Author's note: I wanted to write a one shot between Bella and Rosalie after the events of New Moon but before Eclipse. I would love reviews on this one as I don't think it's my best at all! I hope you enjoy something from this story!
Broken Beauty
Edward was on his way down the stairs, making his way towards the closet under the stairs where the Cullens kept their coats and jackets, for appearances sake, of course. He frowned when he didn't find what he wanted and turned, right as Esme appeared behind him with his jacket in her arms.
"I had it washed for you," she smiled, handing it over.
"You are such a mom, Esme," he replied, rolling his eyes affectionately. "You didn't need to wash this," he frowned.
"Well, it's nice to freshen things up," she said, ruffling his hair.
He ran his fingers through his bronze hair, not in the least bit improving its usual untidy appearance, though it always had worked in his favour.
"Well, I'm going to Bella's before she sleeps then I'm going on a hunt with Alice before she wakes," he informed her. His eyes betrayed that he'd rather not leave her, especially after the events that led to them almost losing each other completely. Esme bit her lip, rubbing his arm comfortingly.
"She knows we're all here if she wants any of us," she reminded him. She observed the dark circles under his eyes and his darkened irises. "You're overdue a hunt. Again," she said pointedly.
He sighed. "I know," he nodded, then turned his attention to the thoughts that just invaded his personal headspace, making him clench his jaw.
Esme turned around to see Rosalie and Emmett walking through the back door and into the wide-open space that was, to the human eye, the living room. Emmett looked jovial as usual, but Rosalie's face had irritation written all over it.
"Hello, dears," Esme greeted them, absentmindedly, her attention on Edward.
"Off to Bella's, Edward?" Emmett grinned.
He nodded, as Rosalie gave an involuntary roll of the eyes. Since Alice and Bella had returned from Italy with Edward, she'd been more reserved towards Bella. No one said it, but Rosalie was trying to be less hostile towards her but sometimes her distaste at their relationship still made itself known. She stood by her vote that she wouldn't support Bella's change into a vampire and though her reasons were justified, they came off bitter. Edward and Rosalie did agree that Bella's mortality should be savoured but regardless, that didn't unify them.
He glared at the blonde beauty standing at her burly husband's side. "Why don't you just scream your thoughts from the rooftop for everyone to hear, rather than give me a thundering headache as usual, Rosalie?" he growled.
"I never invited you in, did I?" she bit back.
"I didn't think that was possible?" Emmett mused.
Esme looked between her three children, wondering why Edward's temper was coming out to play again. "Vampires can't get headaches, Emmett," she answered, impatiently.
"They can with Rosalie Hale in their head," Edward argued.
Esme glared at Edward. "What is this about?"
"Rosalie's natural talent to hold onto grudges," Edward replied. He then rounded on her. "You seriously need to get over it and stop punishing others for it."
"I'm punishing no one," she dismissed with a flourish of her hand. "Get out of my head."
"You forget, sister," he said menacingly, "that I see far more into people than they wish me to see. Your beauty is only skin deep."
Rosalie hissed furiously.
"Hold on a second, Edward," Emmett frowned, his hands resting on Rosalie's shoulders.
Esme raised her eyebrows, the upset evident on her heart-shaped face.
"I'm sick of your resentment," he continued relentlessly. "You've punished Bella since before you'd met her. She's done you no harm but love me in a way that I never gave you. Your shallow, self-obsessed mind repelled me from you before your transformation was complete."
"Edward," Esme interrupted tentatively.
He ignored her and continued, his annoyance and frustrations coming out in an unstoppable torrent. "I understand, probably better than anybody because I can live the pain of your loss in your head, that you never wanted this life, but I won't stand for you to share your bitterness with everyone else, especially Bella. You refuse to support Bella, even after everything she was forced to suffer through the past year? I don't want to end her life, but you forget, you forced this life onto Emmett because of your selfishness. The very life you so despise."
A silence reigned over them.
"I was dead if she didn't, Edward," Emmett murmured, breaking the silence.
"And thanks to your wife, Alice, Bella and myself could have been, too," he snarled.
"That was not my intention!" Rosalie exploded.
"No, you wanted things to be back the way they were," Edward mocked. He angrily pushed his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. "I won't stand by for an eternity to see you treating Bella like a plague on our family."
"I don't have a problem with her," Rosalie spat, "it's her choices!"
"Her choices are what make her Bella," Edward replied flatly. "And thanks to you, those choices are no longer an option."
Rosalie's eyes hardened, and she made to attack him in her anger, but Emmett kept his hold on her shoulders.
"Edward, you need to stop this," Emmett said, all joviality gone from his face. "This isn't fair."
"What isn't fair is that she's never gotten past her stupid observation that there's too much bad blood between us," he quoted. "It was her vanity and pig-headedness that stopped us from getting on, not the fact that I can unwillingly read her mind."
"Maybe if Edward had kept away from her in the first place, none of this would have happened," Rosalie countered.
"I tried to keep her safe!" Edward hissed. "But look at her now! I have to see her, a mere shadow of herself, in the minds of others in the months I was gone. She hates it when I have to leave her, and I can't do anything about it." He took a frustrated intake of breath. "I can't take any of it back." He gave Rosalie one last glare, turning to the door, squeezing Esme's hand in apology on his way past. "I'll be at Bella's," he stated shortly, before slamming the door behind him.
Esme shook her head, shooting out of the back door in a blur. Emmett snaked his arms around his wife and held her in a tight embrace until she couldn't take anymore and extracted herself from them.
"Thank you but I want to be alone," she mumbled, the rage gone from her golden eyes.
Alice abruptly stopped, causing Jasper to zoom past her. Confused, he halted, peering behind him at his wife who he recognised was lost in a vision. He appeared at her side again, his arm resting around her waist until she came out of it. She sighed, turning to look at her partner.
"Esme is around her somewhere," she said, pulling a face. "Edward and Rosalie got into an argument over Bella."
Jasper cringed. "I'm glad I wasn't around to witness that."
"Well, Esme's upset, Carlisle's at the hospital and I'd rather he didn't come home to see her upset like this." Her face went vague for a moment. "Yep, you'll be helpful." She grabbed his hand and took off running.
"And why would I be helpful?" he asked.
Alice simply rolled her eyes at him. She stopped abruptly, causing Jasper to jolt to a stop. He frowned at the little pixie, then followed her eyes up the large tree in front of them. Esme was sat on a branch, swinging her legs sadly. Alice took an effortless leap and landed with the grace and poise that could cause a ballerina's heart to break. Jasper joined them on the branch, sitting on Esme's other side. Together they consoled her until Alice left her in the company of the empath to seek out Rosalie.
"Rose?" Alice called out, skipping her way into her bedroom. She immediately noticed her perched on the edge of her bed, staring out of the window, where Alice joined her.
"What do you want, Alice?" Rosalie asked warily.
"Edward will be joining me in an hour," she said.
"Why are you telling me that?" she demanded, raising a perfectly delicate eyebrow.
"Because I see you visiting Bella," Alice enlightened her.
"It has nothing to do with that know-it-all," she grumbled.
"He won't know you'd been there," Alice continued. "He'd just assume that it's the scent of his family that he carries with him."
"Fine," Rosalie grumbled, leaving a gust of air behind her as she ran out of the open door.
Bella groaned as she tossed and turned in her sleep. Her eyelids fluttered as she relived the horrors of Volterra again. The nightmare distorted the memory as she saw Edward's body be torn apart and set alight in flames. She felt the grief and fear grip her as she watched seven thirsty vampires advance towards her. She screamed herself awake and shot up in bed. Immediately her head shot towards her door, her hands clasped over her mouth, to listen for Charlie's movements in case she woke him up yet again with her nightmares. She was relieved to hear his steady snoring. After all, he'd become accustomed to this over the past several months. Then she looked around her room and called for Edward.
She turned in response to the movement at her window. "Edward?" she whispered.
"No, I'm sorry," a soft, delicate voice answered from the shadows of her room. "It's Rosalie."
She made her way to Bella's bedside, hesitated then sat down next to Bella.
"Rosalie?" Bella checked in exasperation, rubbing her eyes. "Why are you here?" She couldn't help but be aware of how odd it was to have beautiful Rosalie sat in her ordinary bedroom. "Where's Edward?" she asked, sitting up.
"He's with Alice, hunting," she replied gently. "He'll be back in the morning. I came to speak with you."
Bella sat up straighter, leaning her back against the headboard of her bed.
"Okay," she said slowly.
Rosalie considered her for a moment. "You know, I'd never realised how brave you were. I always put it down to stupidity."
Bella gawped at her.
"I'm sorry," Rosalie smiled. "I really am grateful that you went to save my brother, especially at the cost of your own life. I'd never considered how much you really loved each other."
Bella bit her lip, looking down at her lap, unsure how to respond. She felt Rosalie shift from her position on her bed and looked up at the blonde who was glancing around her bedroom. She felt herself blush, as her chocolate brown eyes met Rosalie's glistening golden orbs and she once again looked down at her hands resting in her lap.
"It seems like nothing, doesn't it?" Rosalie asked, gesturing around the room at Bella's possessions that hadn't changed in all the years that she had been living in Phoenix. "So easy. Building a life." She walked over to Bella's dresser and picked up a teddy bear that looked old. She looked back at Bella who was staring at her. "Your room is the same as it was before you left Forks with your mother, isn't it?" she asked, eyeing printed paintings of hands that were small enough to be a young child's.
"Yeah," Bella nodded, "well, Charlie never did anything with it after I left."
"But you didn't change it when you came back," Rosalie observed.
"No," Bella agreed, the question evident in her eyes.
"Don't you see, Bella?" Rosalie sighed, placing the teddy bear back upon the dresser, twirling round to sit herself back on the bed. "There's still time to change! But you won't let change happen. It's normal… human." She leant forward slightly and grabbed Bella's hand. "Once you die, there will be no moving forward."
Bella frowned. "I've almost died three times already. If I had, there would be nothing."
Rosalie dropped Bella's hand and sat back.
"Is that what your nightmares are about?" she asked, a hint of compassion burning in the back of her eyes.
Bella's frown deepened as her eyes shot to meet Rosalie's face. "They're nothing," she replied hastily, fiddling with her bedsheets.
"Bella," Rosalie sighed, "you make horrendous choices, but your ability to lie is no better."
"It's just when he's away," Bella mumbled, tucking long strands of hair behind her ear. "It's like he takes a part of me away with him. I'm dead without him."
Rosalie pursed her lips. "Things got better when I found Emmett," she mused. "My first years as a vampire weren't the fairy tale ending you think it is. It was empty, cold… frozen. I have the love of my life, but we'll never change. There will always be something missing and that's the part that you'll miss the most."
"All I want is Edward," Bella argued, lowering her voice as she heard Charlie's snore get louder from his room.
"But at what cost?" Rosalie pondered. "There's so much you can't have. Everyone you know will die. You can't have a family, or a career, or friends. There's so much lost."
"And so much to gain," Bella murmured. She looked directly into Rosalie's perfect face. "I have Edward and all of you."
Rosalie considered her for a moment. "Edward is right," she commented, continuing in response to Bella's expression, "you are stubborn." Bella gave her a half-smile at the echo of Edward's words. "It will be enough for a while, but one day, after another sleepless night, you'll want more."
"There's nothing more I need," Bella disagreed. "You all complete me."
"And feed into your fears," Rosalie replied flatly. "Since you entered our world, you've had traumas, injuries, heart break and abandonment, yet you still maintain that this is better."
"None of those things can happen when I'm one of you," Bella replied.
"The nightmares are telling you that these things are not good for you, Bella," Rosalie insisted. "I want you to have a life."
"I don't have a choice anymore," she said with finality. "The Volturi will always be watching."
"I'm sorry about that," Rosalie whispered, "but I don't want you to give up your life sooner than you have to. Live, Bella. You have to live. Be more than your feelings. Be the human being who is capable of so many things. Things we cannot do."
Bella leant forward and took Rosalie's hand in her own, squeezing it gently. "Thank you, Rose, for valuing humanity. It was quite different in Volterra."
Rosalie patted Bella's hands that clasped one of her own and she smiled gently at her. "You have always frustrated me, Bella and I suspect you always will, but I can't fault your bravery and loyalty."
Bella thanked her again, releasing her hands from Rosalie's. The blonde vampire's perfect eyesight, even in the dim light, picked up on the dark circles under Bella's eyes and she sighed.
"You should sleep, Bella," she suggested. "That nightmare seemed to be intense."
Bella blanched at the memory and grimaced. "Yeah, it was," she agreed. "Rosalie, why did you come to see me?"
"I thought it was obvious," she replied, raising her eyebrows. "No one deserves to spend their life broken." She got up and made her way to Bella's window. She turned back to face the brunette wrapped up in her blankets. "Bella?" she called to her, glancing once again around her room. "Change your bedroom. It's been frozen in time for too long and it needs to reflect the Bella now, not five-year-old Bella." She looked at the little painted hand prints stuck to her noticeboard and pressed her lips together.
"I suppose you're right," Bella smiled, watching as the blonde beauty fled from her bedroom.
She got out of bed and reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a picture of herself standing in front of Edward. She smiled at his lean six feet two figure towering over her, his arms embracing her protectively as always. She looked up at her noticeboard and unpinned the hand prints painting off and placed it on her desk, only to replace it with the picture. She stepped back and hopped back into bed. The moonlight shining through her window illuminated the picture of them both, the glow of the moon reaching her. She looked down to find her scar glittering and for the first time, she allowed herself to succumb to her humanity and drift off to sleep. The nightmares reminded her that she was a little broken, but not beyond repair.
