The sound of heartbeats
A/N: My first (published) Twilight fic. I hope you like it. After seeing the film (three times) I seem to be at a very RxEm angle at the moment, and this just sort of flowed out.
Happy New Year, everyone!
The only sound she could hear for a moment was the beating of her own heart. It was steady, peaceful, alive. That and the sound of the river trickling past, hardly reaching half way up the banks in the heat of summer, only a few feet deep. She imagined what it would be like to wade through it, warm mud sinking into her toes and she took each step, cool water reaching only to her ankles, little fish flicking against her skin, barely noticeable…
A voice, a light, high, musical voice, interrupted her perfect near-silence.
"Mommy!" it called, and she turned her head, catching a brief glimpse of her own blonde hair as the light breeze tossed it aside. A little boy and girl were running towards her, across the field, hand in hand. The boy was as fair as she was, but with bright blue eyes shining out from under his floppy fringe, and the girl, where her eyes were the same, had dark chocolate curls framing her face like a little halo. They were gaining ground every second towards her, running through the long grasses, destroying the perfection of the field in their wake, smiling widely. She turned her whole body to face them, and they both ploughed into her at the same time, knocking her right off her feet and into the grass behind her, until she was laid flat on the floor, the two of them squirming on top of her. She pressed gentle kisses to both of their heads, revelling in the feeling of their warm bodies, in the feeling of the sun-drenched grass on her back, feeling her children's steady heartbeats.
"Need a hand, Rose?" a deep, melodious voice asked, a hint of amusement in his tone. She gently pushed the children aside, and looked up to see a huge man standing there, a man with a face as familiar, more familiar even, than her own. The children had already scrambled to their feet and were jumping at the dark-haired, smiling man now, but he wasn't as light as she was and wasn't knocked to the floor. She watched in something close to adoration as he caught them both up in his arms and tickled them, sending them both into fits of hysteria and cries of: "Mommy! Mommy, help!"
The sound of laughter decorated the meadow, even as Emmett put their children down and offered her a big, warm, calloused hand. She slid hers into it with the ease of years, and he pulled her up in one solid, fluid motion, but he pulled her a little further than necessary, so their bodies collided gently, with simplicity, with experience. They knew every contour, ever curve of each other instantaneously, without thought.
"Hi." She whispered, finding her face dangerously close to his, feeling his warm, living breath on her mouth.
"Hi." He repeated, his voice barely more than a gentle growl, his lips reaching to caress hers gently, bringing her even closer to him, and age-old dance they'd been dancing forever.
A tugging on her long white dress brought her crashing back to normality, but it was happily, not an annoyance. The look in Emmett's eyes told her there would be plenty of time for that, later. Her little girl was staring up at them through wide blue eyes.
"Mommy." She whispered, and it was like music to Rosalie's ears, light and cheerful, as beautiful as a couple's first dance. The little boy caught her hand and whispered the same thing, his hand warm in hers, alive.
She turned her eyes back to Emmett, who was smiling down at her, eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun. "I love you." He mouthed, and she felt her own face break into a smile just as big, and as the wind tossed her hair out behind her shoulders she smiled and held the two children to her, their heads only reaching to the height of her stomach, her smile unwavering, beaming.
He encased the three of them in his arms, and she was overwhelmed by the sound of four heartbeats.
"Rose? Rose, can you hear me?"
"Rosalie? Rosalie, squeeze Emmett's hand if you can!"
Two voices, two voices she cared about deeply, dancing through her mind, breaking through the sunlit afternoon and delving into darkness. Emmett, her perfect husband, their perfect father, and Carlisle. And as much as she loved Carlisle, he didn't fit into the world she was in right now, the sun drenched world by the river with the children and the heartbeats.
It was so easy just to shut their voices out and sink back into the warm, light place…
Then she heard him.
"Rose! Please, Rose, keep fighting! I can't live without you, I can't live with myself if you-"
The pain she was feeling in her heart as she was tugged away from that world, that pain was mirrored in his voice. Pure, unadulterated pain.
Carlisle's voice again. "Emmett-"
"You can't stop trying, Carlisle! You can't give up on her! It's Rose, not just some patient! My Rosalie."
She felt it this time, a grip of her hand, sending jolts through her body. In the sunshiny world, Emmett's face had turned cold, tears were tracking down his cheeks as he stared at her, and his eyes were slowly turning amber…
"I'm doing everything I can. Emmett! She's suffered a lot of injuries; she's in a critical condition!"
"We're. supposed. To be. Immortal." She could hear his voice clearly, and it almost burnt her ears to hear his anguish.
He vanished altogether from the sunshiny world, and the children were fading in her arms, their eyes the last thing remaining, staring up at her like she was something wonderful in those last few seconds of their existences..
"Mommy…"
Tears streaming down her face, she watched the sun disappear behind a cloud, and as she did, she pulled herself away.
Emmett's voice was getting closer now. "Come on, Rose. I can't be forever without you…"
Carlisle's hands had gone down. He'd stepped away.
"Carlisle!" she heard a third voice, a familiar, well-loved voice. Alice. "Carlisle! You have to do something!"
She could hear the regret in the tone of the man she had come to think of as her only father. "I can't do anything more, Alice. She… she doesn't seem to want to come back…"
Still, nothing was strong enough to pull her through, out of the darkness again.
A human memory stirred, that night she'd been changed, lying on the cold floor, every inch of dignity stripped away, letting the blackness suck her in…
"I love you, Rose. Come on, babe, I love you…"
And, all of a sudden, that was enough. Images filled her vision to match the sounds. Heads above her, Emmett's and Alice's, staring down with worried eyes. Carlisle, his head in his hands, Esme's arms around his waist. Jasper, Edward, Bella and Renesmee by the window, the sun glittering off their skin, diamonds sparkling at her. Emmett saw her eyes open first, and lifted her off the pillows to hold her to him, tighter than she even thought possible. She revelled, somewhat bitterly, in the cold, hard perfection of his skin. Then Carlisle stepped forward, his eyes blank and sad, and she knew he knew.
Knew that there'd been a moment there when she hadn't wanted to fall back into this cursed life, no matter how much she loved them, loved Emmett. There was a moment where she'd almost succumbed to the… dream? Was that was it was? Of humanity, and normality. A moment when she'd almost been ultimately more selfish than even she was truly capable of.
Later, when only Emmett sat by her bedside, eyes entirely black from a lack of any hunting, holding a straw for her to drink blood through, that Jasper had broken into an animal hospital and stolen from a blood bank, because she still refused to drunk human blood, even under the circumstances, she spoke to him, through a croaky, dry, burning throat.
"What happened to me?"
"You don't remember?"
Oh, she remembers. She remembers a family of four playing beside a river, and that memory takes everything else away.
"No."
"There was a fight, Rose, some newborns in the area. And… there were just too many of them, I couldn't hold them all off. You… you were nearly gone when Tanya, Kate and Garrett arrived and helped Jasper and Edward finish them off. I've never seen anything like it before. You were… unconscious, if that's even possible. Jasper told me there was no hope, you were gone, but Carlisle didn't give up on you, not til-"
She silenced him with her hand over his. "Emmett, I had… I had this dream…"
For there were no secrets between them, no matter how painful they might be to both of them. Emmett lay beside his Rose, and listened to everything she had to tell him.
And when she had finished, he pressed his lips to hers, sealing their deal of silence and selfless love all over again.
A/N: I hoped you liked it. I'm not really sure where it came from, actually. But I'm in a very Rosalie/Emmett place right now :)
Please review.