So I got the year wrong last chapter, it should have been 2006, not 2005. I've changed that now. Sorry everyone!

Gigantic thanks to Anita Simons, eeeeaud, and lovelygiselle123 for your reviews - I've replied to them all today (and yorrusorra who I thanked last time as well)!

Chapter 6 - Forks, Late November 2003

Carys had the distinct feeling she was being watched.

Again.

It had started a week after her tour of Forks Community Hospital, on the day she'd started working there. At least, that's when she'd noticed it - she could have no idea that she'd been watched by Alice Cullen from the moment she'd decided to move to the town. Or, that Alice was currently locked in a battle of wills with her family over whether or not Carys would one day join them.

So, to Carys, it had started on her first day at work.

It was unnerving, to say the least, she thought to herself as she held her book close to her chest and glanced about the hallway nervously.

It seemed to happen most often when she was leaving the admin office to deliver something or was heading to the reception, or making a trip to the staffroom for lunch as she currently was.

Though she couldn't describe the feeling exactly, it was as if she was being observed or... Or well, frankly she'd started to imagine it was how a deer might feel being stalked by a hunter.

Honestly, it had been the only blight on her otherwise happy transition to work.

Everything had been smoother than she'd thought it would be since she'd arrived in Forks, but the ease of sorting out her employment details with the hospital had felt a little too smooth. She hadn't dwelt on it before the watching, but now she occasionally found herself with a fanciful notion that someone had particularly wanted her to be working there, and as soon as possible.

Carys' colleagues had all been more than happy to show her the ropes and help her if she forgot anything, but it had also turned out quite quickly that the whole department was as prone to gossip as Sandra was and so she'd tried to stop herself from letting too much of her nervousness show. When it had, they'd thought it was nothing more than first-month skittishness and she'd been unwilling to dissuade them of the notion in case she ended up being their topic for the week again.

Still. She felt as if she was going slightly mad. She couldn't remember being this on edge before.

It had got to the point that she'd spent the night before considering running back to London after all.

It felt a bit too... Midsommer Murder-ey for her liking.

"... leaving... getting nervous... might... just talk to..." Carys rounded the corner and stopped dead in her tracks as her heart skipped a beat. She'd been able to overhear snippets of a bell-like voice as she'd approached the turn so had expected people would be standing there, but seeing that Dr Cullen was the other half of the conversation managed to take her breath away.

She wondered if she'd ever get used to the sight as she spared a brief glance at the small dark-haired figure beside him and bit her lips together to stop herself from smiling at the way it looked like the calm doctor was in the middle of being put in his place.

Carys' eyes dropped and she let out a gasp when the two predictably turned to see who had interrupted their conversation, and she tried to ignore the intense feeling which rolled through her when she felt his eyes on her.

If this was what all the other women in the hospital felt whenever they came in contact with Dr Cullen, she could completely understand their obsession with him.

Forcing her legs to move and gripping her book harder to stop her hands from trembling, she kept her eyes down as she headed quickly to the staff room on the other side of the wide hallway. When she began to pass the pair, she was sure she could feel her heart beating out of her chest.

"Miss Vale," Dr Cullen murmured in a strange tone. It was as if he was somehow caressing the words rather than speaking them. It surprised her to realise he sounded almost... English, but she knew that couldn't be the case after what Sarah had told her the week before.

Perhaps he'd spent some time there when he was young enough to adopt the accent, and it came out more when speaking to an English person? But Carys had yet to utter a word this time.

To cover her musings, she smiled and nodded in Dr Cullen's direction, a move that she was sure made her look somehow like a bobble-head. She kicked herself.

"Doctor Cullen," she replied, a moment too late for politeness.

"Hello there!" The bell-like voice rang through the otherwise near-silent hallway.

Carys paused, turned, and thanked whichever god was looking down on her that the beautiful pair couldn't hear how fast her heart was beating at that moment as she forced a smile to her face. Then gulped. Then checked the hallway.

"Erm... That was... That was to me, right?" She asked quietly, pointing at her chest in case they hadn't heard her with the few feet between them. The tiny woman grinned, showing off a pair of perfectly straight and gleamingly white teeth that Carys was surprised by her envy for.

For a split second, Carys wondered if this woman - because now she could properly see her, she felt as if her height and size probably made her appear younger than she was at first glance - might be Dr Cullen's secret girlfriend, the one she'd heard about yesterday in the office. And that could mean she was calling her back to tell her that if she spoke to anyone about seeing them together, she'd be sorry.

Then, as if Carys' face had given her fear away, the grin softened slightly and lost the mildly threatening edge.

"Of course I was! Who else would I be talking to?" The small woman asked with a tinkling laugh, throwing her arms out as she pirouetted to emphasise the emptiness of the hall.

It was saying something that she didn't have the nerve to look at Dr Cullen - she wasn't sure she would actually be able to speak if she did, she was having trouble as it was. "Hi, it's nice to meet you."

Hi, it's nice to meet you? Great. What if she's about to murder you, and those are your last words?

"It is very nice to meet you too," the pixie-haired woman announced, her grin widening again as she skipped across to hold out a hand to Carys.

This is how I die. Carys thought to herself before dismissing the thought as she took the other woman's surprisingly cold hand. She could definitely take her. Just... As long as Dr Cullen didn't get involved. She'd probably just stay rooted to the spot as she met her end if he did.

"Your name is... Miss Vale?"

"Carys - Carys Vale," Carys replied in a strangled tone.

"Alice!" The woman replied, announcing herself with aplomb. "Don't worry, I don't bite." Alice shook her head, lowering her voice and leaning in with a wink as she said the last.

Well, now I feel safe! Carys thought sarcastically as their hands parted.

"Alice!" Dr Cullen admonished, and Alice pulled away with a vaguely apologetic look on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Sorry. You just look a bit like you've seen a ghost is all," Alice told her, shrugging elegantly. Carys hadn't known shrugs could be elegant, but she learned something new every day.

"Sorry," Carys echoed, trying to take a deep breath through tight lungs. "I'm just a bit on edge is all... Long day," she added when she caught sight of Dr Cullen's eyes widening in her peripheral vision. She was hardly going to tell two perfect strangers that she felt like she was being hunted, in a hospital of all places, or that it had led her to momentarily feel threatened by one of them.

Alice cocked her head to the side and spared a speaking glance over her shoulder at Dr Cullen before she turned back and tempered her smile once again, dark eyes twinkling mischievously. "Don't worry about it. Everyone gets that at first, don't they Carlisle?" She didn't so much as look in the doctor's direction as she spoke. "When we came here, Carlisle was scared he was going to get kidnapped by a bunch of nurses and forced to do their bidding!" Her laugh was as infectious as Dr Cullen's face was horrified. "It's just the gossips, they like to see what you're up to when you're new."

Carys sighed audibly and tipped her head back as she chuckled breathlessly in relief.

"Oh thank God-in-heaven," she said as she turned to take in both Alice and Carlisle with a grateful shake of her head. "I felt like I was being hunted or something. I have a newfound understanding of how a deer must feel in its last moments!"

Alice seemed to find Carys' description incredibly funny and laughed heartily for a full minute longer than Carys.

"Oh my! That's amazing! Isn't it Carlisle?" She did spare Dr Cullen a look then, but by the time Carys followed Alice's gaze, he seemed to be studiously disinterested in the woman's comment. "Emmett will love that. You don't mind if I tell him, do you?"

Carys' lips twisted and she clutched her book tighter as she shook her head awkwardly, wondering who Emmett was.

The group was silent for long seconds, and Carys was just thinking about how to excuse herself when she thought again how close Alice and Carlisle seemed to be, but that it was a far cry from the sort of closeness you'd get from a relationship. And Alice had mentioned "when we got here," so more likely daughter? If so, her age estimations were off by a few years at least and she should have taken the petite frame at face value.

Carys tried to think if anyone had told her Dr Cullen's kids' names or ages, but she didn't think anyone had.

"So..." Carys began. Alice's head cocked to the side and Dr Cullen's eyes seemed to light up, lips tipping up at the corners at the suggestion their conversation would continue. "You're Doctor Cullen's... Daughter...?"

Questioning silence met her question. "I mean-" Carys spoke quickly, holding a hand out and shaking her head to show she didn't mean anything by it if she was wrong and the small woman was his girlfriend after all. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest - I mean, I just - are you not-?"

"I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, Miss Vale," Dr Cullen spoke slowly, eyes tightening a little in confusion. Part of her screamed not to explain herself, but she couldn't seem to stop herself a moment later when she fell headfirst into Dr Cullen's eyes.

"You're just both... Very beautiful, is all... I thought before that perhaps she was your secret gir-"

"No."

"No!"

Dr Cullen's deeper voice came to her a millisecond before Alice's tinkling one. Whilst his tone was horrified and vehement in denial, it was far quieter than Alice's, who jumped forward to take Carys firmly by the upper arms.

"No?" Carys wasn't entirely sure she was completely understanding what was happening in the conversation either at this stage, eyes still locked onto Dr Cullen's golden ones. Were they lighter than last time? Her brain felt fuzzy.

The "no!"s of the pair were repeated, far more forcefully this time, and Carys' mind finally caught up with her.

"-she's my daughter."

"-he's my father!"

Carys' eyes widened more than she thought they ever had before as she looked down into Alice Cullen's far darker pair. Her stomach bottomed out and chills racked her. She felt like she'd just made the worst mistake of her life.

"Oh my... And I just... Oh god. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. Oh god, I'm so sorry! I'm just... I'm going to go die now. I'm so sorry. And I said you were beaut- I'm so sorry."

Carys pulled herself away from Alice's hold, not noticing that it was harder to do than it should have been considering their considerable difference in height and size, and turned swiftly away, half-running straight past the staff-room and towards the back-exit of the hospital.

Tinkling laughter verging on manic followed her, and she was almost sure she heard "-so cute when she's scared! Can I keep her yet?", but it must have been her imagination.

She'd never be able to look at him again. Or her. Or anyone named Cullen, or anyone with the as of yet unknown surnames of his foster children.

Oh god! What possessed her to make such a terrible mistake!? How did she think the woman was Dr Cullen's supposed secret girlfriend!? And what possessed her to go all starry-eyed and blurt out her mistake in the first place?

And why in hell had she told them they were beautiful!?

She hid behind the hospital in case Alice Cullen left any time soon, and by the time she'd composed herself, her lunch hour was over.

Doubling back, she swore at herself when she realised she'd never talk to Dr Cullen again. Never. Ever. Nope. Wasn't going to happen. Either she'd die of embarrassment at the mere thought of it long before it happened, or he'd continue to avoid her out of horror for the rest of her one to two years in Forks.

Nope. She'd well and truly put her foot in it.


As it turned out, it would be less than a month before their paths would cross again, and that time-frame in itself would be a feat of self-control unlike any Carlisle could remember. It was a need so far removed from his days of blood-lust.

In the end, it was a feat he only achieved by recalling the look of loneliness and depression on his son's face the evening after he'd first set eyes on Carys Vale.

The evening when Carlisle and his family had, after hours of debate, voted it was best for the coven as a whole that Carlisle leave her well alone - for now, at the very least.

It had been a vote from which Carlisle had abstained. A vote which had seen Alice's hand alone raised in favour of the woman who possessed a name meaning love and farewell.

Love and loss.

How poetic, he had thought many times since.

Carlisle felt sure Jasper and Edward were the only family members privy to the true depth of his pain since that evening. They also happened to be the two he most specifically sought to protect, and so it had become an open secret between them.

One day, he believed whole-heartedly, Edward would find his other half - someone who would bring him to life in the way Alice and Jasper and Rosalie and Emmett had. He was equally sure Jasper would eventually learn to trust in himself as Carlisle and Alice did.

He could only hope Alice's predictions for him were correct despite his absence in Carys' life.

Could only hope that Edward found his mate before Carlisle's was lost to him. Could only hope he had the strength to wait, to limit the interactions. To refrain from watching her at the hospital whenever he could.

That he'd have the strength to treat her as he would a medicine - to prescribe himself what he needed, and nothing more.

Remembering how she found him beautiful was of great help in those first few weeks.

A/N: Ahh, Carlisle, you wonderfully (quietly and lovingly) dramatic man. Alice, you scary sweetheart. Carys, you poor thing - I'm kind of looking forward to her finding out how "young" Alice is in 2003 so she can die from shame, but I'm being a bit evil I think.

I promise we'll understand the summary from the next chapter onwards. Who else wanted to stuff a sock in Carys' mouth to stop her? - I know they say kill your darlings, but...