erDisclaimer: I don't own Twilight and its sequels.
Author's notes: Ok, so I'm feeling the Twilight love at the moment, and a few moments of inspiration led to the completion of this one. I hope you guys like it – it started off with a vague idea of just wondering what if Emmett didn't see Rosalie as a perfect little angel or princess or nymph or something. And of course, my love of Cowboy Bebop came in handy, bringing an idea of Rosalie and cigarettes and the wrong kind of angel. And I wondered what if Emmett really knew this and accepted it nevertheless? (I have to admit, though, that blonde Julia in Cowboy Bebop appeals to me not. I love my raven-haired Faye. But this does not detract from my love of Rosalie.) So anyway, this is again a series of non-chronological one-shots, this time focussing on Emmett and Rosalie, and more with Emmett's point of view really. It's aiming for a slightly darker feel, less optimistic and rose tinted because, let's be honest, there's no way that anyone, vampire or not, can remain unscathed by a rape. So yes, here it is; my love of Cowboy Bebop producing a cigarette-smoke-drenched Rosalie and an Emmett who doesn't think of her as an angel or a goddess. I really hope you guys like it.
Sweet Scent of Cigarettes
The first time he had seen her, on the brink of dying, he had thought of her as an angel. Beautiful golden hair – golden, not blonde, certainly nothing common like blonde – with her perfectly chiselled features, her large eyes and gorgeous skin that seemed to glitter. He had accepted death if someone that beautiful would come for him.
After he had been transformed, she had seemed altered. More beautiful than before, her previously flawlessly pure white skin had tones and tints that he had never seen before, shades of colours that didn't exist in human eyes. Her eyes seemed more perplexing and her hair seemed to be evidence that there were different hues of golden, as pure and as dazzling as each other but so different. She hadn't seemed like an angel then. She seemed more like a goddess, simultaneously more human and more inhuman than the angel he had previously thought of her as. No Greek could have written about Aphrodite if they hadn't seen her and no Roman could have painted a Venus that could compare to her. She was enticing with her beauty, intoxicating with all the potential raw love that radiated from her. He could have been drunk on her very self, every little blink seemed like a glass of vodka drunk.
And then he had heard her talk to a boy standing next to her – he seemed like nothing but a sulky boy to him, pouting and scowling as he stood next to something so entrancing. He had seen her lips move oh so perfectly, and they had ended in a smile, the ends of her lips twisted up. She hadn't been like an angel then, unearthly and surreal, heralding death; nor had she been a goddess blindingly beautiful in inhuman ways, exhilarating in the very human love that seemed to lie latent in her. She had been something else - something that seemed cruel and vicious, animalistic and evil, something very dark and twisted. He saw her lips in something resembling a smile but instead of lips curling upwards, they seemed to twist instead. He saw her in a new light then. He realised, almost instinctively, that she wasn't a happy person. Almost just as instinctively, he realised that the bitterness enveloping her meant that she had been a happy person once. He wondered what had happened.
The next time he had seen her was after he had killed a few animals and quenched the thirst. His first hunt had been relatively clumsy, blood spilling and dropping over his clothes and, as she had caught sight of it (or maybe just smelt it) she had wrinkled her nose in disgust and looked away. He'd wondered who she was really angry at, because he hadn't done anything and neither had Edward (that he was aware of, although his seemingly perpetual scowl was off-putting). That was the first time that he had caught a glimpse of her anger, the anger that was fairly infamous in the Cullen household, the same anger that was overhyped, overrated and under-present. He'd wondered why the others couldn't see through her fake anger. It was years later before he realised that it wasn't that they couldn't, it was that they wouldn't. They wouldn't deny Rosalie her right to feign her anger and they couldn't put her through the unnecessary doubt and pain that she'd go through. He loved and respected his family all the more for allowing the facade to continue.
It had been days after his first hunt that he saw her actually lose her temper. In those days, she had arduously ignored his own presence, never glancing at him, let alone speaking to him. And in those days, he had developed what he had considered to be a very unhealthy obsession. Now, he didn't consider it to be an unhealthy obsession, he knew it to be one. But that unhealthy obsession had led him to observe her carefully, ignoring Edward's taunts and Esme's knowing smiles. He learned the different expressions that her face took on without realising, the smiles that were never smiles and the frowns that were never frowns. But on that day, when he first saw her really lose her temper, he saw her rebellion. He saw the way she seethed in almost literal terms. He saw her stubborn chin jut forward more than usual. He saw the way her full lips straightened out into as thin a line as such full lips could. He saw eyes sparkling with anger, tiny fists clenched in rage, and he saw her proud head tilt backwards, staring furiously at Edward. She was a Statue of Rage, but he didn't see the anger in her, he saw rebellion. He saw a girl trying to fight back against whatever seemed wrong to her; it seemed to him that Edward was the personification of everything that was wrong to her.
And a few weeks after that, he had finally summoned up the courage to talk to her. She had raised her eyebrows in mocking surprise but her voice had held no mockery surprisingly. She'd replied to him, pleasantly enough, although he was hyperaware of every little nuance and more than ready to find an affront where there was none. And the image that he had held of her after than first conversation was one that remained strong in his mind to this day. He'd seen her then, not visually but odorously. He didn't see her as an angel or a goddess, as a mythical figure or as a very human idea. He'd instead seen her as cigarette smoke, smelt her like cigarette smoke. She even seemed to feel like it, wrong but so seductive, cancerous but comforting at the same time. Just like cigarette smoke, it radiated from her and he had wondered how he could have missed it for so long when he could almost smell it, when he could almost breathe it in.
And then she'd smiled at him. It hadn't been the twist that had reminded him of bile and unspeakable cruelty. It was a genuine smile, a sign of pleasure and happiness. And though that smile had made him feel lightheaded, though it had irrevocably altered his life and destiny and everything pertaining to it, the cigarette smoke had been omnipresent. He had seen the smile as if through a haze of cigarette smoke and it had felt much like a mirage to him, the kind that showed death in the most frightening of lights, and yet the most appealing. And he had been hooked ever since, worse than bloodlust or drugs, the addiction was unhealthy at best, toxic in the minimum. At worst...but he didn't dare to think what the worst could mean. All he knew was that whenever he saw Rosalie, he saw her being through a diaphanous sheath of cigarette smoke as he felt the sick craving beginning to stir. And even when he didn't see her, he smelt that sweet toxic pungent scent of cigarettes lingering, tempting him, taunting him, killing him softly and surely and he bowed to it each time, without the least resistance.
After all, if Rosalie could be described by anything, she could be described by cigarette smoke, he had decided in the end.