When they'd told Rosemary what she'd need to do for the mission they had planned for her, she hadn't thought anything of it at first. She'd never cared that much about her looks one way or another; she looked too much like a stereotypical farmgirl for someone who'd been born and raised in northern New Jersey and spent almost every minute she could spare since the day she'd first gotten her driver's license hanging around in New York City, but most of the time it didn't bother her. She never would have been a Ginger, but she could have been fine with always being a Mary Ann.
She was just as fine with letting them change that.
They started with the easiest changes. Her hair had always been frizzy, an almost cartoonishly bright yellow, and far thicker than was usually seen on a blonde. When she'd been a child her mom had always kept it chopped short because she'd been too impatient to keep it nicely brushed when it grew out, and it had puffed out around her head enough to make her look a little like a dandelion. They had made her grow it long and brought in a team of stylists that a movie star would envy to smooth and soften it until it was shiny and perfect and surprised her a little every time she touched it and felt its new texture. The dye came last, dark brown hiding every hint of yellow, and then the stylists left after making sure that she had memorized the haircare regiment they'd given her to make sure their work was never undone.
Their lessons were less effective than the subtle threats of her employers when they warned her that if she ever let her roots grow long enough to become visible or even one lock begin to frizz she would be considered a failure.
Her skin had always burst into freckles whenever she went out into the sun for long, and that too had to be changed. For the most part they just had her stay indoors as much as possible, which would have been necessary in any case; they'd provided her with an entire laundry list of subjects she needed to learn, books she needed to read, movies she needed to watch, a whole world of information that she needed to pack into her mind to have conversations which would hold his interest once her new appearance had caught it and that leave her with much time for ambling outside. For times when she'd needed to go out they'd provided her with an entire collection of hats to shade her face, girly things decorated with ribbons and flowers, always just enough to be tasteful without going overboard and not so much as one normal baseball cap among them. He liked his women feminine, not tomboyish.
Her new wardrobe was such an easy change that she hadn't even realized they were making it, she just came home from the store one day to find all of her old things were gone and her closet was packed with a fortune worth of designer labels. More lessons were added to her schedule, about how to put together an outfit, how to coordinate her make-up with her clothing, when it was appropriate to wear her hair up and when it was better to leave it down.
They hired a voice coach for her, a woman who always seemed genuinely kind enough that Rose was never quite sure if she actually worked for them or was just hired by them; she didn't really associate her employers with kindness. She'd never thought that her Jersey accent was that strong until she was expected to learn to speak perfect, flat, newscaster English at all times. She snuck herself a copy of My Fair Lady in the period when the lessons frustrated her the worst, in a fit of sympathy for Eliza Doolittle, and watched it over and over again through the night before it could be stolen away from her the way she'd known it would be.
The first more extreme change was still something fairly simple, her teeth covered with veneers so her slightly gap-toothed and coffee-stained smile became perfectly straight and white. For days after they were complete she kept flashing herself smiles in any reflective surface, admiring how perfect they looked.
But then they went for her eyes, and that was much more frightening. They changed her vision, taking away her nearly life-long need for reading glasses, and then just when she was getting over her nightmares about lasers shooting her eyes they took her in again and had lens slipped into her eyes to change them from muddy hazel to true brown. She thought they'd be content then, but once again they looked at her and decided that they'd not yet done enough. The shape of her eyes was wrong for his tastes, they decided, and everything had to be perfect for him.
Her life became a series of surgeries for a while then, once they knew for sure that she'd firmed her mind to her duty enough to go along with it without need of convincing. Her cheekbones, too prominent, were shaved down; her jaw, too pointy, rounded; her crooked nose straightened. She was thin and fit enough to start with, but there were a few spots here and there that they decided just didn't look quite smooth enough so they sculpted her body to their specifications by liposuctioning the excess cellulite away.
She allowed it all, without a thought or a care. She had always been fine with the looks she'd been born with, but who was she complain if they decided that they wanted to change her from cute to lovely? It was only when she were mere months away from finally meeting him, and beginning what would be, if they'd trained her well enough and had their way, the one 'love' of her life, that she finally found a change that they'd made that she would never have knowingly agreed to.
She'd always called her mother every Sunday and Wednesday, to let her know that she was safe and get caught up on family news. Her employers knew, of course, as they knew everything that she did, but since she'd been doing it even before they recruited her for their pet project and they never once tried to forbid it she'd always assumed that they didn't mind. Maybe their little soldier liked a girl who loved her family.
She remembered forever afterwards that it was February fifteenth, the day after Valentine's day, that she called for the last time. It was one of them that answered, the colonel that she was expected to work with once her mission began in earnest.
"We're sorry, Rosemary," he said, in a tone too steady to be sincere, "but at this point we've determined that continuing to maintain contact with your family would be too great of a risk to your cover. Rest assured, they've been moved to a safe location."
The phone clicked to a dial tone in her hands before she even had a chance to respond.
Her family was alive, at least; she was sure of that. She was also sure that 'safe' meant somewhere under The Patriot's supervision at all times, where there'd be easy to use against her if she ever faltered in her duty. As likely as not she would never see them again.
She stared at herself in the window above her phone, which the darkness of the night outside had changed into a mirror. The wide, frightened eyes that stared back at her were no longer the exact same shade as her father's, the hint of teeth that she could see between her parted lips no longer had the gaps that had been the shared bane of herself and every one of her sisters. Her hair wasn't the tangled mess that had driven her mother mad when she was a little girl. Her nose no longer had the bend it had held ever since she'd broken it by falling out of their treehouse.
Even her voice no longer told everyone who listened where she come from.
She closed her eyes and steeled her resolve. This too, she could accept. What did it matter if she never saw them again? They would never have seen their Rosemary again anyway. The girl they'd watched grow up had been sliced up and stripped away, and not a trace of her remained.
The only thing which existed in the reflection before her was Jack's dream girl, and he didn't even know she existed yet.