Chapter Summary: A three way tie. Either the malnutrition, or the hypothermia, … or I would kill her. I could only handle one problem at a time, and the most pressing one was the most dangerous one: me. As always. But if I didn't do something about her scent right now …

"This will hurt."

Rosalie looked me dead in the eye, inches from me.

Oh, we were both naked.

"Rosalie," I pleaded, not just a little bit frightened, "we don't have to do this right now, do we? We can wait. We can wait just a little whil-..."

She looked at me with black, hungry eyes, blinked at me, and then swallowed.

"No, now," she said firmly. "Right now. I can't wait, not anymore."

I couldn't help but sympathize with her. She wanted me so badly that it was painful for her. I could see that, but still ...

"It ... it won't hurt too much?" I asked, "... will it?" I felt any confidence I may have had fade away under her determined stare.

"... will it?" I looked to her for some reassurance.

But I didn't find anything there to reassure me, no matter how hard my pleading eyes looked.

"Agony is agony," she stated so calmly, so factually. "It won't matter to you that the pain you feel now may be more or less than any other pain you experience. All you will feel is this pain now. It will hurt until I stop; it will hurt after I stop, and I won't stop until I'm finished, but I need to do this to you right now."

We really needed to work on her bedside manner.

But I saw that there was no stopping her. Not now. She was really going to do this to me.

I closed the gap between us, wrapped my arms around her tightly and shut my eyes, resting my head on her shoulder.

I fit into her body perfectly.

I felt her stiffen, but she didn't push me away. She was so cold. So, so cold. But my skin touching her everywhere was on fire with the feel of her on me. And her scent. Oh, God, her scent!

"Did you want me to tell you when I ..." she began to ask.

I interrupted her; I couldn't stand the suspense. "Just do it! Don't tell me. I can't stand it anymore! Just do it fast, okay?"

"'Quickly,' not 'fast.'" Rosalie corrected in a lecturing tone.

"Rosalie, please!" I shouted. I gripped her as hard as I could, burying my head in the hollow between her shoulder and her neck, hoping that would somehow help.

I felt her shift slightly. Her hands reached down, and her lips brushed against my exposed neck ...

Oh, God! I thought. This was really going to happen. This was happening right now.

Rosalie lifted up the pot full of Belle Fourche river water and poured it over our heads. I felt the water wash the strawberry-scented shampoo from my hair and cascade down the rest of my body.

She was right. The cold of the water knifed into me. It hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt so much that I couldn't think. Everything in me went rigid as I squeezed everything in my body, trying to shrink myself into a point smaller than nothing to disappear from that water caressing me with agonizing tendrils. I clasped myself even tighter to Rosalie. I think I might have been functional if the water washed over me for a second or two, but it seemed to go on and on. All I could do was to hold onto her with all my might.

I might have, in my squeezing, squeezed out a little pee? I'm not sure, but I regretted the drink I took earlier.

"You know you're only hurting yourself more this way," Rosalie said. "What I am is colder than the water. You can feel that, can't you?"

I didn't feel that, and I didn't know that. I just knew that the water had stopped knifing into me. That's what the water felt like: knives made from ice, and not just any ice, but cold ice. If you live in the New West, then you know the difference. I guess she must have stopped pouring. But where I felt Rosalie? It was cold, but it was hot. It was like fire or electricity. By clinging to her, I was clinging to my life. That's how it felt, anyway.

But I wasn't feeling very communicative. I was in so much pain that I was glued to her, frozen into position. And I couldn't move, probably not even to save my life.

But Rosalie wasn't asking that much of me, anyway.

"Can you wash yourself?" she asked as she touched the bar of soap to my back.

"N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-..." I was clasped tightly to her. This was a good thing, because I would have probably shaken myself to death otherwise.

I felt the lathered washcloth go up and down over my back, around my neck and shoulders, and over and then just below my butt. She was actually washing me this time. Not like for my hair. She had poured that cold, cold, painfully cold water over my head but told me beforehand that I needed to wash my own hair; I needed to rub in the shampoo myself. I had asked her why couldn't she do that, too. She told me that I wouldn't like it all that much if she pulled the hair out of my scalp or pushed her fingers through my skull and turned my brain into gray paste if she were the one to lather me. I guess she had a point there.

I felt her hands leave my back, and I felt and heard her washing her back and sides.

"I'm going to have to rinse off the soap now," she said quietly.

I couldn't speak anymore. What was I going to say, anyway? That it was okay? It definitely wasn't okay. I just held her, as I felt her hands leave my back, reaching down again.

Oh, no.

I felt the water, or ice knives, again. I squeezed my eyes closed so tightly that I saw white. I now had a really, really bad headache. That was a pain — ha-ha — but it wasn't the worst thing happening to me.

"You may let go now; I have to do your front side." Rosalie said.

Doing my front side: that would be the worst thing.

It would have been nice to do what she asked, but I found I couldn't. I couldn't move at all, I just held on to her, and as much as I tried, my eyes stayed tightly shut and my arms stayed locked around her.

"Did you hear me?" she asked, but patiently, I was glad to hear. "You can let go now."

"I-I-I-I-I-I-I-..." I sucked in a gasp of wonderfully Rosalie-scented air and tried again, "I-I-I-I-I-I-I c-c-c-c-c-c-..." I wasn't making much progress.

"Hush, now, hush," she said gently. "If I have to move you, I might hurt you. Do you understand me? I might snap your arms in half."

I couldn't respond, and I couldn't move.

Rosalie sighed. "Listen. I'm going to move your arms. If you feel the slightest bit of discomfort, let me know. Scream if you have to. Do you understand?"

I nodded my head jerkily.

Rosalie reached behind her head with both hands. I felt her index fingers and thumbs encircled my wrists. They were cold, but they were warm? I didn't understand it. She pulled my hands off her neck and made a little space between her and my arms. She was so gentle moving my arms. She was so, so gentle.

She made enough space between her and my arms for her to slip easily out of my embrace. She didn't move me at all, she simply stepped around me in the tub so that she was now behind me.

"I'll be as fast as I can," Rosalie said kindly.

But what happened next wasn't kind. I didn't know I could experience more pain, but then she poured more of that cold, cold water over me.

"Keep your eyes closed," she whispered in my ear, and it was a good thing she said that, because right after that I felt the washcloth over my face, soaping it.

"Okay, now I'm going to do the rest of your front. Keep your eyes closed until I rinse you," she said as she continued to soap me. The washcloth moved quickly over my front ...

Of course, it would move quickly, I thought regretfully. There just wasn't all that much to wash. Not much at all.

"Would you separate your legs, please? I need to wash your legs and private areas."

It would have been nice to be able to do that, especially since I think I did have a bit of an accident, but I couldn't move.

"Can you move your legs?" she asked after a few seconds. I just jerked my head back and forth in a no.

I felt her arm snake around my waist, and she lifted me just off the tub. I felt her leg nudge between my legs, then she let me back down, and my legs natural flowed around her leg, separating.

And my frozen brain thought, wow! I suppose she could have forced my legs apart, but she made my non-working body do all the work. She's so smart! She's so wise! She's so gentle in all her strength.

Rosalie must have knelt down, because her arm released me and I felt legs being soaped, back and front, inner and outer.

Then I felt one, two, three quick, soft swipes on my nether region, and one, two wipes between my cheeks.

But I didn't have any time to think about that or to react to it. What would I do, anyway, die?

Yes, that's exactly what I would do, or that's what it felt like. The water from the pot washed over my face, and I couldn't hold it in anymore: I sucked in some of that icy water, hurting my insides as the agony seared my outsides, and I screamed.

But this time the rinse didn't take all that long — just forever — and before I knew it, I was dried, sitting on a pile of towels near the stove, wrapped in a spare blanket. Did Rosalie know ahead of time she would need to do this? Is this why she got the extra bedding? Could she see into the future?

I didn't know. I just absorbed the heat from the freshly stoked stove as Rosalie fetched more Belle Fourche river water to be heated on it. Each second in front of the heat of the fire I became more human, returning from just being in agony from the cold and nothing else.

As I was sucking in the heat from the stove, sitting upright, I remembered how Rosalie came back from the river with a pot full of ice-cold water.

...

She looked so furious with me, like it was my fault that she decided never to speak with me, yet her eyes were the purest gold.

She wasn't breathing.

"Rosalie," I pleaded, "you can't just stop talking to me. You can't."

Her eyes flashed black, and she hissed at me, looking at me in pure hatred.

"Rosalie, you …" I began, but she interrupted me.

"You are so lucky," she stated each word quietly and deliberately.

I just looked at her. I didn't feel particularly lucky, as she had put it.

"You are so lucky that I had already promised you that I would try to tell you when I do kill you, otherwise I would have never spoken to you again." She put the pot on the stove to heat the water for the coming bath (a fat lot of good that did) and turned and looked at me, taking me in with one contemptuous look. "That would have been my promise, my pie-crust promise, because you would have said something right away that needed correcting — as you always do — and where would I be then?"

"Pie-crust promise?" Well, she was talking again. That also meant she wasn't making sense … again.

She looked at me with crossed arms and shook her head. "You really are an untouched blossom, aren't you? 'Easily made, easily broken,' that's what a pie-crust promise is."

She didn't add the word 'idiot,' but I could see her struggling not to.

"Oh," I said meekly, but she kept saying things about me that just weren't true, so I added: "Rosalie, I don't know why you keep saying these things about me because I'm just not these things that you say I am. I'm not smart compared to you, I'm definitely not beautiful, and I'm not pure, I'm just …"

"Royce King II, and before him, two security guards whose names I do not know, and before them, Andrew King and before him John Parker before him John Candler III, or Trey, as he liked to be called, in Atlanta, and before him Smith Aldington. What was the name of the last person you killed?"

I looked at her. She wasn't joking when she asked me. She was serious. So I answered her seriously.

"I haven't killed anyone," I said quietly.

"Yesterday, most recently," she continued, "and only because I haven't had time yet today. When was the last time you cursed God?"

I blinked.

"Ever?" she asked.

"Have you ever coveted anything or anyone? Have you ever thought ill of anyone?" she continued.

I had her there, but I wasn't pleased to admit this one.

"Sometimes I don't think so well of, … well, you …" I answered quietly, looking down to the ground, wishing my eyes could bore a hole into it so I could bury myself there.

"I didn't ask if you thought accurately of anyone," her voice smiled, "I asked if you thought ill of anyone."

I blushed.

"How about lying, when was the last time you lied?" she continued

"I …" I began and looked up at her, but then something much more important than me not knowing this answer occurred to me. "You lie?" I asked her timidly.

"I am a vampire," she explained forcefully, as if she were stating the obvious. I guess she was. "Everything I am is a lie; every action I take among humans is a deception."

"Do you lie to me?" I asked her.

She looked at me, at naïve little me. "You've never lied, have you?"

I blushed, knowing she, this cosmopolitan vampire, thought less of me, this unsophisticated country girl. "I'm not all these things you say I am."

"Oh, and I'm not kind and not funny because I say that, too," she countered.

"Funny?" I asked.

She smirked. "Perhaps you had a bit too much medicine to remember that little declaration of yours."

"Oh," I said, as my face colored more. Now I did remember that night, millions of years ago — or was it the night before last night? — when I called her kind and funny and tried to set her up with a vampire boyfriend.

"You see," she said, "we both deny what the other says about us, because we both believe what we think we know. The difference between us is that I know I'm right about me, by my very nature, and I know you're wrong about you, again by your very nature."

"Rosalie," I shook my head, "you're wrong. I'm not … I'm just not …"

"Your humility is only strengthening my side of the argument." She had that tone of voice like she just won. She was so stubborn. She just couldn't be made to see me as I was.

...

My rueful reflection by the stove was interrupted when Rosalie returned and placed the full pot back on the stove. Then she picked me up, just like the pot — so easily — and placed me on the bed, dressing me in panties, tee shirt and PJs, putting me under the covers. I felt like complaining that I had just woken up, but I was too exhausted to do so.

I must have drifted off to sleep, because sometime later Rosalie was sitting beside me on the bed. She had the steak cut into thin strips on the plate, arranged as spokes from a wheel's hub, and in the center of that she had cut an egg lengthwise so that it fell out like a flower with six petals. It was so beautifully arranged. It was something that could only come from her.

I was still groggy, so she fed me the steak and egg (which, being pickled, tasted a little salty and briny), then she fed me one of the canned beets from a bowl. After eating that I was drifting off again, but she forced me up, ignoring my faint complaints, and forced me to brush my teeth.

Meanie. There, see, I could think ill of her.

But I was in no position to renew that argument. I leaned on her pretty heavily as she lead me back into bed. I don't know why I was so tired.

A/N: I am indebted to Consultant by Day's story "Rosalie's Revenge" for providing the names of the men who assaulted Rosalie and for the order in which she killed them.