A section of this chapter comes straight from New Moon. I've taken parts before, but this speech is a very long one, so I just want to reiterate, I don't own the Twilight saga, I just think Carlisle's story shouldn't be skipped over in this chapter (though, I've edited it here and there).
Long chapter ahead... Sorry...
Thanks will now be at the bottom of chapters!
Chapter 3
They struggled for a few moments longer, before Carlisle, dodging out of the way of Jasper's snapping teeth, gripped the nape of his son's neck and whispered something in his ear.
He continued on until he saw a reaction from him.
Something sparked in the depths of Jasper's eyes. It was gone in a flash, but it was enough for Carlisle. His lips blurred as he spoke, and though Jasper continued to fight and snarl, though Emmett held him tighter still and forced his arms further away from Carlisle, something had changed.
Carlisle, the only vampire in the room who remained unaffected by the blood that pulsed from Bella's outstretched arm, pulled away from his son, his authoritative gaze sweeping over the room before he focused on Emmett and Rosalie and addressed them.
"Emmett, Rose, take Jasper outside."
Emmett nodded, his face grim.
"Come on, Jasper, let's get you out of here, okay?"
With Carlisle no longer distracting him with his calm words of comfort, Jasper's struggle was renewed. He twisted in Emmett's arms, baring his teeth, the unmistakable loss of control somehow more evident now after the brief flicker of life they'd glimpsed. In his feral state, he reared, snarling, desperate to sink his teeth into his captor.
Edward released him, darting across the room and wheeling around to crouch protectively before Bella. A low, deep growl ripped from his throat, slipping from between clenched teeth.
Carys gasped, remembering the way in which the Nomads had reacted to Edward's protective nature months before, and the way his proximity to Bella's blood would affect him and therefore his brother. Edward barely glanced in her direction, but when he did, what she saw in his eyes frightened her more than Jasper.
Anger. Pain. Fear. Desperation. Hunger.
Carlisle held an arm out behind him, his palm flat, fingers extended towards Carys. It gave her some form of peace and assurance, though she wondered how a simple gesture of silent support could affect her in such a way when Carlisle stood so close to danger. The pain that continued to burn her back and shoulders threatened to overwhelm her, but she grasped the distraction and gritted her teeth.
Now was not the time to draw anyone's attention.
After Jasper and Bella were safe, she could think about herself.
Carys had to trust, as Carlisle did, that Emmett and Rosalie, who stepped in front of Jasper and sent the smug look of a sister who'd been proven entirely correct in Edward's direction, could and would handle the situation.
More than trusting Carlisle, she believed in Jasper. In that momentary flicker in his eyes. In the way he spent each and every day battling against his lust for human blood; in the way he battled his family's bloodlust at that moment as much as his own.
Carlisle was right. He needed to be out of the house. Away from the overwhelming scent of Bella's blood, and the way it affected Edward, the way it caused Esme, Alice, Emmett, and Rosalie to hold their breath where they could and cover their faces where they couldn't.
Emmett and Rosalie all but dragged Jasper from the house, dodging out of the way of his teeth.
Esme held the door open for them, her free hand pressed tightly across her face, covering her nose and mouth. Her cry of, "I'm so sorry, Bella," before she followed them out of the house was accompanied by an expression of such shame that it wrenched Carys' heart.
"Darling." Carlisle was suddenly crouched in front of her, one cold hand grasping hers. Carys tried to squeeze back, but her grip was too lax. He pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek and tried again. "Darling, are you hurt?"
Carys glanced at Edward, but he was far too preoccupied to focus on her.
She shook her head.
Carlisle didn't believe her for a moment. "Where?" He whispered in her ear urgently.
"I'm fine," Carys breathed, unsure that she could raise her voice even if they weren't keeping their voices low. "Bella needs you. Go. Don't be silly, she's bleeding."
Carlisle spared Bella a look over his shoulder and grimaced. "You're not cut-"
"Carlisle." Carys laid one shaking palm against his cheek and stared into his dark eyes. "I promise you can focus on me as much as you like, once Bella's okay."
He nodded once. A second later, he was kneeling beside Bella, head bowed as he examined the wound to her arm. Bella was clearly struggling with her shock, trying valiantly to compose herself whilst the tension that hummed from Edward's frame began to ease. Alice appeared by Carlisle's side, offering him a towel to stem the flow of blood. He refused it, shaking his head.
"Too much glass in the wound," he explained, reaching across to the table to rip a long, thin strap from the bottom of the white tablecloth. His movements were quick, but by the time he'd secured the makeshift tourniquet around Bella's arm, the ends had trailed and were blotched and darkened with her blood.
Carys looked away, pushing back to sit on her heels; she rolled her shoulders and bit her lip against the pain.
She could hear Carlisle offering to take Bella to the hospital in the background when Alice's terrified face appeared before her.
"Mom? Did I hurt you?" Alice asked rapidly, a shrill whine in her already high voice. "I did, didn't I? I tried to push you down, but-"
"No," Carys assured her, forcing herself to keep her expression neutral as she reached up and lightly tousled Alice's short hair. "Well, not much, anyway," she added with a smile when Alice appeared about as convinced as Carlisle had.
They watched as Edward carried Bella to the kitchen, Carlisle supporting her arm whilst they hurried across the room, and Alice released her, darting up the stairs and returning in a flash and disappearing into the kitchen ahead of them, Carlisle's black bag in her hands.
Left completely alone, Carys stared around the room and struggled not to laugh.
She thought she'd once read something about shock and laughter, but couldn't quite work out where.
That would annoy her.
In fact, it already annoyed her.
Was that part of shock as well?
Or was it grief?
Carys let out a grunt and focused on the rising need to confirm the source.
Leaning into the compulsion, she used it to distract her enough that she could take a deep breath and shove herself up to her feet without screaming. Something pulled in her side, and she was half sure she could hear it snap as much as she could feel it, a sharp, excruciating pain.
Gritting her teeth and curling her toes, she felt around her torso as best she could; she was blinded again when she gingerly tested the ribs on her right side.
She definitely wasn't laughing now.
It took her two minutes to make her way slowly, painfully, into the kitchen, and by the time she made it, Carlisle and Bella were alone in the room.
"Where's Edward?" Carys asked as casually as she could, avoiding Carlisle's eye as she sped up a little and crossed to the kettle she'd bought when Esme had worried about redoing the kitchen again for a hot water tap.
Potentially broken ribs called for tea, she reckoned.
"We ran him out," Bella explained, lifting her head and keeping her face turned as far away from her injured arm as she could. "Well, I did..., I ran Alice out too..."
"It wasn't your fault," Carlisle told her as if reiterating an earlier point. "Carys?"
"Yeah?"
Carlisle pointed at the counter beside the kettle, where three tablets laid next to a glass of water and two empty mugs. Worry flashed in his eyes. "Codeine and asprin. Please, take them."
"I'm fine, completely fine," Carys argued softly, with a smile for Bella. She supposed he might have heard the snap. Perhaps he was simply hedging his bets.
The moment Bella began to stare up at Carlisle once again, Carys met his eye and nodded, raising the tablets to her lips and swallowing them dry.
Carys' gaze was drawn to Carlisle's actions, and her stomach roiled to see the extent of Bella's wound, highlighted by the glare of a small powerful lamp. Carys could understand why Bella was trying not to look, but likewise why she was almost unable to look away. It wasn't bleeding as much as it had been, but shards of glass glittered and twinkled in the light, highlighting the parts of Bella's forearm that she thought they could all agree should have been forever hidden by at least a few layers of skin.
Bella and Carlisle returned to the conversation they'd been having before she entered the room, and Carys tore her gaze away to flick the kettle on and use her one fully mobile arm to drop tea bags into the mugs.
"To answer your question," Carlisle was saying, "years and years of practice. I barely notice the scent anymore."
Of course, the subject was blood.
"D'you think it would be harder?" Bella asked after a moment's silence. "If you took a vacation from the hospital for a long time? If you weren't around blood or anything?"
Carys' ears perked up.
"Maybe?" Carlisle responded casually. "I've never felt the need for an extended holiday," he added, and Carys turned her head to see the large smile that split his face. "I enjoy my work too much-" He broke off and stilled for a fraction of a moment before he met Carys' eye.
She flashed a smile and turned back to the sugar. So, no year travelling around the world then. She'd suspected as much.
Bella hadn't noticed the interaction, it'd been brief, and conducted over her head; the steady tinkle of glass hitting expensive china returned.
"What is it that you enjoy?"
"Hmm...," Carlisle pondered aloud. "I think the part I enjoy the most is when my... Enhanced abilities let me save someone who otherwise would have been lost. It's strangely pleasant knowing that, that thanks to what I can do, some people's lives are better... Better, simply because I exist. Even the sense of smell is a useful diagnostic tool at times." He was smiling as he spoke, it lifted his voice.
The tinkling ceased by the time the kettle clicked; Carys looked over to see he was retrieving supplies from his bag, and Bella's head lifted again, turning as best she could to see Carys.
"Tea?" Carys offered, lifting a mug and forcing a smile to cover her pain.
"No thanks, but thank you," Bella replied softly through a light wince. When Carys poured the boiling water into the two cups, she added, "I'm really fine for now."
Carys maintained her grin, by now actively fighting with herself not to grimace when her ribs protested another move.
Carlisle captured Bella's attention once again.
"I'm afraid that mug is for me," he explained with a bright smile for Carys. "Carys and I were friends long before our relationship turned to romance. During that time, I had one thing to connect us," he glanced down at Bella and raised his eyebrows. "By the time I convinced her to-"
"You convinced me?!"
"Alright, by the time things changed, I'd become so used to pretending to survive on coffee that it soothes me as much to hold one as it does for Carys to drink it."
Carys huffed, rolling her eyes in what she hoped was a teasing manner, and slowly slid the mug within his reach.
"How long were you friends before you got together?" Bella asked, adjusting in her seat.
Carys made things easier for her by slowly crossing the room to stand beside Carlisle, who pulled a chair out for her and eased her down into it.
"Friends? A year maybe?" Carys wondered. Carlisle would likely know to the hour, but he'd returned his focus to Bella's arm for the time being. "We knew each other for... Ooh, maybe... Fifteen months, I think, before he asked me out on a date." Carys searched Bella's face and realised she was more making polite conversation to include her than anything else. "Pretend I'm not here-"
"A little difficult to do," Carlisle murmured.
"Do you want me to get Esme to-"
Carlisle held his hands up in defeat.
"Please, Bella, I think Carys wants us to continue our conversation," he indulged.
"Well..." Bella glanced at Carys again, and she nodded her encouragement, sighing a little as the pain medication started to kick in. It was fast acting, she'd give it that. "It's just," Bella addressed Carlisle, keeping her eyes on his face and not on the way he began to stitch her skin. "You try very hard to make up for something that was never your fault... What I mean is, it's not like you asked for this. You didn't choose this kind of life, and yet you have to work so hard to be good."
Carlisle concentrated on tightening a stitch and frowned lightly. "I don't know that I'm making up for anything," he disagreed. "As with everything in life, I simply had to decide what to do with what I was given."
"That makes it sound too easy," Bella countered.
"There." Carlisle ignored the comment and checked his handiwork, a long line of perfect stitches along her forearm, and announced she was, "All done." He poured a thick brown strong-smelling liquid that made Carys think of TCP onto a Q-tip and ran it over the operation site, staining Bella's pale white skin.
"In the beginning though?" Bella pressed whilst he taped gauze over the wound as a second line of defence against infection. "Why did you even think to try a different way than the obvious one?"
"You have met Carlisle before?" Carys offered, blinking slowly.
Carlisle reserved his small smile for Bella, but seemed to agree with the sentiment of Carys' question. "And hasn't Edward told you this story already?"
Bella nodded quickly, points of colour brightening her otherwise too-pale face. "Yes, he has, but... Well, I'm trying to understand what you were thinking..."
Carlisle sighed, his expression turning serious as he thought over his reply and began to disinfect the tabletop. Carys could easily understand why he'd thought of it and was mildly surprised Bella couldn't. It was the same reason Edward and the others had followed him when he'd changed or adopted them - Carlisle was too compassionate to bear hurting, let alone killing, another person...
Though, she knew he continued to regret his actions before his change.
"You know my father was a clergyman," Carlisle mused as he continued to carefully rub down the table, repeating his actions until he was sure no trace of blood was left. "He had a rather-," he glanced in Carys' direction, "-harsh view of the world, which I was already beginning to question by the time I changed." He gathered together all the dirty gauze and dropped them over the splintered crystal he'd removed from Bella's wound.
Harsh was an understatement.
Bella jumped when Carlisle lit a match and threw it lightly into the bowl, igniting the alcohol-soaked contents.
"Sorry... That ought to do it," Carlisle apologised, glancing over the area again. When he was sure, he nodded and leaned his hip against the table.
Carys lifted her mug and took a sip, groaning when she realised she'd forgot the sugar for her own cup. Carlisle watched her for any signs of discomfort when she stood and headed for the sugar pot, but the tablets he'd bade her take had helped enough that she could more than bear the pain.
"So...," he continued distractedly; he shook himself and looked down to Bella again. "Sorry, yes, so I didn't agree with my father's particular brand of faith-" Carys scoffed and Carlisle flashed a smile. Now that was the understatement of the century. "-but never, in the nearly four hundred years since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or another. Not even the reflection in the mirror."
They fell into an easy silence, and Carlisle grinned for a moment when he met Carys' eye and she whispered that he was, "So... Bloody... Old..."
"Younger than Charles the Second - sorry, Bella, I imagine this can all seem a little strange, coming from a vampire - yes, Carys, especially one who missed out on tea."
Carys grinned and faced the sugar pot again, adding the first of four teaspoons to her tea. A clever cup of tea could solve all the problems in the world, but it could only do that if you made it to fit the occasion. Shock called for sugar.
Carlisle sighed. "Regardless of it all, I'm hoping that there's still a point to this life, even for us. It's a long shot, I'll admit," he continued, offhand. "By all accounts, we're damned regardless, but I think, perhaps, finding our soulmates suggests some point to it all. I hope, maybe foolishly, that we'll get some measure of credit for trying to save our souls at the very least."
"I don't think that's foolish," Bella mumbled from her position behind Carys. "And I don't think anyone else would, either."
"Actually, you're the very first one to agree with me."
Carys raised her eyebrows. Her nostrils flared as she let out a sharp disappointed breath, turning her back on Carlisle, to face the sink. Bella was the first one to agree? That was interesting. Very. Interesting
"Apart from Carys," Carlisle added quickly, obviously chagrined and attempting to salvage his position with her. "She believes, if there is a God, I must have made up for my sins by now."
"But the rest of them don't feel the same?" Bella asked, clearly surprised. She must have been thinking of Edward when she asked, that would be the obvious direction of her thoughts.
Carys wasn't sure she wanted to stay for the rest of the clearly private conversation, and was already thinking about how easy it would be to slip out of the room when Carlisle picked up the thread Bella had laid for him.
"Edward's with me up to a point, but..." He collected his thoughts, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft and wistful. "He thinks that if God and heaven exist, then... So does hell. But he equally doesn't believe there's an afterlife for our kind. If one does exist, he thinks it would be hell, automatically and without question. And I must admit I wondered if he wasn't right for a while... Ah, the hell part," he clarified quickly. "You see, he thinks we've lost our souls completely. That there's no chance of redemption."
Bella gasped. "That's the real problem, isn't it? That's why he's being so difficult about me."
About her? Carys thought, frowning, her interest piqued, wondering if Bella and Edward had come to some sort of plan for the future as she and Carlisle had.
She kicked herself. Of course, they would have.
"I look at my son," Carlisle reflected slowly. "His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him." The same brightness that Carys wished Edward might show to others as often as he showed it to Carlisle. "And it only fuels that hope, that faith, more than ever. How could there not be more for one such as Edward?"
"But if I believed as he does...?" Bella questioned.
"If you believed as he did, could you take away his soul?"
Carys pondered his words. She wasn't sure she believed in an afterlife; didn't believe in a God as far as she could tell. That didn't mean she could ever agree with Edward. It was why she'd tried so often to work on Carlisle's view of his soul, to revert it back to what he believed before - that even if he believed he'd damned himself further by changing the others, he'd made up for it by the life he'd carved out for himself.
Carys sipped her tea and settled in for the long haul. Her side twinged when she turned around, but it was little more than a strong discomfort at this stage.
"You see the problem," Bella complained stubbornly, with a shake of her head.
Carlisle sighed again and ran a hand through his hair.
"It's my choice," Bella insisted.
"It's his, too." Carlisle held up his hand when Bella sat forward and attempted to argue. "It's his choice as to whether he's responsible for doing that to you."
"He's not the only one able to do it," Bella countered.
Carys' jaw firmed, her eyes narrowing in suspicion at the casual appeal. Whilst she agreed that it was Bella's choice, she disagreed that that choice should involve potentially driving a wedge between Carlisle and his son. If Bella and Edward decided to go for that, then it would be something discuss with him, in her eyes, anyway.
"Oh, no!" Carlisle laughed, lightening the mood and removing a little of the tension he saw in Carys' face. "You're going to have to work this out with him, Bella." He sighed then, and moved his gaze to the window, staring unseeing into the darkness beyond. "That's the one part I can never be sure of. I think, in most other ways, that I've done the best I could with what I had to work with... But was it right to doom the others to this life? I can't decide..." After a couple of moments where a thoughtful silence descended on the room, he smiled briefly, a humourless expression. "I've been told to think of it as saving them, rather than dooming them, but it's not always all that easy to think in that way...
"It was Edward's mother who made up my mind," he whispered, drawing Carys back across the room to take a seat opposite Bella. He'd not told her that before.
"His mother?" Bella prompted softly, saving Carys from having to ask.
"Yes." Carlisle sighed again, his expression wistful. "Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Masen. His father, Edward Senior, never regained consciousness in the hospital. He died in the first wave of influenza... But Elizabeth? She was alert almost to the end." His brows lifted as he returned to a hundred years before. "Edward looks a great deal like her, she had that same strange bronze shade to her hair, and her eyes were the exact shade of green his were."
"His eyes were green?" Bella repeated.
"Yes... Elizabeth worried obsessively over her son. She actually hurt her own chances of survival trying to nurse him from her sickbed... I'd expected he would go first - he was so much worse off than she was, you see. But when the end came for her, it was quick. Very quick. It was just after sunset, and I'd arrived to relieve the doctors who'd been working during the day. That was a hard time to pretend - there was so much work to be done, and I had no need of rest. How I hated to go back to my house, to hide in the dark and pretend to sleep while so many were dying."
Carys lowered her gaze to her cup and blinked back tears. Not only for the way he must have felt, but for the lack of comfort he had been forced to endure. The loneliness that laced his tone with pain she could barely understand the strength of. She wished she could take that pain away from him as he'd taken the pain she'd felt from her, but it would always remain just as strongly for him, even though they would spend eternity together.
"I went to check Elizabeth and her son first. I'd grown attached - which is always a dangerous thing to do considering the fragile nature of humans. I could see at once that she'd taken a bad turn. The fever was raging out of control; her body was too weak to fight anymore. She didn't look weak, though, when she glared up at me from her cot. 'Save him!' she commanded hoarsely, the best her throat could manage.
"'I'll do everything in my power,' I promised her, taking her hand. The fever was so high, she probably couldn't even tell how unnaturally cold mine felt. Everything felt cold to her skin. 'You must,' she insisted, clutching at my hand with enough strength that I wondered if she wouldn't pull through the crisis after all. Her eyes were hard, like emeralds. 'You must do everything in your power. What others cannot do, that is what you must do for my Edward.' " He recalled, holding a hand out, as if he remained in that room, clutching her hand. "It frightened me... She looked at me with those piercing eyes, and, for one instant, I felt certain that she knew my secret.
"Then the fever overwhelmed her, and she never regained consciousness. She died within an hour of making her demand. I'd spent decades considering the idea of creating a companion for myself. Just one other creature who could really know me, rather than what I pretended to be. But I could never justify it to myself - doing what had been done to me.
"There Edward lay, dying. It was clear that he had only hours left. Beside him, his mother, her face somehow not yet peaceful, not even in death."
Carys rubbed at her aching heart and fought a fresh onslaught of tears when she saw the venom filling his eyes. She glanced at Bella, and found her as lost to the preceding century as Carlisle was. For once, she wished he wasn't such an exceptional story-teller.
"Elizabeth's words echoed in my head," he continued on after a short pause. "How could she guess what I could do? Could anyone really want that for her son? I looked at Edward, and... And sick as he was, he was still beautiful... There was something so pure, so good about his face... The kind of face I would have wanted my son to have."
Carys lifted her mug to cover her trembling lips and took a shaky sip. The warm, sweetened liquid did nothing to remove the rush of emotional pain that came from those words.
Carlisle, thankfully, didn't appear to notice, though he paused for a moment longer before he carried on.
"After all those years of indecision, I simply acted on a whim. I wheeled his mother to the morgue first, and then I came back for him. No one noticed that he was still breathing. There weren't enough hands, enough eyes, to keep track of half of what the patients needed. The morgue was empty - of the living, at least. I stole him out the back door and carried him across the rooftops to my home.
"I wasn't sure what had to be done. I settled for recreating the wounds I'd received myself, so many centuries earlier in London-" he continued over Bella and Carys' gasps, made, Carys was sure, for different parts of his comment. "-I felt bad about that later. It was more painful and lingering than necessary.
"I wasn't sorry, though. I've never been sorry that I saved Edward." He shook himself free from the past then, his smile touching upon Carys before falling on Bella. "I suppose you should be taken home now."
"I'll do that," Edward announced, striding slowly through the dining room into the kitchen. Bella looked as uncomfortably and uneasy from the look in his eyes and blank expression as Carys felt.
Carys feared for what was going to happen if he had his way, as he so often did. She recalled the moment earlier that evening when Bella had looked to him, an apology for having been hurt. Was that how their relationship worked? That she had to apologise for being hurt? That he somehow blamed her for being human?
Edward glanced in Carys' direction, and she dropped her gaze to her cup again, drawing a deep breath that twinged her side again.
That's not fair, she threw out, knowing he was listening. It's not fair, or right.
"Carlisle can take me home," Bella argued with Edward, drawing Carys' attention. Bella was looking down at her shirt, studying the blood that soaked it, and the pink icing that covered her right shoulder, a result of the cake which had followed her to the floor.
"I need to stay with Carys," Carlisle smoothly countered her suggestion.
Edward's voice was as blank as his expression. "You'll need to change anyway, you'd give Charlie a heart attack the way you look. I'll have Alice get you something."
You're being an arse! Carys sent after him when he turned on his heel and strode back out of the kitchen.
Bella looked at Carlisle with an anxious expression. "He's very upset..."
"Yes," Carlisle agreed. "Tonight is exactly the kind of thing that he fears the most. You being put in danger, because of what we are."
"It's not his fault..."
"And it's not yours, either," Carlisle explained, taking the words right out of Carys' mouth.
"Is it what you fear too?" Bella asked, staring pointedly at Carys. "That Carys could've been hurt as well?"
Carlisle offered Bella his hand to help her up. "Of course, but-"
"Carlisle's spent the past few hundred years making himself the go-to vampire for injured humans," Carys interjected lightly, soothing the worry from Carlisle's face. "We're in pretty safe hands."
"I'll be back in a minute," Carlisle told her, his dark eyes shining with barely concealed concern. "You promised, Darling..."
It seemed as if it physically pained him to wrench his gaze from hers and leave the room, followed closely by Bella, despite Carys' attempt at a reassuring smile.
The smile dropped from her face when they'd left, and she waited for a few moments before slowly rising to follow them, gasping and clutching lightly at her side, below the tender area of her ribs. She swayed, blood rushing to her head, and fought the black dots in her vision that accompanied the waves of heat rolling through her.
When she'd recovered herself, she straightened and tested the area again, twisting a little.
She'd have to practice her pain-free expression before she left the room.
If Carlisle knew what he'd agreed to when he'd prioritised Bella, she didn't think he'd be half as talkative as he had been.
A/N: Thank you to Sting3, chellekathrynnn, Ella (I entirely agree - I think if he'd been able to get used to her more, it wouldn't have been as bad - also, if Edward hadn't thrown Bella across the room, but anyway. I also agree that the different approach to their relationships makes Carys more part of the family than Bella, because Edward keeps Bella to himself and treats her like she's fragile, so they do the same when they do get to see her), PenforPerfection, WickedlyMinx, Adela (might need to wait for another chapter to find that out!), Lizzy B (thank you!), souverian, and Love. Fiction. 2020 for your reviews!
