Twenty-Five

Rosalie needed to disappear, sometimes. Long ago she had been a human fueled by the praise of her biological family and the throngs of admirers who saw her only for her beauty and her charm. Her upbringing had been so different from that of her Cullen siblings. Different than Carlisle and Esme as well.

Now, although she delighted and regaled in such notions—what human could look at her and not notice her—? she found herself more and more withdrawn. She was happy with Emmett. Always, prideful and content in their relationship together, and she loved her niece with the same fierce intensity that she once imagined that she would love any natural child of her body, but something had changed in the last four years. Something that had darkened her, something that she was still trying to formulate into words. Something that kept her mind occupied on New York, and Ithaca. The time that the Cullen's had all fled Forks after Edward has asked them too, fleeing to a place so close to her original home town, and the things…

She didn't let her thoughts linger there.

Presently, she was elbow deep under the hood of her custom-built Essex SUV. Several months ago, she had stumbled upon a prototype Tesla engine at a warehouse site that was up for foreclosure. Alice had hinted that there might be something in the moldering old work space that she might enjoy and Rosalie had gone, lip curled and arms crossed, wading through the aisleways of greasy, rat-infested car parts, until she had stumbled upon the tarped engine. The dealer, a sub-contractor who had no idea that the engine before her was worth more than the entire building combined, had shrugged, saying the property owner would accept five hundred dollars for it. He had asked, after had she paid, if she brought her boyfriend to help her carry the gnarled-looking engine out to the jeep, she had driven in. Rosalie had smirked, good naturedly, and watched as the older man gaped, open mouthed, while she hefted the engine up, doing her best to make it look at least somewhat difficult, and gave him a sassy wink as she passed him on her way to the car.

The image still brought a smile to her face.

The engine itself was priceless, but she was tinkering with making the Essex, and import from Germany, run smoother with the prototype. She had seen limited success, and she was hoping that with the added benefit of some more elbow grease she could see more.

Alice stepped in.

Rosalie could not be startled—her senses had been honed to a special tightness when she became a vampire, but traces of the last night of her humanity remained in her body and in her mind. Rosalie had been alone, nothing but the quiet for company, but when she heard the doorknob click, she had lifted the crowbar on the side table, instinctively. Even though she was nearly a century removed from the crime of her murder she could still remember the feeling of the scream in the back of her throat, the way the hair at the nape of her neck stood on end when Royce and his gang of thugs overtook her in that ally. She could still recall the way her cheek had hit the shiny chrome of the wet pavement, it had rained most of the day before, and the gaslit streetlights made the rainwater look like glitter, like the whispered promise of jewels from her fiancé, so near, had she been to her wedding day.

Now that she was in her vampire form, she could recall, with freighting salivation, what the taste of her own blood had been like as she lay dying on the cobblestones, seconds or hours away from Carlisle's cold embrace enveloped her, and she had awoken to an eternity of unchanging life.

Rosalie eyed her sister. She could not say that she was particularly close to Alice, though Alice had always tried to be a good friend to her. Rosalie was uncomfortable by the way Alice could see so much of her past and present. There were secrets that she never intended for anyone to know; secrets that she hadn't even told Emmett, even after their many years together, but it unnerved her that Alice had already seen, or sensed, those dark moments of her life, even though she had not been told.

Alice smiled gently at her. "I wanted to get that old plastic tub that you used to use for spare parts on the Mustang."

Rosalie raised an eyebrow, "What for?"

"We'll be getting a cat soon." Alice dashed around the garage, pixie-like as ever, overturning the neat piles that Rosalie had compiled in all four corners of the room. Rosalie objected, loudly.

Alice came away triumphant, holding up the empty plastic bin.

"A cat?" Rosalie questioned. There was bitterness in her tone. She had had cats in her human life, loving, cuddling creatures that would curl up by her feet while she slept. Animals tended to shy away from them now, they were the highest predators in a world full of prey. Why would any creature, either large or small, trust them?

Alice replied, her voice as trilling and singsong as any windchime. "I saw a cat coming out of the woods. Can't say when she'll get her for sure, but soon. I think—"

"Why are you here, Alice? I can tell that you're seeking me out, cat or no cat. Did you see something?"

It did go without saying that Alice was likely to see as much as she felt. Alice moved the box down, letting the side dangle from her curled finger. "I did see something." For Alice, it was a relief to admit it.

Rosalie raised her eyebrows, "And?"

Alice bit her lip, concentrating, trying to find the right phrasing. "I saw Renesmee…"

Rosalie let the crowbar drop, the sound would have been ear splitting for a human, and even with vampiric hearing, it immediately put Alice on edge. "What about Renesmee? What did you see? Is someone going to hurt her?"

Alice extended her free hand, palm up, hoping to appease her more volatile sister, she let the plastic bin drop. "She's okay, it's just…"

Rosalie shrugged in annoyance. "Spit it out, Alice."

"Alright," Alice said, trying again. "I saw that Renesmee is going to talk to you about… adult things soon."

Rosalie took a moment to process, brows furrowed, "Adult things…?"

Alice struggled, Renesmee was still so young, so childlike, her own visions of the future had startled her. "Sex, I think. She won't feel comfortable going to Bella."

Rosalie immediately relaxed. "Is that all?"

Alice tried again, digging deeper into what she saw. "It's not just, sex."

"She's growing up," Rosalie reasoned. "She's bound to be curious. It's very healthy for someone her age."

"Rose," Alice tried again. "It's going to bring up all the past trauma with Royce King."

Royce? The name made Rosalie's nostrils flare, even though he had been dead and in his grave for more than eighty years. "Royce?" She said out loud. Her voice was shaky, belying her earlier bravado. "Royce?" She said it again, unsure of even her own words. Only moments ago, she had thought of him, his face and her human death were never far from her mind, but now, to say it… Say the name out loud for the first time in years.

Alice was pained to have to bring it up. Rosalie was a secretive person by nature. She presented herself as an untouchable vixen, but deep down, Alice knew that she had been wounded deeply in the past, and those pains, still stayed with her, despite what she did or did not say. Rosalie had never openly confided in Alice about her last night as a human, but Alice had unwittingly seen most of it through the tunnel of her visions of the future. Rosalie's actions and reactions were consequences of her past, and Royce King, dead and murdered as he had been, still steered many of her decisions.

"I know we've never spoken of this," Alice went on, floundering.

Rosalie lowered her chin, contemplative. "But you've seen it?" Rosalie had known, she had always known.

Had Alice been able to dream, the bloody screams that Rosalie had gasped before her final breaths would have been the stuff of nightmares.

"Rose, I'm sorry," Alice began.

"And if you've seen it, then Edward has seen it. You would have told Jasper," she reasoned, "Edward would have told Carlisle and Carlisle would have told Esme. The entire family is aware."

"Rose," Alice whispered, heartbroken for her sister's pain. "You did nothing wrong. You have nothing to be ashamed of."

"He raped me, Alice."

Alice's voice was a whisper. "I know."

"He raped me, and then told his friends to do the same." Her hand clutched at her neck, feeling the phantom stab of a human pain, long dead to her, but still very much real. "They beat me. Put their hands on me. Put their teeth inside of me." She looked to her wrist, the scars long sense healed by her vampiric blood, but still very much visible to its wearer. Only Emmett knew the full extent of that night, and she had only spoken of it a few times in the last half century, she felt compelled to go on. "They stabbed me, here" she pointed to her abdomen, "And here," her other hand went to the palm size shape above her collar bone, close to where her neck met the shoulder. "After they were done, they put a broken beer bottle inside of me. The bottles were made of glass back then, remember? They laughed when they saw all the blood. I remember, at the end," she continued, "when they had satisfied themselves completely and I was choking on my own blood, they took it in turns to urinate on me. One. At. A. Time. Carlisle must have smelt that too," she reasoned. "Along with the blood. Esme and Edward must have smelt it as well, while I—" she felt a sudden stab of embarrassment, wondering if they must have thought she had pissed herself at the end.

Rosalie's fingers brushed against her clothing, black leggings and a fuchsia-colored tank top, nothing too fancy for the work she was doing now, but that night, her dress had been satin and lace, a cashmere coat pinned loosely against her breast.

She remembered that her hands had been so cold.

Alice slumped against the wall, as though she had been struck by the force of Rosalie's words.

Rosalie was calmer now. "What does all this have to do with Renesmee, though? Is someone going to hurt her?"

Alice shook her head, "I don't know the specifics, only that she's going to talk to you about—"

"—Jacob?" Rosalie couldn't keep the disgust from her voice.

Alice searched back through her mind, uncertain, "I can't say for sure."

Rosalie rolled her eyes, "Who else would it be? He's had his canines and his claws in her since she was born with his sick star-crossed wolf thing."

"Maybe there's a human boy that she met at school?" Alice countered.

"Maybe," Rosalie noted. "But maybe not." She crossed her arms. "It must be Jacob, I saw the two of them, last night."

"Saw them?" Alice was genuinely shocked. She hadn't seen anything in her vision.

Rosalie shook her head. "Not like that. They were talking. I could tell he was frazzled, I guess, for lack of a better word." She went on, clarifying. "Like he wanted to kiss her or sleep with her, but part of him was weirded out by the fact that's she's just a child."

"She's four," Alice noted diplomatically.

"Four," Rosalie agreed, though with a sour note to her voice. Renesmee may be four, but every day she was transforming more and more into a teenager.

"Hey, Rose," Alice said. "If you ever want or need to talk about what happened that night, you know I'm here."

Rosalie turned back to her. Alice noticed that there was a smudge of car grease on her neck, where her hand had earlier touched. "Surely, Carlisle and Edward regaled you with what happened after I was turned into a vampire."

Alice was quiet.

"They must have told you," Rosalie went on, "That I hunted down each of those men, killed them, slowly. Royce was last. He was so altered that they had to use his dental records to identify him."

Alice couldn't ignore the smile on Rosalie's face. "But that's revenge. I can tell that it still upsets you. The trauma."

"Hardly." Rosalie regretted letting her guard down. She wasn't interested in being known for her pain or her past. Her hands were dirty with car grease but she non the less raised her hand, fluffing the back of her low bun, feeling the layering of curls framing her face. She looked perfect, dazzling, every bit the demure vixen. Embodying every man's fantasy of a beautiful women working on a car.

Alice shrugged, shyly. Her mouth curling into a half smile. "Well, if you do," she bent, picking the plastic bin back up from the ground, "Want to talk, I mean. You know where you can find me."

Rosalie smiled, ashamed of her earlier behavior. "You'll be making a home for the stray cat, right?"

Alice grinned, pleased by the affectionate banter. "That's right."

Rosalie turned back to the car, hearing Alice hover for a few more seconds, before finally retreating out of the back door.

It would have been a lie if Rosalie said that she didn't still think about Royce King, or even his family. His parents died a decade after she had killed their son, but his brother lived on well into his seventies. Rosalie had kept tabs on him, secretly fearing that this younger brother, might have the same predilections as Royce. She watched him, content to strike out at him should even the whisper of a crime cross her path. She watched his son's too, and even now, she kept tabs on his grandchildren.

Rosalie had entertained the notion of destroying the bloodline completely. Royce's brother, a man named Randell could have easily met his demise by her hand. Randel's son Timothy was still alive, a balding baby boomer with two sons of his own, Joseph and Keith, one in his twenties and the other still in high school. She kept google searches alerted to all three of them, and typically, once a year she would disappear back into upstate New York to watch them.

Before, when the family had fled back east to Ithaca it had been shamelessly easy to watch them. She would wander autumn streets with a white coat, imagining herself as an avenging angel, with Emmett on her arm, ready to step in should she request it. She recalled finding herself in a nightclub, dancing with Joseph, waiting for him to potentially try to put something into her drink. She would leave him, stunned on the dancefloor when all sighs pointed to gentlemanly behavior. Alternately, the following day she would waltz into Keith's high school, steal a seat next to him in his history class, flirt with him, tease him with the lovely slope of her cheekbones, coax him out to the back of the school, behind the gym, put her hand on him and wait for him to attack, but he had not. Afterward she had searched out Emmett, who had blended in with a gang of football players and together they would leave.

While she was there, she had also reacquainted herself with her own family. Her two brothers, both still children when she was killed, had long since died, but their children and the children of those children were still alive, still walking on the earth, some of them still recognizable by the slope of Rosalie's father's nose, the same as hers, or the dreamy color of her mother's eyes. Her brother's granddaughter, a tiny freckled girl of fourteen lived eight miles away from the house where Joseph and Keith King lived. This little girl, reminded Rosalie so much of herself at that age, stunning in the way that Rosalie and her mother had been, yet so innocent and untouched, like Renesmee herself.

Emmett had no desire to find anyone of his relatives who might still be alive or his decedents, but he catered to her with a bent arm for her grasp onto or a shadowy backup on a dance floor.

Her mind turned back to Renesmee, and this supposed conversation that Alice had seen. Anything could happen, and knowing her family anything would happen. She couldn't imagine Renesmee, the child of her heart, grown up enough to talk about boys and relationships, especially when it concerned that mutt, Jacob Black. But she would do what she needed to, believing wholeheartedly in the right that each woman or girl could and should do what they wanted with their own bodies. Edward, with his old-fashioned sensibilities would die if he could read her thoughts now, and Bella, so heavily influenced by him may not agree with her. She knew that they had still not come to terms with Jacob imprinting on their daughter. It was a delicate balance—on the one hand, Jacob would die to protect Renesmee, and as two helicopter parents, themselves, she was sure they enjoyed the freedom to relax every once in a while, Jake and Renesmee were together, but the fact that their daughter was rapidly going from a little girl to a woman must be startling them.

She stepped away from the engine, moving quickly to the driver's side and twisting the key into the ignition. The engine purred and she felt contented.

Ness still wasn't out of the woods just yet, and it had been hours since she last check on her.