Chapter 14

RPOV

'Bella?' I gasped. My fingers gripped onto the phone too hard and a groove moulded into the plastic case.

'R-Rosalie?' her voice stammered.

I detected the fright. Emmett swerved into our part of town. The Jeep's wheels skidding at an almighty pace.

'Bella! We're coming!' I said, Emmett parked up and we all dashed for the door, I put the phone down and Alice quickly jammed the key into the lock.

'Bella? Edward?' I frantically shrieked.

'Carlisle?' Esme shouted matching my own worry.

Alice had stationed herself upstairs and I heard the rattles of Jasper running across the landing alongside her. The house shook. Emmett was in the kitchen whacking the doors open of the rooms that were connected onto the kitchen. I meanwhile went to Carlisle's study with Esme. It was completely deserted. They had to be here somewhere and I was not wrong, Alice and Jasper had found something.

'Oh my word…' Jaspers southern American vocals trailed down the stairs. It sounded blood thirsted. Agonised. Tormented.

Esme and I stood still tuning into the next voice that was heard.

'Oh God, Bella, what's happened to you? … JASPER! NO! JASPER, GET BACK!'

The tumbles and screeches bounded down the staircase, Esme and I no longer hesitated. I sprinted up the stairs not allowing my hair strands to even sway from the intensity of the speed. My nostrils kicked into the scent of Bella's oozing human frame and the salty mixture of warm dripping blood. I traced it to the very room that had been Bella's solitary and Alice's shouts did not isolate my hearing completely, I could hear Bella breathing, I could hear her heart beating.

There, poised in a bleak curled up position in the very corner was Bella, her white nightgown stained from a bleeding wound beneath it. Her terrified composure unlacing a bare bony white leg and her eyes piercing shut. Jasper was grovelling on the floor and Alice attempting to pull him away with her tiny fists.

I latched on to him, helping Alice to pull back. Esme had flitted to Bella's side, soundly lifted her, while the tears etched down Bella's face. Esme grotesquely hissed at Jasper. My grip on Jasper now sturdier slammed him back onto the wall; my arm leant across his collarbone stapling him to the ground. Before I could shout for Emmett, he was already there and dragged Jasper away, out of the doorway and elsewhere.

'Bella?' Esme whispered weakly. 'Where's Edward and Carlisle, Bella?'

Unable to speak, we had to rest her onto the bed, we lifted her nightgown to where the thick blood was spilling out of her stomach, it was a slit, perfectly aligned that only someone with superhuman abilities or an expertise mass murderer would have been unable to accomplishes. I heard Alice draw a sharp breath of air before getting closer to it. Esme had found the bandages but seemed unable to approach any closer to her.

'Give it here, Esme.' Alice snapped. She hadn't meant it to be so harsh but the blood was becoming unbearable and Bella was growing increasingly uncomfortable.

Esme flung them at Alice and I handed Alice a bottle of antiseptic. Alice's fingers began to tremble as she dabbed the strong scented formula on cotton wool and treated the cut. Emmett was raging somewhere on the floor below and I tried to concentrate on his words but was completely lost, hopelessly thinking of how foolish I had been. The childish way that I, Rosalie Hale, had been so envious of this human girl that had stolen the dead heart of Edward. How I wished I could be as vulnerable as she but now looking into her eyes seeing the fear and fright, the pain she anguished, it came to me that I felt for her. I had grown to care for her.

These past weeks it reminded me of the days that I had endured pain as a human. Flash backs of my last moments with human life, the soaring pain shooting up my body as the man I had turned to love wrecked me before his very own eyes. Edward had mentally done this to Bella. I wanted to show her that I understood. No matter our differences, no matter my being absorbed into myself, I would be here for her. I would listen because I knew what it felt like to suffer in silence. Now as I looked on at her physical injury, I felt a human emotion that would have shocked even Jasper, I felt sickened. Sickened to the stomach that someone had done this to her. I was certain it was Edward; he being ashamed of what he had done could explain his sudden disappearance.

I watched Alice so tenderly dress the cut with bandaging. Bella's heart rate was calming down.

'Where are they, Bella?' Alice asked urgently.

Bella shook her head. 'I – I don't know. Carlisle t-took Edward away from m-me.'

'Why, Bella, why did Carlisle do that?' Alice questioned.

'Edward tried to help me.' Bella cried desperately 'He was going to end it all. We were going to end it t-together.' She let out another cry, the tears no longer being with held. 'You have to find him Alice – y-you have to f-find him.'

'Bella, where have they gone? Do you know?' Alice whispered immediately.

Again Bella shook her head. 'H-he had the m-matches.' She said in a wispy voice. 'He t-told me that our love was like no other and I had shown him that he too had a soul. And he had the m-matches and s-said we'd journey together. He would end my s-suffering he s-said. Only if I ended his.'

Matches? My mind whizzed. A vampire with the need of fire only meant one thing to me. Death. Or in Edward's case death on his own account. Suicide. Assisted suicide.

'Is that when he hurt you? Did he do this to you?' Alice prodded sceptically.

Bella shook her head once more. 'I don't know what I've done to him Alice. I think he I g-got into his head. He s-said we'd go to our m-meadow… and he took a knife from the draw and l-lifted me u-up. W-we were going to end it.' She sobbed harder. 'We were going to stop it, s-stop it all, he s-said that w-we'd do this t-together just… just as we had started.' She was bawling so much that she had to catch her breath.

'Then what, Bella?' Alice demanded. She shook Bella quite vigorously.

'Let go Alice, you're hurting her, come on.' I intercepted carefully.

I did not want to get on the wrong side of Alice; I had proof of this only the previous day. I had drearily stationed myself in the kitchen, deep in thought and only murmuring to myself. I do not know what words were breathed exactly but Alice made sure to make herself noticed and flared up saying I thought about nothing but myself.

'Rosalie, how much vainer can you get? If you get anymore bigheaded you'd explode. We're going through a crisis here and all you can do is make yourself the victim. Well, I've got news for you; you're not the victim here. I don't give a flying fuck if you drowned in your precious self-pity. Just get over yourself.'

I had not replied. Emmett on the other had defended me. He loved me so. But I could not function like I had before, Bella's illness had sparked a new light in me that was yet to fully emit light and was still uneasily flickering.

Turing back to Alice now, she looked even paler then possible, she was almost transparent from the extent of it and she took a step back as I took over.

'Bella?' I said gently. 'How did you end up like this?'

She opened her eyes noticing the change in addresser. She paused for a while showing that she was unsure of whether she should prevail.

'Carlisle, found us just as Edward was going to jump out the w-window and the knife slid and – and it c-cut me and C-Carlisle must have r-realised what we were going to do and he threw him t-to the ground… and then they were g-gone.'

The knife. A knife to cut up the solidified remains of a vampire from the effects of fiery flames. We all stood there. Silence overcame us. The story exposed. Emmett came ambling up the stairs. It was obvious by his wide eyes that he heard what Bella had to say. He put an arm around my waist as my own eyes widened in terror.

Things were bad. It was an understatement. A stupid one at that and I cursed myself internally. We offered Bella water for she looked famished. She refused. She cried that it'd make her gain weight.

'Don't be silly,' Alice said sharply, 'Water doesn't have any calories.'

It didn't matter to her even so. She did not want to survive, we had already established this and water was the element that kept human life sustained. No – any matter of life sustained.

'F-find Edward.' She trembled. 'FIND HIM!'

Jasper had cooled off from his rage and he, Emmett and Esme agreed to look for Edward and Carlisle. Not only for Bella's sake but our own. Esme looked mindless, I saw an almost pronounced stumble as she left despite it being impossible for things like that to occur in vampires. Her own son had tried to take his life with his love as his witness. Like us, he could not bare it all. Unlike us, his binding with Bella was so strong that he stayed true to his word that he'd give her anything – even death.

Alice was beginning to get aggressive, she was screaming. 'Bella! Just do it. I love you, Bella. Why? Can't you just drink the goddamn water? Drink it!'

'No.' Bella moaned. 'I'm sorry Alice. I can't do it… h-he promised me he wouldn't leave me again.' She sobbed.

'I can't take it anymore! I can't take it, I can't watch you waste your life away any longer!'

There and then I revisited a haunting part of my past that I had tried such a great deal to conceal, to forget and lock away in the dark corners of a cupboard. The dark silhouettes of my human eyesight flashed into my mentality, becoming even more so real. Dark silhouettes groping me, aggressively thrusting me to the muddy floors, whispering to me, shoving me, breaking my ribs, scarring the untouched flesh on my thighs. And I suppurated, crying for help, inhaling tobacco and leering unwashed clothes, begging for a stop but the agony did not stop, a knife to the throat, a kill to the spleen, a tear to the skin and the end of the sacred purity before me.

The very screams that had mustered from Bella were the ones I had once cried. The tears that had once escalated down the broken bones in my cheeks were reciprocated into that of Bella's skeletal bone structure.

I think Alice lost hope because she did not force her to drink, she slumped back, exhausted. And I could do nothing, for I knew more than anyone that at times like this you could not comfort the pained. Bella was beyond repair. She would never recover. No matter our attempts to help her. It would be the battle she finally lost and Edward had simply refused a victory.

A/N – Review please. That was Rosalie's point of view. I wanted to show that she isn't as bad as she's portrayed.

Songs – Paranoid Android by Radiohead/ Killing me softly by Fugees.

Also, what point of view do people want for the next chapter? Whichever character gets the most votes will have a chapter in their view. So pick now… Bella, Edward, Esme, Carlisle, Emmett, Alice, Rosalie, Jasper, Charlie… who ever really.

I'm writing something else for Twilight so keep your eyes opened for it. Lots of love, peace and anti-global warming badges, Nem ;O xx.