Em hovers over Edyth as she collects some cash and puts it in an envelope. Carine and Esme had returned and were very enthusiastic with the idea. "You should put a note, 'sorry for your loss', so they know it's for Em." Esme suggests.
"Something about how it's impossible to ease such suffering, but impossible to sit by and watch," Carine continues, and Edyth sighs.
"Why don't the two of you work on a letter?" Her tone is heavily sarcastic, but Esme and Carine both put their heads together to write one anyway. Which only serves to further annoy the red-head, as she waits for them to choose the words.
Em stood silent and patient, and constantly fixes Rosalie with a wide beam. Rosalie stood closer to the door, and when Esme and Carine had perfected their note, Edyth sealed it all up and bid them good-bye.
Rosalie was furious and jealous in equal turns. That Edyth made such a good gesture and Em looked so incredibly pleased by it. "It was good of Edie to do it," Em said, stepping up to Rosalie and taking one of her hands.
Rosalie didn't need to hear it. "Well, she probably stole the idea right out of your head." She snipped. She feels hollow in her chest – that Edyth was visiting the human family that Em would never see again. And her head tells her that Em would have never seen them again regardless, even without the bite, properly humanely dead, but her heart sinks with her guilt. Damned her, damned her!
Rosalie watches as Em's face falls a little, and the woman looks down, bashful. "Still, she didn't have to actually do it …." Rosalie feels a little as though she was watching with a pin-hole distance, as though her limbs were as pliable as the marble stone they resembled.
Rosalie doesn't want to stand here and listen to Em speak about another woman – even if it was just Edie. Rosalie wants to move, to prove that she still could. "I'm hungry – excuse me." She hears the words come from her mouth, but her lips feel strangely numb.
"Let me come with you!" Em says, but Rosalie is already moving, running.
Rosalie holds her shoes in her hands as she runs. She has a feeling and a growing certainty that Em follows her, and slows to a stop near a river. It's late in the evening and Rosalie suspects they might have crossed the border at some point. Em stops some distance away.
"I'm sorry Rosie," she called out, "you looked upset, and I was never any good at leaving pretty young things alone."
At Em's voice, the pure gentle concern, Rosalie feels herself crash down. Like a wave on the rocky shore, like a crystal vase dropped on the floor.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this!" Rosalie cries out, feeling the pain claw at her throat and shoulders and try to drag her to the ground. But she was stone now and would not budge. "I was supposed to be following in the steps of Aimee de Heeren. I was supposed to be striving for best-dressed lists and the headlines of the society pages. I …" Rosalie paused, breathed out slowly. "Do I sound like I'm from New York?" She asks Em plaintively.
Emmaline shakes her dear curly head. Rosalie knew how she spoke – the purring 'r's and sharp 'a's of the Mid-Atlantic accent she'd learnt at finishing school. But she'd had to change it, as they moved to smaller and smaller towns. Where it struck people as too rigid and high-bred. Where it never really took, where it was already falling out of fashion.
She looked at Em miserably. She almost wished she could cry, that she could let the dam break. But she knew Em would comfort her and soothe her, and she didn't deserve the relief. "I've robbed you of your human right – your right to die."
Em grunts, throws up her hands. "Well, now, I think that's enough!" She snaps, marching up to where Rosalie cowered on the ground and squatting in front of her. "I can barely stand to see pretty girls upset – so imagine how hard it is, to see the most beautiful woman in the world like this!" Em reaches down, grabs Rose's cheeks and presses them together. Rosalie feels her cheeks squish together and does nothing. "I'm sorry I've not told you yet, that I'm grateful, but I'll tell you now. I am glad I'm still here – maybe not the same as I was, but still here. I didn't want to die, in those woods all alone, Rosie. I was frightened, and you saved me." She says with wide eyes and a furrow in her brow, while she mashes Rosalie's cheeks together.
So when the woman says; "Thank you." it's muffles through pouted out lips.
Em's lips quirk up, and she lets her face go. "… Would you have me die now?" She counters, brows raised. "To make it up for it?"
"No, no …" Rosalie grabs the woman's fingers, strong and thick from real work. She looks down at them as she whispers; "stay with me."
"I will – I want to!" Em assures her, her tone uneven as she laughs as she speaks. "I don't want to be anywhere else, Rosie. Don't leave me all alone, angel."
"I won't." Rosie said softly, unable to stop herself leaning into the large palm of Em's hand. She felt much better already, the guilt ebbed away, knowing the woman was happy to be here with her. The release had felt good, being able to give a voice to her guilt and regret, and hearing them just as swiftly rebuffed had drained her of all the tension she had been holding.
As though all her stone flesh had melted, she sinks against Em, who sways backwards onto her bottom, and scoops her up happily. "Angel, pretty angel." She coos.
Em lowers her head and their lips meet, the strange almost scrape of their skin against each other was disconcerting for the first few moments. Rosalie whimpers, as Em's thick arms wrap her up and crush them together. Rosalie gives a shaky sigh as Em presses her tongue into her mouth, inhaling the scent of the woman that was already so dear to her.
Em is slow to pull back, her pink tongue darting out to lick the corner of her own lips. "Been wantin' to taste you for a long time now, Rosie." Em admits, her gaze was impassioned. Not the distasteful patronizing lust of older men who expected her to fawn under their attention. The open adoration of someone who knew exactly who they were looking at. Rosalie herself was too consumed with staring right back at her to school her own facial features. "Wasn't expecting it to remind me of scotch." She says, her mouth pulling into a grin.
Rosalie blinks, surprised, before she realised what Em was referring to – the dull burn of another person's venom. "We don't have saliva anymore." She says shortly, grimacing. She pulls away,
She remembers Esme telling her, with some bashfulness, when she was still new, when Carine still had hope that Rose would ever deign to consider Edyth as anything more than an annoyance.
"So that means a million kisses from you just might get me drunk?" Em asked, eyebrows darting up while Rosalie bit back her chuckle.
"It means we will just have to get used to each other – through exposure." Rosalie explains, and Em hums cheerfully. "We can't get drunk."
Em's smile is practically cut off her face. "Wait – what?"
Finished! Thank you for reading!