ROSES BEHIND MIRRORS
She didn't want to be there. He couldn't wait to get away. But what happened when Rosalie Hale came thundering into Emmett Cullen's life, no one could have predicted. AU, AH. RxEm.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, Stephenie Meyer beat me to it.
Chapter Four
He moved his hand away, running it through his tousled short hair. He sighed, again realising his inadequacy as a confidante.
"Should… should we call your brother or something?" he asked.
She shook her head quickly, swallowing so hard he saw her throat move. He hardly moved a muscle, just shifted imperceptibly, and she stiffened.
She's terrified of me. Emmett thought suddenly, like a shot in the dark at what might be wrong. He looked at how miserable and small she looked and – it hurt. He wondered, briefly, whether he ought to call Alice and let her know, or get her to find Rosalie's brother or something, but he didn't want to betray her trust. He had know idea what she needed right now, but some strange intuition he suddenly had told him that she needed someone to trust.
They sat there in silence until he couldn't bear it any more. "Rosalie?" he asked gently, probing slightly, but ready to withdraw the moment she asked. She looked up, however, and her eyes were no longer full.
"Yes?" she whispered in a tiny voice, as if she could hardly find the courage to speak.
"What… what's wrong?"
It sounded so lame, he realised, the moment it escaped from his mouth. It just didn't seem to encompass the massiveness of the trauma she appeared to be in.
"I'm all right." She said slowly, loosening her arms from around her knees and letting them touch the dirty ground either side of her. "I'm not crazy."
He chuckled lightly, and for the tiniest of seconds her whole body relaxed – it was deep, melodious, and soothing, Emmett's laugh. Then she tensed again.
"I don't think you're crazy." He said, smiling. She wished he wouldn't smile at her like that, like she was something fragile, something breakable. "I think you're scared."
Breathe, Rose. How the hell did he read her like that? Why didn't he think, like everyone else on the planet, that her boyfriend had broken up with her or something? He hadn't ever seen the scene in the classroom with that jock. He'd established the fact that she was frightened simply from her running, and from her eyes.
"Yeah." She said softly. He looked surprised, and in truth, he was. He had expected her to turn on the defensive and deny anything he said. It didn't occur to him that maybe she had no energy left to fight him.
"D'you… d'you wanna talk about it?" That was what a girl would say, right? A friend?
"No." she said definitely. "I'm fine. I… I just have to ride it out… it'll go away soon…"
"This happened before?"
She looked at him with sad eyes, wondering at his naïveté. But then, she guessed she couldn't blame him, he knew nothing about her, no more than her name. "All the time."
Emmett was struggling with himself. The moment was becoming more and more awkward, as Rosalie seemed to clam up more and more and all he could think was how he couldn't help, the only way he knew how to help would be to take her in his arms and clearly that wasn't an option, what if he was just making things worse?
Cut the crap, Emmett. What would your dad do?
"Are you hurt?" he asked softly, wondering if she needed medical attention or something, and realising he knew nothing about it.
"I was, once." She said; her eyes were bleak. "But not anymore. Not on the outside."
She had no idea why she was telling this stranger anything. In her panic, she couldn't even remember his last name. Emmett someone. She was telling Emmett someone things she hardly even told Jasper. She had no idea why, but for some reason she had taken down her false "I'm fine" front, and she was spilling out over it and…
Tears burst out of her again, and her shoulders shook with sobs. She buried her head in her knees once again, and felt the salty tears soaking through the denim of her jeans. She was shivering, it was freezing. Emmett seemed to notice that at the same time as she did, and pulled off his jacket. Not wanting to touch her, not wanting to scare her, he held it out and cleared his throat.
"Put that on, please." He said. She shook her head.
"I'm fine."
He swallowed. Maybe it was time to start being less of a girl and more like Emmett Cullen.
"I don't know what you are, Rosalie Hale, but you are clearly not fine. Now, please put the jacket on before you die of cold and I have to explain to the whole of Forks High that I killed the new girl!"
Was there a hint of a smile on her face as she pulled the jacket around her shoulders? It was warm with his body heat, but it was a comfortable kind of warm, not the stifling kind. She had come to know that there were two types of people in the world – and you could judge them by how they dealt with you when your world had been destroyed. The first type, the type like her parents, and all her friends back in Rochester, pretended that nothing had happened. They gave it a month or so and then it evaporated from memory. They didn't try to see past her pretences of normality; they were what they wanted to see. They tried to move forward with life, even when she was stuck in the quicksand of memories, drowning her. They were the type that didn't care enough to worry.
Then there was the other type, the type she knew cared about her, but they were in a way even more annoying than the first type. They were the people that treated her as if she was made of crystal glass, and the slightest touch would make her crumble into irreparable pieces. They were the people who would no longer look her in the eye, or disagree with anything she said, for fear they would scare her, and she would run for the hills and never come back. They were the type that were constantly asking if she was all right, if she needed anything, if she was coping, until she wanted to scream and tear her hair out and really run for the hills and never come back. They were the type who cared, but cared too much about the past, without a thought for the present. Jasper fitted into that group, loving but stifling.
And for the first time, she believed she had found someone who was neither. Emmett Cullen certainly wasn't pretending anything was all fine, but neither was he frightened of looking at her, wrapping her up in bubble wrap until nothing could touch her at all and she was completely numb…
But then, he didn't know.
That was the problem. She pulled his jacket tighter around her, looked up into his eyes, unafraid. He was caring, but not about cushioning her emotions. He didn't want her to be cold, something that would unfathomable to anyone else because they were all too busy pretending not to notice her, or refusing to let her out of her own house. She swallowed again, but this time it wasn't forcing anything down. It was a realisation that she was safe.
Entirely safe, with this guy, in the middle of the forest. After she'd sworn never to trust a man again.
He looked down at her beautiful face, registering again the perfection of it, but also smiling slightly as he saw the vulnerability in her eyes, and the… trust beginning to form in them.
"You're going to be ok." He said, "I don't know how, yet, but you're going to be ok."
And he reached out a hand, an offering of comfort.
Rosalie Hale put her hand in his.
A/N: Phew, that was hard to write! I have to keep forcing myself to remember that they've only just met, and Rosalie wouldn't really be telling Emmett anything, but then I want them to have that instant connection between them. Hmmmmm… it's a dilemma. I guess I'm gonna go with the excuse that Rose is completely screwed up at the moment, and Emmett gets completely under her skin, but by being there, he's beginning to gain her trust… I dunno. Gah. Review.
