Con Amore
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing: Rosalie/ Emmett
Author's Note: The holidays make me feel vaguely fluffy, and this fic is the result. The italicized headings are based on musical terms and notations. Enjoy and have an awesome winter-festival-holiday-season celebration!
Disperato: hopeless, desperate, despairing
Rosalie thrashed and screamed, her delicate face empty and bruised. The pain contorting her lovely features masked the darkness that shadowed her eyes, making her seem to be nothing more than a young woman caught between death and immortality.
Edward looked in on her every once in a while, his eyes drawn to her matted honey-gold hair, streaked with her own blood. Curiosity urged him to remain, as he watched the thoughts dancing through her mind, elusive and beautiful as the flash of silvery fish scales near a river's surface. He had never listened to the thoughts of someone caught in metamorphoses.
Let me die, please, please God, let me die. It hurts, they hurt me, they hurt me, make it stop…
This did not surprise the copper-haired young man; he assumed everyone prayed for death during the transformation as he had. Then he saw the images running through her mind.
"Carlisle! Carlisle, she thinks they're still… Carlisle, what can I do?" The frantic, sharp note in his son's voice brought the doctor into the room immediately. Reading Edward's meaning in his eyes, he gently touched the young man's shoulder and said, "There's nothing you can do now. Wait for a while, she will be alright." For the first time, the golden-eyed vampire did not believe his father's words.
Rosalie woke for the last time. She was beautiful, like sunlight on snow, but just as cold and ephemeral. Bloodlust was strangely absent, as was interest; instead her eyes were crimson and dull, filled with memories and nightmares.
---
Dissonance: harsh, discordant, lacking harmony
Edward wanted to love her, despite everything he had known about her as a human. Superficial she might have been, as well as vain, petty and cruel, but the ghosts of her past circled around her, and he could help her leave them behind.
She, on the other hand, did not want him at all. Whenever he tried to speak with her, play piano for her, show her something that would cheer her, Rosalie turned away sharply, letting her thoughts wander away to her terrible, stark beauty. She hid behind the mask of her loveliness as easily after her death as she had before it, never relinquishing that barrier.
***
Edward entered her room without knocking, catching her at the mirror, adjusting a white gown, which fell like a cascade of moonlight around her. She was angelically lovely, as always, but her scarlet eyes were an inferno.
"What are you doing, Rosalie?" he asked quietly, lingering near the door.
"Leave, Edward," she ordered, not turning to look at him. Her voice was clear but brittle as crystal.
"You're wearing a wedding dress," he said quietly, reading her intentions in her thoughts. "What will the humans think, Rose?"
She turned to smile at him, the expression harsh and unnaturally vicious, "Perhaps they will think it was a ghost. That's what I am, after all." With a laugh like falling silver, she brushed past him and vanished into the night.
For almost two weeks, she slipped out of the house near moonrise and returned at dawn. Her dress was pristine each time, but her eyes were the hellish black of an abyss. Nobody questioned her, instead allowing the growingly urgent headlines in the newspaper to inform them of Rosalie's actions.
On the last night, the lovely young woman returned home soundlessly, neither whisper nor breath leaving her lips. Instead, she sat at the piano and began to play for the first time, ivory fingers dancing lightly over the keys.
She plays well, mused Edward from his room, tilting his head to listen. Then he heard a misplayed chord, nothing more than a small stumble, utterly acceptable for a mortal, but not common for one with the skill and speed of a vampire. The melody resumed its smooth flow, before faltering once again. It took the copper-haired young man a while to understand.
Rosalie could play perfectly if she chose to; the small dissonance was a reminder of the discord hiding behind her own exquisite façade. That, Edward realized, was the problem with love between them (if such love had ever existed); they could be beautiful, but there would always be a misplaced note.
---
Con Fuoco:with vehemence and fire
Rosalie tore through the forest, a young man's body cradled in her arms. Her eyes were dark, longing for his blood, which spilled from his side and the deep, jagged tears on his arms and face. In spite of his impending death, the dark-haired man looked up at her with an almost-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"I will keep you safe," she murmured, unsure whether he could hear her. The iron in her voice was obvious, as though she was willing him to breathe, to live for only a few more miles, until she could give him eternity.
The golden creature burst into the Cullen home, bringing with her the stench of blood. She was frightened and angry, Edward could tell from her thoughts, but there was determination, clear and bright as a candle flame, that kept her from sinking her teeth into the human's throat.
"Carlisle!" She was quiet but insistent, "Change him for me, please." Her father wanted to question her, find out what the boy's name was, how she had found him, whether his family had seen him or her, but he chose to say nothing.
***
When the man woke up after his transformation, he smiled at the lovely, honey-haired woman sitting beside him. "You're beautiful," he told her, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. She smiled (the brightest smile he had ever seen) and asked, "What's your name?"
"Emmett," he whispered, then the bloodlust tore through him, and it took three of the Cullens to hold him down.
***
Edward watched Rosalie from a distance, because she did not leave the newborn's side. She loved him already (with the unthinking tenacity that she personified).
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Adagio: slow, lyrical
Emmett made Rosalie laugh. Edward did not need to use his gift to find this out; for the first time, his sister's wind-chime chuckle echoed freely through the house, mingling with Emmett's boisterous guffaws. Still, he could see the wariness between them, the way Rose flinched away, even from accidental touches.
***
"What happened, Rosie?" Emmett asked her one day, gently tucking golden curls behind her ear.
A slow current of warmth flowed through her; nobody had called her Rosie before and it sounded so right coming from Emmett. This was quickly followed by a jolt of pain and suppressed memories.
"What do you mean, Em? What happened when?" she decided to play innocent, counting on his lack of intuition to derail his questions and silently cursing Edward for whatever he might have said.
He smiled, an easy, adorable grin that told her he was not convinced but said nothing, allowing her to fill the silence with her own words. Suddenly, her expression changed and she began speaking, her voice low and lacking inflection. For the first time, she explained what had happened in her past.
He listened. He did not try to explain like Carlisle, sympathize like Esme, or search for hidden meaning behind her words like Edward. When Rosalie had finished telling him about her bloody, ghostly vengeance, she bowed her head waiting for judgement, or anger, or for him to get up and walk far, far away from her. Instead, he met her eyes and said gently, "I'm proud of you, Rosie."
His lips met hers then in a kiss as slow and sweet as honey.
---
Con Amore: with love
Rosalie and Emmett never felt the need to justify their love to anyone. Regardless of opinion, they were together, appearances be damned.
They never wasted their time on empty words, such as I love you. The light in Rosalie's eyes, and the way Emmett smiled was more than enough for either of them. Of course, their family did not understand for some time, but Rosalie and Emmett did.
That was all that mattered.
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