Chapter 23 – (The Future)

"Merry Christmas!" Emmett greets us from the porch when we arrive for the McCarty's Christmas potluck the following evening. He's wearing a mustard yellow handknitted sweater with a reindeer's face on the front of it, complete with red pompom nose. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so hideous.

"What are you wearing?" I can't help myself.

"Rosalie!" Esme says reprovingly, but Emmett only laughs a little ruefully.

"Gran knitted it…can't remember her own name half the time, but still remembers how to knit ugly Christmas sweaters and it was apparently my turn this year." He tugs it away from his body with a grimace. "She forgot I can't wear wool though…I put it on to make her happy, but I'm going to have to take it off soon or I'll be clawing my skin off. Holy shit Ouija-woman, what have you made there?"

"Ta-dah!" Alice lifts her gingerbread house with a flourish. From the top of the slightly crooked chimney to the bottom of the uneven porch stairs, it's a perfect gingerbread replica of the McCartys' Victorian house.

"That's crazy!" Emmett leans forward to look more closely. "It's brilliant – there's my window and everything. Wow, a jello salad that is NOT."

"I know!" Alice's eyes are shining. "It looks fabulous, and I'm such a good cook now that I'm confident it will also be delicious."

"I'll let you know," Emmett says. "You should go show Mom, she'll love it. She's over in the marquee…and thanks again for putting that up, Edward and Jasper."

The others move towards the tent, and I climb the steps to stand beside Emmett, leaning into him and feeling him kiss my hair. "You're feeling better?"

"Yeah, a lot. Still coughing up a lung every now and then, but all right." Emmett scratches his neck, and I see the angry red of his skin.

"Keep taking the antibiotics until they're finished," I instruct him. "And you should go upstairs and take that sweater off before your skin starts peeling."

"Yes Doctor Hale," Emmett says teasingly, but he grabs my hand and tows me into the house and upstairs. "Dad said thanks for the deer too – I told him you were a crack shot. He was pretty impressed."

"He's all right?" I ask hesitantly.

"Getting there. He's sober tonight anyway, and that's something." As we reach the attic, Emmett tears off the sweater and tosses it onto a chair, cursing as he scratches at his skin. "Damn it, it's rubbed me raw right through my t-shirt." He pulls the t-shirt off too, grimacing as he looks at the angry red patches of skin on his arms and chest.

I don't look at the rash. All I'm seeing is the broadness of his shoulders, the solid muscle of his arms and chest, the faint trail hair on his lower belly as it disappears into his jeans, feeling the familiar rush of heat and overwhelming want. I move closer, and Emmett catches my eye and I know he feels it too. He breathes my name, and then his arms go around me and I'm kissing him, drowning in the taste and smell and feel of him as he pushes me back towards the bed.

Mine.

It's ultimately an exercise in frustration though, because as good as it all is there's a line I don't dare to cross and it's a line that leaves us both wanting. It's not a matter of desire, or trust, or love – I would give Emmett everything of myself if I could, but I can't. The scent of his blood flowing fast and hot and aroused under his skin is strong enough to make the whole world tremble, and the feel of him drives me to the brink – but I can't ever let myself go, because I don't know that my control will be enough not to hurt him and I couldn't bear the result if it were not.

"Emmett, no more…stop…"

"All right, all right, just…ugh." Emmett rolls away from me with a groan.

"We have to stop doing this to ourselves," I murmur, but even as I say it I find myself sliding close enough to Emmett to trace a cool finger down the line of his spine, following it a second later with a trail of kisses.

"Angel-girl…"

Emmett practically whimpers, and I kiss him once more, hard and fast on the mouth, before rising to my feet. "We should go back to the party."

"Give me a minute...I can't go down like this." Emmett, lying flat on his back and breathing hard, is not exactly decent for company.

I smooth my dress back into place and comb my fingers through my hair. "Jasper is starting to hate us."

Emmett laughs, and sits up. "Is that why he's started to leave every time I come over to your house?"

"I think he's finding it a little hard to take at times." Not that I blame him. This pure, unbridled lust and frustrated desire feels like it's consuming me from the inside out, and my poor empath brother must be feeling it too.

"Not harder than me," Emmett mutters, and then snorts with laughter. "Sorry, I didn't mean that…I'll behave." He rubs some cream into the worst of his eczema patches, and then pulls a t-shirt and hoodie on. "All right, let's go down and hit up the barbecue."

Emmett does full justice to the array of food available, including being the first one to break into Alice's gingerbread house.

"It's great," he tells her, dropping down beside her as she and Jasper sit on a log by the bonfire. "Your cooking is so much better now! You guys really miss out not being able to eat this stuff– don't you find your regular menu incredibly monotonous?"

"It can be a bit lacking." Jasper's eyes are dark in the firelight.

Emmett finishes the last chunk of gingerbread and starts in on a slice of cheesecake. "It sounds like living on a permanent, tragic diet of deprivation and boredom."

"Lucky for you that we do," Alice says, looking at him in amusement.

"Well, I can't deny that. Just imagine if Rosalie had had her wicked way with me last November - I'd be nothing but a pile of bones now, and not sitting here with my beautiful girl and a bellyful of food." Emmett tosses his empty paper plate into the bonfire and groans. "Maybe too much food."

"You don't have to be a psychic like me to foresee that three plates of barbecue and another one of dessert is going to leave you with a stomach ache," Alice says.

"I know, but it's so good." Emmett wraps an arm around me and pulls me closer to him. "I'm not very good at telling myself no I guess."

"Don't I know it. And wait until it's…" Alice cuts off her words, but against my side I feel Emmett tense and I know he caught what she said.

He laughs though, and says lightly, "Until Rosalie accepts that I'm serious about her and makes me a fanged creature of the night thirsting for blood like the rest of you?"

Alice giggles. "You'd miss real food too much."

"Probably…but I'd gain a few other things, wouldn't I?"

"No." My voice is sharp. "I don't even want you to joke about that."

There's a slightly uncomfortable silence. Emmett scratches at the skin between his fingers, and Alice purses her mouth up exaggeratedly as she catches my eye.

"Don't go there," I say flatly. "You promised."

"You can't avoid the issue forever," Alice says, low enough that Emmett won't hear. "He was joking just now, but he's going to bring it up and you're going to have to deal with it."

"Not now Alice," Jasper mutters, rising to his feet and offering her a hand. "I think we should head home." I can tell he's had enough of the crowd.

Left alone, Emmett and I are quiet. Glancing sideways I see him staring thoughtfully into bonfire, and the colour of the flames reflected in his eyes makes me shudder. Feeling my shiver, he tightens his arm around me and kisses the side of my head.

"I was joking, but we're going to have to talk about shit sometime," Emmett says, echoing Alice's sentiments of a moment before.

I shake my head. "Not that. It's not even an option."

"Alice has seen that it is."

"When did she tell you that?" I demand furiously. "She promised…I don't care what she's seen, I've told you that…I could kill her!"

Emmett dimples at me. "She never told me she saw that. But you just did."

"Smartass." I narrow my eyes at him. "But it doesn't matter what Alice has or hasn't seen, and I'm serious about that. You becoming a…it's not an option. No matter what."

"Do you remember this time last year?" Emmett says, abruptly shifting gears. "We sat by the bonfire then, and I told you that I loved you."

"I remember." Instinctively my fingers touch on the cherrywood bat dangling from the bracelet on my wrist that I wear nearly every day.

"You told me that I'd outgrow you. That one day I'd move on from you, want something or someone else. Something ordinary."

The very thought of it twists my stomach. "It's what should happen."

"But it's never going to happen." Emmett holds my face in his hands, his thumb brushing across my lip. "I knew it then, and a year on I'm just as sure as I was that I don't want that. There will never be anyone in the world for me but you. Always you…there isn't a future that I want that doesn't have you in it."

"I know you might think you feel that way," I whisper. "But you're barely eighteen, and you'll realise after a while that all the things you can't have while you're with me matter…"

"Stop," Emmett says. "Don't talk down to me. I know my own mind, and I know what I feel for you. This is real."

"Real, yes…but enough to last? You must see that this will just become more impossible as time goes on! Don't you want someone you can have a real future with, without the constraints of being what I am? We can't even have sex! In another few years it will become very noticeable to anyone who knows me now that I haven't changed, so we will never be able to be together around your family or friends. Even strangers are going to notice and judge when you're a grown adult man and I'm still a teenager. You'll never able to have any kind of normal life with me, not long term."

"I know all that! I've thought about all of it! But none of it matters, not when I hold it up against how much I love you!" Emmett's face softens. "You're everything to me. The ground under my feet and the sun above my head and the air that I breathe…from the first day I saw you it's like the world changed, and you're what holds it all together and makes it mean something. I will do whatever it takes to be with you."

I kiss him then, slow and deep and yearning, because this is all so impossible and yet I cannot let it go. The two of us…there is nothing else in the world as beautiful as this.

Emmett presses his forehead against mine, his breath warm and his eyes fierce. "I don't want to lose you. I can't. And we have to figure out what that's going to look like, because I'm never going to walk away from you."

"I can't see you made one of us," I say, breaking away. "This is not a life for you."

"But Alice has seen it?" Emmett questions, gazing intently into my eyes. "No lies," he reminds me. "You promised me that."

"No lies." I hesitate. "Alice has seen you as one of the family. I think from the first day, although she didn't tell me until later. But she's seen other futures for you too…and all of this is why I told you right from the beginning that you can't get too caught up in what Alice says she sees! We make our own futures Emmett, and yours isn't going to be one without a beating heart."

"As long as I have you," Emmett says, but his face is troubled and I know the conversation hasn't satisfied him.

Playing human, I go home from the McCarty's Christmas party when Carlisle and Esme take their leave. Emmett is coughing again in the late night air, and I'm glad to see him going inside as we bump our way down the driveway.

I hate leaving him. Emmett isn't the only one unsettled by our conversation tonight. Alice's careless comment has opened the door to a future I have steadfastly refused to contemplate, and despite the light heartedness of Emmett's response it's clear that it's a future he has thought of.

"You can't blame Alice." Edward looks up from the piano as I walk into the living room at home. "Her comment tonight didn't put the idea into his head – he's been thinking about it for a while now."

I sit next to him on the piano bench with a sigh. "I know. Of course it would have crossed his mind that it could be possible…but it isn't possible Edward. I can't see him made this. You understand, don't you? You'd feel the same, if it were you."

Edward nods, thoughtfully fingering the keys. "I don't know that our motivations would be exactly the same, but yes. If I were you…I would feel the same."

"Alice doesn't understand that," I say after a moment. "Not really. She doesn't remember being human and she doesn't miss anything about it. She doesn't see the tragedy of what we are, and she'll never really understand why I don't want this for him."

"Alice sees the world from a very different perspective. Her visions are as real to her as what happens day to day sometimes, and her visions of Emmett's future are particularly strong. To us it hasn't happened, and won't happen if you get your way, but to Alice he's already her beloved brother. She sees him as one of us, sees him immortal and happy, and sees you happy at his side…"

"Please don't," I choke out, because as Edward talks I see it too, and see what it could mean for me. Emmett's warm flesh turned to immortal stone…I could touch him, I could keep him, I could love him unreservedly because I could look to a future where he would not die and I would never have to lose him…

But I see the rest of it too! I see the blood on his hands and his eyes crimson, and all the death that would be laid at my feet because he was changed for ME. And I see the resentment when he realises all that he's lost, everything that he has given up and will never have, and it will be my fault and he will hate me for it. He'll see me for what I really am, and I would lose him anyway…

"It wouldn't be that way," Edward says softly. "Emmett sees you for what you are right now, and he loves you. Whichever future he's living, he will love you until the end."

Until he dies. Because as a human, there's only one way it ends.

"Yes. The way it should be. But best for Emmett isn't necessarily best for you, all things considered, and I think we're all concerned about that."

Why are you being so nice to me?

"Oh, I don't know…you've mellowed lately." Edward gives me a grin. "When was the last time you ripped off my fingers or smashed a piano over my head?"

I give him a half smile in return. The truth is, Edward has always been nice to me when I needed it. He's always been able to put aside his condescension and contempt and give me kindness when it mattered.

"You need it now," Edward says. "Oh, sometimes I could see you thrown into the bottom of a well, no doubt about that, but I would never wish to be where you are now." He plays a soft chord on the piano. "I can't say I've never thought about the possibility of one day finding someone, of having what Carlisle and Esme, or Alice and Jasper have. But to find it as you have now, with a human…it's the devil's own bargain for you."

"It would have been easier if you and I had worked…if it had been the two of us, as Carlisle and Esme once hoped," I say morosely.

Edward throws back his head and roars with laughter. "Oh Rosalie, to think I should have lived to hear you say that!"

I can't help but laugh too. The idea of Edward and I as romantic partners is, and always has been, utterly absurd. "I know! But Emmett and this whole situation has just brought me undone! Tell me Edward, does he really think about it? Has he seriously considered that he might become one of us? He's not talked about it to me."

Edward's laughter fades. "He's thought about it," he says finally. "How seriously he wants it, I'm not sure. He hasn't talked about it with you before because it wasn't necessary yet – he's not unhappy with his current life in any way. He sees no reason for push the issue now, but the future is looming. It's not going to be as simple once we all graduate high school, and it's only going to get harder and more complicated as the years go by."