Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns the Twilight series. I'm just playing around.


The Twilight Twenty-Five

Prompt: Bitter

Pen name: daisy3853

Pairing: Rosalie

Rating: T


Bitter

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

My life was all promises and hopes and dreams: roses and violets, wedding dresses, and beautiful people dancing at even more beautiful parties.

Beauty gave way to terror one cold April night. At the hands of my supposed prince, I was ruined. He and his men took by force what I would have one day given him freely, and then they kept taking. My body, my life, my beauty. My everything.

I drifted to sleep in pain – what I thought was the worst pain of my entire life. I was battered, broken, and left for dead, and I felt as if I'd never be whole again. I watched helplessly as my petty dreams seeped out with my blood, staining the pavement crimson as all of it flowed beyond my reach. Snow began to fall around me, and I watched it flutter softly to the ground. I was jealous of each perfect flake for being lovely while my own beauty was dying.

My body grew gradually colder, until the chill of my skin matched the pavement beneath it. My vision blurred beyond just my tears as the darkness sunk in around me. It enveloped me and somehow soothed me, despite the unrelenting pain.

I lay in the street, waiting patiently for death to come and claim me. When my frozen skin touched something even more glacial, I thought that it had. An angel had come for me. He carried me away, so fast I could feel the icy wind beating against my cheeks and tugging my hair. The pain never subsided, but I was flying to a better place; I was sure of it.

The angel brought me into the light and held me as my pain slowly gave way to peace.

Suddenly, the pain returned tenfold. I awoke, not to the welcoming embrace of heaven, but to the searing flames of hell. The fire engulfed me, swallowing my pain and making it burn infinitely hotter. It crept over every inch of my skin and charred me alive. This pain was one far more terrible than I had ever imagined could exist. I prayed for an end to my misery. I wanted peace. I called out for it, begging for mercy again and again until my throat was too raw to continue.

Again I was refused.

Instead I awoke once more, to a new kind of life and yet another fire. This one scorched my throat and tortured whatever had remained of my tattered soul. My beauty had been my downfall and my curse, and I was haunted by the loss of the simpler life I could have led.

So I battled the only demons I could control.

I fought my nature, as the angel insisted. He showed me his life and his purpose. He trusted me with his secrets and promised to honor mine. He brought me into his life and into their home, but I could hardly feel a part of their family.

I despised the boy as he despised me. No man had ever dared to deny my beauty. I wanted him to want me. I was desperate for someone to admire me. I needed him to make me feel like myself again. I needed to feel alive.

I watched his distaste melt into irritation and then detachment. His eyes fell on me with casual indifference and sometimes pity, but never desire. Every time he failed me, I hated him just a little more. A small bit of compassion might have helped me forget the monster I'd become.

I could never forget the monsters who ended me.

I came for them one by one, hunting them with the same level of ruthlessness that they had afforded me. If I'd still had a heart that could beat, its angry staccato would have betrayed my weakness. If I'd needed my lungs, I would have been frightened and lightheaded and unable to breathe. As it was, my life after death had dissolved my weaknesses, rendering me lethal and terrible. For the first time since my new awakening, my strengths were strengths and not something I resented.

I killed the first few men rather quickly. They weren't expecting me, and at first they didn't register that they should fear me. I saw their expressions change from awe at my frightening beauty, to terror as they pled for their lives, and finally to nothing. I watched as their eyes filled with emptiness and then I tossed them aside.

I planned his demise with the same care as I had planned our storybook wedding, right down to my chosen attire. I made a sick and twisted game of this: the last game I would play, the last life I would end. I relished in the theatrics of the hunt, dragging it out until I was certain he knew his fate.

When I finally came for my fallen prince, he was waiting for me. He hid behind his guards and lock and key; he had no idea how futile his precautions would be. I could smell his fear beyond the stench of his captivity, and I heard his heart racing for me. He begged for his life and for forgiveness, but his feeble pleas fell on deaf ears. My heart was frozen solid in my chest, and that was his fault. He'd stolen it, crushed it, and left it for dead, right alongside the rest of me. He would reap his reward.

His screams of pain and misery did nothing to sway my resolve. I took my time, savoring the agony he was now suffering at my hands. Pain for pain, tit for tat, his life for my life. He had taken my dreams, my virtue, and my future from me. I took everything back that I could, but it still wasn't enough.

I held my breath as I ended every last one of those men. I let my throat burn painfully dry, aching all the more at the scent of all the wasted blood before me. The venom flowed suggestively, but I ignored its call. I watched the life drain from their eyes without ever spilling a drop.

Because to taste their filthy blood as it crossed my lips would have been the most bitter pill of all.


Thank you for reading.

Love always to justaskalice for beta'ing and telling me I don't suck. :)