Part 3: The future is in stone
The sheer amount of melodrama Edward exuded in the following weeks made him even more unbearable. There were times she wished her brother were someone else's family.
It wasn't even that people changed while vampires didn't, Rosalie had seen that proven often enough. When the chance arose to tell Bella the story of how Rose Potter had become Rosalie Hale, she told the truth.
"Having my life taken from me, it broke me. All I had wanted was normalcy. A handsome husband who would care for me, a career I could enjoy, a good home to raise my children in."
"What happened to your godchild?" Bella asked.
She thought of blue hair streaked with grey, of a familiar stranger wielding their Prophet and cuppa on the way to the kitchen table. "They grew up without me. When I disappeared my people buried an empty coffin in the same plot my parents are on. The Girl Who Lived, they etched into the stone right below my date of death."
"Do you regret it? Killing them and having to run?"
"I might have been a little less dramatic, what with the dress. My anger has faded, Bella. Emotions change."
Bella waited. She'd learned patience from a vampire, wouldn't let up until Rosalie'd answered properly.
"I wish I could have taken Teddy with me. But it was safer this way, with the world thinking me mysteriously dead. You cannot raise a child while looking over your shoulder, and I could not bear to put Teddy in danger with me."
She'd gone back to check on her loved ones once it had been safe. The Gryffindor courage to invite herself in had wilted when she'd seen the dried up flowers on her grave.
To come back to them when they didn't bother to remember her would have been the worst pain of all.
"What I really wanted was a husband who loved me, and a daughter." Rosalie laughed, and even to herself it sounded beautiful and broken. "I'm a lucky woman. All but one of my dreams have come true."
Victoria danced across the treaty boundary as if she had mapped it. 'Fuck the treaty, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' Rosalie wanted to say, but the wolves and Edward were equally stubborn on holding to arbitrary lines.
It surprised exactly noone when the bitch came back with an army, and by then they were all itching for a fight.
Rosalie kept her powers hidden, knowing the Volturi would follow the tail end of the newborn horde. Naturally, the guard showed up exactly after the fight was over.
"You have done well for yourself, Carlisle." Aro could make even a greeting sound like a threat.
"Bella will be turned soon," Edward said. Rosalie stilled, wishing for once that her brother would read her mind. Could he not see that the kings thought their coven a danger? Usurpers, almost, a challenge to the throne. They'd misinterpret his words as a boast, 'We'll have a powerful shield soon.'
Aro's eyes came to rest on Rosalie then, blood red and far too bright. "Rosalie, my dear girl. How can it be that we have never met? Come, shake my hand. I find myself curious."
She doubled down on her Occlumency as she walked across the field, filtering which thoughts she would show him. Snape would have been proud of how many months she'd spent preparing for this exact moment.
It took all her self control not to laugh when Aro's eyes blinked in disappointment. Emmett's arms were exactly what she needed when the king let her go.
"You must come visit Volterra, Bella dear, once you have become one of us."
The Volturi could make a farewell sound like a threat, too.
La Push's wolves were a mess of snarls and teeth when they learned what had been said. "You can't turn her, it'd break the treaty," a boy said, showing that he understood nothing of the world and its inevitabilities.
'You will live a sad life filled with obligations, hopes, and empty promises,' Rosalie thought at him. 'One day you will die feeling unfulfilled, bemoaning your regrets. Your body will rot in the ground while my family still roams these lands, one town to the next. After she turns, Bella will barely remember you. You are nobody. Your words mean nothing.'
"We will not end her life," Edward lied. "We will not violate the treaty."
Rosalie wanted to grab them both by the scuff and shake them.
Graduation was such a silly ritual that Rosalie skipped it, content to trade hours of mundane droning for a few minutes of Alice's complaints. Instead she fiddled with the Chevy that Bella had gifted her; she'd taken out the engine without deciding what to replace it with.
The rusted red had charm, she'd give Bella that much. She didn't want to ruin the truck's character, but a vampire's car had to accelerate past 80.
Bella's inevitable turning still bothered her, but the decision had been taken from them by royal decree. "Soon" could mean years to vampires as old as the kings, perhaps Edward would yet convince the girl to live a little longer.
Perhaps she would have a daughter first. Bella could name her Iris, Heather, or Hazel.
Alice outdid herself with the wedding. Rosalie played the piano as Chief Swan walked his daughter down the aisle, and for once the girl looked like she truly belonged with them. Emmett's hand on Rosalie's shoulder was a promise, a honeymoon of their own when the ceremony was over.
Bella shouldn't have invited the wolf, but she'd become predictable. Bella was stupid and brave, good at rushing headlong into the biggest danger she could find, and she had a saving people thing. Speaking from experience, it'd take her at least another decade to stop trying to save people from themselves.
Afterwards, when Edward had whisked Bella away on some strange parody of a honeymoon, Esme showed Rosalie a photo and teased her for looking fond.
"She'll make a good vampire one day," Rosalie answered. "And if I can help it, she'll be a vampire without regrets."
Nobody had been expecting the phone call, least of all Rosalie. Nobody had been expecting the pregnancy either, though Rosalie was the only one who embraced the idea of a child with delight.
A baby, her baby, she was finally getting her baby!
Rosalie danced through the weeks like she was the luckiest woman in the world. Adopted or not, the child would be the next flower in a long line of Evanses. The name didn't matter, Bella's baby was going to be family.
The newest Cullen was a fighter from the start, beating Bella black and blue from the inside. The potions Rosalie bought did nothing, and neither did Carlisle's medicines. It clotted Rosalie's joy into a helplessness that made her blood boil. There were days she couldn't meet Bella's eyes, hating to watch her baby try to kill their own mother..
Hermione's pregnancy hadn't been like this, pregnancies weren't supposed to be a battle where only one victor would come out alive.
The inevitability of the growing foetus was like a metronome counting down the days to Bella's turning. This both solved and caused problems with the wolves, ending in three of the stinking things camping in Esme's back garden.
Nobody else found it strange how treaty lines could be bent now that a child was in danger, but not when it had been all of Forks, Seattle, and Port Angeles at risk. Still Bella was so young, too young. This was the twenty-first century, mothers shouldn't die in childbirth anymore.
The maternal mortality rate for young healthy mothers in Washington was 0.0001 percent. Bella could have beaten the Potter luck, for her to manage one in a million.*
While Edward tried to reanimate his wife long enough to make her a vampire, Rosalie cradled Renesmee to her chest and sobbed.
With that small heart beating so strongly against her, it was as if she, too, was alive.
She'd been afraid of Jacob's reaction, the possibility he'd hurt the fragile life nestled in Rosalie's arms. Him imprinting instead was absolutely unwelcome. Even after Edward eased some of their concerns, it was unnerving.
Rosalie was reminded of fate and prophecies, of Mars being bright, and of beings greater than them all. Something this convenient must have been arranged from high above or deep within the earth, an entity pulling on strings.
How much of their lives was free will? Had there been another glowing orb in a hall filled with shelves upon shelves? She will be killed, and she will kill in turn. She will chance across her husband while treading the path of Orion. Her child will be born as the seventh month dies.
It was too good to be true, Rosalie knew. She held her baby girl in her arms every night as she slept, watched as Renesmee outgrew her clothes as fast as Alice could buy them, and waited for the other shoe to drop.
*IRL in Washington, pregnancy-related mortality is 11 deaths per 100,000 live births, 60% of which are considered 'preventable'. In this fic we jump from 5/100,000 to 1/1,000,000 because of Magic.
Day 20 of a chapter every day this December. Happy Yuletide or whatever it is you celebrate, my friends. Thank you for reading.