Thank you to lucefatale, chellekathrynnn, Guest, Anita Simons, paninihead, and ninaaark who reviewed since the last chapter! I'm super excited for you to read this chapter and next! chellekathrynnn, I promise it'll all be explained as we go along!
Sorry about the wait for this one. I've had a couple of hectic days and started back at work this week, so I've been a bit all over the shop!
We're about to slow things down for a bit to follow Twilight through.
Twilight
Chapter 1
When Carys returned to work at the start of January, it was to find that Carlisle's subtle flirting on the day she'd left hadn't been an isolated event. It was as if something had changed when he knew she wanted to stay in town, almost as if her decision to stay had brought on his interest in exploring the boundaries of their friendship.
Carys didn't flatter herself that Carlisle had suddenly sat up one morning in bed with the realisation he wanted to date her, and so for the first two weeks of January she enjoyed the benefits of flirting with him without any real connotations attached.
Her distinct lack of realisation likely came from the fact that Carlisle hadn't made a single attempt at flirtation when they'd spoken on the phone over Christmas. And so when he continued in the same vein over those weeks, preferring to keep their long chats as they were before, she thought he must view it as a natural progression to their teasing each other.
Things began to change for her after the seventeenth of January 2005, when Isabella Swan moved back to Forks and set in motion a series of events which would change her life and the lives of Carys Vale and the Olympia coven forever.
On the eighteen of January, Isabella, who according to the very active rumour mill preferred to be called Bella, braved her first day at Forks High School.
On the morning of the nineteenth of January, Carys bumped into Carlisle in a state of worry verging on fear. He took her up on her offer of a quiet chat, and they agreed to meet up for a coffee after his shift to talk.
That evening, Carys walked quickly across the parking lot from her car to the door of the café and entered quickly as she rubbed her cold hands together.
Whatever was bothering Carlisle had shaken his usually calm facade, and Carys could completely understand why he'd suggested they meet outside town to discuss it. Neither of them had visited each other's house before, and she got the impression Carlisle wasn't too eager to set tongues wagging when he'd only recently freed himself from the clutches of the town gossips.
She let her eyes wander the near empty café for half a minute, then started forward when she caught sight of the back of Carlisle's head.
He was sat in a corner well away from the other occupants, most of whom looked to be hikers or passers-through. There was no one Carys could recognise, and she supposed again that that was why they were there in the first place.
"Carlisle," Carys greeted with a smile as she unwrapped her scarf from her neck and sat down in a chair opposite him. He looked especially pale, the dark circles under his eyes once more in stark relief, and Carys thought as she often did that he seemed to be running himself into the ground. Instead of asking him about it and being rebuffed as she had a few times before, she sighed audibly and blew on her numbed hands. "It's bloody freezing up here, isn't it?"
Carlisle smiled weakly, a testament to how he must be feeling. "Bloody freezing indeed." A moment later, as if to distract from his uncharacteristically morose tone, he added, "I think it's to do with the cold air over Lake Pleasant."
Carys looked her friend over as she unbuttoned her coat and laid it over the chair behind her, trying to think of a time she'd seen him look quite as lost in thought.
A short, balding man approached their table with a mug in one hand and a steaming pot of coffee in the other, and Carys thanked him quietly when he filled the mug and half-slammed it on the table in front of her. Some of the coffee sloshed onto the table as he did so and the man pointed at the napkin holder before he walked away, seemingly indifferent to whether or not the mess was cleaned up.
She was almost thankful for the rude and abrupt interruption as it seemed to draw them both out of their own heads. They reached for the napkins in unison, and their fingers brushed.
"You're as cold as I am!" Carys gasped, pulling her hand back a little.
"Colder." Carlisle murmured before he leaned back in his chair, dropping his hand to his lap as he stared at the table in silence.
Carys, confused by his reaction and not sure he was speaking to her as much as himself, set to mopping up the spill and then wrapped her hands around her steaming mug. "What's wrong?" she asked, expecting he would understand she meant more than why is your hand cold?
Carlisle seemed for a few moments as if he didn't want to answer, but then ran a hand through his hair as he sat up straight and brought his own mug closer to himself. Though it was still full, it gave off far less steam than Carys' and she began to wonder how long he'd been sitting there.
Finally, after what felt like minutes, Carlisle looked up at Carys as he steepled his fingers together and rested his elbows on the table. "Edward left," he said quietly, before explaining, "he's gone to Alaska."
"Is he staying with Tanya?" Carys questioned, recalling that he had cousins in Alaska.
"Yes," Carlisle smiled then, and the expression reached his eyes, "he's staying with Tanya and her siblings."
"For how long?" Carys asked, her head tilting as she tried to reconcile the information. From what she knew of Carlisle and Edward, admittedly from her conversations with the former, they seemed to have a close bond. She wasn't sure what could have happened to change that, but something must have for Carlisle to be reacting as he was.
"I don't know." Carlisle admitted as his hand twitched against the table top. He seemed to be battling with himself. He frowned as if in pain, and then reached across the table and slid his fingers over the back of Carys'.
When she instinctively turned her now warmed hand and wrapped it around his far colder one, his frown eased.
"He had an..." He paused, his attention held by their joined hands as he ran his thumb over the side of hers. "He had an issue with one of his classes and the school wouldn't let him change it. He left last night."
Carys tried to calm her breathing, hoped it might help slow her heartbeat. She wished she didn't have such an intense reaction to his touch when she was trying to support him.
"Why would he leave over a class?" She asked with a confused frown, watching Carlisle's face as he continued to stare at their hands. He pressed their palms together and linked his fingers with hers, and she felt as if he was clinging to the contact. "What was so bad that he couldn't stay?"
"Edward is..." He paused again as if searching for the right words. "Worried, that he might fail and that his failure would affect us all. He finds it difficult sometimes, to believe in himself as I do, to see how capable, how gifted he is."
"He thinks he might fail at something... So he's just left home...?" Carys couldn't understand. Her frown deepened as she tugged her hand lightly and uncurled her fingers from Carlisle's. "Why would he think failing a class would affect you all so badly? I thought you didn't mind how they did in school?"
She referenced a conversation they'd had months before when he'd mentioned how well Jasper had been doing in American History once his class had begun the Civil War, and how the change in how he'd applied himself had surprised his teacher.
Carlisle's face fell when their hands parted, and he seemed shocked when instead of pulling back completely she added her other hand and began to rub at his skin in an attempt to put some warmth back into him.
"You're still cold," she murmured in way of explanation, glancing at his hand. She slowed her movements a moment later when she realised there was something distinctly odd about the way his skin felt against hers, and it was her turn to gasp in shock as he wrenched his hand free and dropped it quickly back to his lap.
"I'm so-"
"I'm sorry."
Their voices intermingled as they spoke, Carys' falling off as she realised. Carlisle had continued through the word, shifting his chair back a little as if he was trying to add as much distance between them as he could.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-" Carlisle broke off, pressing his lips together as he looked out of the window. When he turned back to her, a look of mild desperation passed over his face. It was gone a second later, replaced with the genial calm he usually maintained. "I should go. My children will be wondering where I am." He pushed back his chair and stood in a smooth movement, reaching into his jacket and producing his wallet.
"Wait, what?" Carys stood with him and stepped around the end of the table. "Did I offend you or something?" She wasn't sure she'd ever had an interaction as confusing as this one.
"No," he assured her, shaking his head as he dropped a $10 bill onto their table, "I'm simply out of sorts, that's all."
Carys tried in vain for a few moments to catch Carlisle's eye before she realised he was actively avoiding eye contact as well as physical. "Carlisle? I don't understand what I've done, why're you..." She trailed off, not sure how to describe his strange behaviour.
He looked horrified as he reached a hand out between them, stopping himself before he touched her. "You've not done anything, Carys. It's me. I-" Carlisle's nostrils flared and he shook his head, "can't."
"You can't...?" Carys prompted when he fell silent.
"I'm worried," he told her quickly, not quite meeting her eye again, "about Edward. I need to know - I need to discuss things with him. He needs to know I'm focusing on him right now, but-" he laid a hand on Carys' shoulder and met her gaze again, staring down at her with an unreadable expression "-but he'll come back, I know it. He has to."
"You still haven't explained why he's gone in the first place," Carys complained, "or why you're you acting so strangely."
"I will," he promised as he stepped closer, his dark eyes pinning her to the spot, "I can't explain yet, but... This isn't the first time Edward's confusion, his..."
"Fear of failure," Carys offered.
Carlisle smiled gently. "Yes. He... He thinks he failed himself once before, and it haunts him to this day, though I know he'll get through, that he'll succeed at whatever he puts his mind to."
"But he doesn't?" Carys queried, her senses alert to every movement of his hand as Carlisle slowly withdrew his touch. "He thinks failing this class would mean failing the family?"
"Yes. I think he does. I have to be there for him, Carys. You understand, don't you? I have to wait until he comes back, show him I believe in him, that he can achieve anything he puts his mind to."
"Have you told him this?" She asked, and when Carlisle nodded, she added, "It's one class, wouldn't he be able to make up the grade somehow?"
Perhaps, she thought, Carlisle and Edward shared some flair for the dramatic. Though, she'd heard about Edward over the past year, that he excelled in classes. He wouldn't be the first, definitely not the last, teenager to have an inherent fear of disappointing themselves or their parents with a bad grade.
But to run away to Alaska? She just couldn't understand. Not simply that he left so abruptly, but that Carlisle would let him go. Over one potential bad grade.
Carlisle left Carys at the café with a repeat of his cryptic promise and an insistence that Edward wouldn't fail so her last question wouldn't need to be answered.
Carys spent the rest of the week in a state of ever increasing confusion. Whilst Carlisle wasn't exactly distant over that time, his subtle form of flirting had ended abruptly, and they'd only spoken on the phone twice. The more she thought about their conversation, the less she thought she understood what had happened between them.
Three things made less sense than anything else. What had led to Edward's overwhelming fear of failure? What was it about Carlisle's hand that she'd noticed? And what had he really meant by I can't?
Carys received an answer to one of her three questions that Sunday, when Monica had to cut their trip to the bookshop short because she was called into work, and enlisted Carys to deliver Sarah's forgotten lunch.
A/N: poor Carlisle.
Edit: I promise the next chapter will have everyone happy - it has me that way at least.
