they'd done. It was a source of bitter irony for Edward and Carlisle. They'd chosen a private agency because they had more resources, more funding, and an interest in protecting their assets-the foster parents. However, they also had the ability to simply terminate any relationship they didn't want to deal with. It was all over the documents they'd signed when they agreed to become foster parents.
It was true that they could have sued on a civil level. It was discrimination, after all. But they were never going to find a lawyer who was willing to defend a couple of homosexual sadomasochists. Even if they did, then what? They would have their private life dragged out in painful detail to be dissected and judged. Again. There was every chance that their employers and vanilla friends would discover their secret; who knew what would come of that? And for what? A civil court could only award them damages. Edward and Carlisle had money; they wanted their children back in their arms.
On top of all that, and probably no small contributor to the foster agency's decision, Edward's father was a lawyer. Not in the same county, and he didn't practice family law, but he was the type who knew people who knew people. He had influence, and he had made it clear he would fight to make sure Carlisle could never abuse an innocent child. That had come out during their meeting with Mr. Newton. If the agency decided to let this incident slide, Ed had promised to make sure the county got involved. If the county got involved, lawyers and judges would follow .
No. They were well and truly, irrevocably fucked. They had never had any rights to the children, and so they had no recourse at all. Riley and Bree were lost to them. It was done.
Thankfully, after that, no one tried to fix the problem. There was no fixing it. They simply had to figure out how to survive it. For himself, Edward was having trouble stringing two words together. He didn't know how to form a complex plan when he couldn't think straight.
On the fifth day, when Edward woke up, the quiet of the house bothered him. Their friends did leave them alone at night, so Edward expected the house to be quiet then. Now, though, it was the middle of the day.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Behind him, Carlisle's breaths were even. He was still asleep. Edward made his way to the door. He hesitated. He had no idea why he was so reluctant. A part of him expected to find the world had crumbled to some post-apocalyptic dystopia while he slept.
He turned the knob and stepped out into the open hallway for the first time in days.
The house was, indeed, empty. They were alone, but that wasn't what had Edward's heart seizing. Pain hit him so hard, his knees nearly buckled. He gripped the banister as he stared down over the open family room.
He had no idea how long he'd stood there, but he jumped when he felt a touch to the small of his back. Carlisle came to stand beside him, and his breath too was ragged as he looked down.
They had known, of course, that Siobhan had come to take Riley and Bree's things away. More than that, Edward had a vague memory of Esme or Bella telling them that they had put a few things away in the attic.
Apparently, what they'd meant by that was that they had taken all the things the foster agency didn't want-the toy chest, the children's playsets and furniture-and hidden them away. The house was neat and clean, back to the way it had looked before they had children. As if Riley and Bree had never been there at all.
Would it have been better if they'd left it all out? Would it be better if their playthings, never to be played with again, were there as a constant reminder of what they'd lost?
Either way, the emotion that swept over Edward then was too much. He had a crazy urge to claw it out from under his skin. He would have, if he'd thought it would do any good. He would have torn his flesh from his body in order not to feel this way.
He turned on his heel, ducking out of Carlisle's loose hold, and headed back to their room, to the bathroom. He found the keys to the cabinet-the foster agency required cleaning products and medications to be locked away-and unlocked the drawers with fingers that shook too hard to make the task quick.
"What are you doing?" Carlisle asked. It was almost strange to hear his voice after so long.
"I need... Dammit!" Edward had dropped the keys. He picked them up, clenching them tightly in his fist as he guided the right one into the lock. "Meds. I need fucking meds."
Two years before, Edward had broken his leg in a skiing accident. Doctors tended to prescribe other doctors with the good stuff, and so Edward's pain meds had been of the unnecessarily strong variety. He'd only used them a couple of times, and so he knew there was a mostly full bottle of pills in here somewhere.
Carlisle got to his knees beside him and took him by the wrists, stopping his desperate search. "No, Edward. No. Don't… don't do that."
Edward yanked his hands free and tried to go back to searching only to be stopped again. "Dammit. Cut it out. I just… I need one." They made him loopy. That was why he'd stopped taking them in the first place, but now, loopy sounded like heaven.
"Edward." Carlisle got his arms around Edward's chest and pulled him backward. They ended up in a heap on the floor, limbs tangled. Edward tried to scramble away, but his husband held on tighter.
"I don't want to feel this," Edward said. He recognized his voice was a thin whine, and he hated it. He hated how out of control he felt, and he couldn't stop shaking. After days of numbness, this was too much. All he wanted was to dull the edge. Was that really so much to ask?
"Please don't do this." Carlisle readjusted his grip. He straightened up enough to lean against the wall, pulling Edward back against his chest. He ducked his head, his lips close to Edward's ear. "Don't start down this path. Not even a step. You can't check out. Don't pull away from me. Please, baby. I need you."
Edward wanted to tell Carlisle he was being ridiculous and melodramatic. All he wanted was one pill, one time. Just once. The sight of the house had taken him by surprise, and it was too much. It wasn't as though he could be shocked all over again.
But he was smart enough to recognize what was happening here. Here he was, a grown man, struggling in his husband's arms with a desperation that bordered on violent. All for what? Because he needed a pill to dull his thoughts, his mental anguish? He wasn't even close to rational, and if he couldn't begin to deal with this crippling agony now, what made him think he was ever going to start?
Edward slumped, the fight going out of him. He leaned into Carlisle's embrace, his breathing ragged, on the verge of tears again. Carlisle readjusted his grip, no longer restraining, but holding. He rocked them, his cheek resting against Edward's.
Christ, they must have been a sight, huddled on the floor as they were. Neither one of them had shaved in five days. At Esme and Bella's prompting, they'd showered, but they hadn't tried to comb their hair. Edward couldn't remember if he'd brushed his teeth that morning or sometime the day before.
The rough scratch of Carlisle's beard tickled Edward's neck as his husband nuzzled him. Edward tilted his head back in response, and he felt Carlisle's lips at his skin. He shivered. He'd almost forgotten what intimacy felt like. He closed his eyes and sighed, concentrating for a minute not on the overwhelming grief that pummeled him, but on the soft, tender touch.
His husband, his love, was still here, wrapped around him. He remembered his far-away fear from days before, when he had looked at his beautiful husband and couldn't access the deep emotion he always felt for the man. Carlisle framed Edward's body with his, pressing chest to back, enclosing him in the parentheses of his legs, and kept his arms locked around him. Concentrating on that lifted the veil that had fallen between Edward and his love for this man. He hadn't lost it, he realized. It was still there, safe and warm-the only source of warmth in his otherwise cold, dead heart. It was small but vibrant, strong. Hiding, he realized, not damaged.
Edward lifted his arms to put his hands over Carlisle's. He turned his head so he could kiss his cheek.
"I have you, baby," Carlisle said. "I'm here."
"I'm here too," Edward said, kissing his lips. The words were a promise. Devastated though he was, he knew he had a choice. He could fight or give in.
Edward made his decision right then. He was going to fight. Tooth and nail, he was going to fight. He didn't know what he was fighting, but he knew that every reason he had to fight was wrapped around him, loving him. Carlisle was worth it. In the end, it was an easy choice. He would remember how to be a human being again, because this wonderful man was worth that, even if nothing else in the world was.
A/N: Hugs for everyone. *hugs hugs hugs*