Been a while. All errors are mine.
Shared Breath
(They're connected. Tethered to the same emotions, bound with the one soul that breathes).
She smells the vibrant scent of the salty and fresh rain; mixed with watered down sage, lavender, and mature violets—the floral scent warns her of the teen. The hurried footfall scuffs the concrete harshly, and it only amplifies the almost maniacal haste that particular human pursues her with. An impossible breath weaves past her lips, and Rosalie braces herself for the absolute hinderance she believes will become of their interaction.
"Rosalie," her steps quicken. "Rosalie!"
The conviction, and displeasure that arrives in the manner of a low 'huff' from the human encourages the faint uplift to her lips. The vampire lengthens her strides, and momentarily she's enthralled with the determined teen who only scurries after her all the more frantically.
"Rose." Spoken with an ambivalence of annoyance, and that fondness she cannot quite place a reason for.
(She may very well halt for that lonely call to her name evermore).
The vampire halts, all amusement evaporated. With her demeanor stalled, and forever unmoored she pivots quicker than all the time it would have taken for this uncoordinated human to stop. Instead, Bella's body collides with her as an unrelenting object meets an unmovable force—the human bounces from her solid frame wildly. And it's her ancient and leisure hand that halts the brunette from the quick fall unto the wet concrete. She grants the human to gather all the decency she can, however she presumes the human is the essence of a flushed mess.
Those dubious murky-brown orbs bore into her as such; 'as the sun bides a solemn farewell to the moon it may never touch', and the blonde stares back as an enchanted incantation overcomes her. Rosalie blinks, affronted and displeased as Bella prettily tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear. Only, for some reason the human smiles all too inhibited, and basked in a heated blush. Rosalie steadies the clumsy teen, and snatches her hand back to her privacy. Momentum convinces her to take a step back from the human, a statement she wills Bella to comprehend. Her space is not to be disturbed, especially not for a flustered teen that is hardly comprehensive of the notion of coordination.
"So, you did hear me," Bella states impatiently. "You know, one would stop when they hear a friends voice call out their name a couple times over."
"Since when are we friends," Rosalie mumbles bitterly. "And don't waste my time with nonessential conversation Bella."
Bella, vastly enthralled, and attentive has the audacity to smile—that tiny hushed and lulled smile that in all its radiance draws a silent blink, from the vampire. Then the human dispels the moment with a misplaced hesitancy that only foreshadows trouble, she nips at her bottom lip and Rosalie shuns the nervous habit.
A low hum emits from Bella's lips, adjusting the straps of her bag the human peers around the lot. A worried deliberation settles over her features, and the vampire listens. To the rapid beat of that heart, she's keen to seek, and this worry is different. Far from the typical embarrassment and shyness that overcomes the human in the blonde's presence. This heartbeat is erratic, and wildly untamed.
"Yeah," Bella clears her throat. "No, you're completely right," the absent nod seems out of place. "I'm sorry I bothered you. It wasn't anything important anyway."
And she turns to leave. The quick departure of the human startles her, and for some dark reason a peculiar prickle probes the forefront of her mind.
('Stop her')
"Don't convince yourself of that." Rosalie breathes a bit easier once the brunette halts in her tracks.
And Rosalie watches it occur about Bella in a way she hadn't before, quivering, lost, and disturbed. It seems as if Bella herself cannot place her emotional turmoil, especially in the weak manner she turns to meet the blondes entreating frown.
"What is it, Bella?" The question falls from her lips earnestly, and cautiously.
Bella flips her shoulders noncommittedly, and throws a crooked smile between them. ('It's forced. She isn't fine). A weary frown sticks to the blonde's face.
"I…wanted to check in on you is all," Rosalie's frown deepens. "And I wanted to check in on you is all."
Bella's face looks rueful, and unsure.
"I just had a nightmare is all. And you—it seemed so real…"
Rosalie doesn't know what to make of the saddened frown.
"It was a dream, Bella." Rosalie mumbles.
And Bella watches her for another moment before she dispels her stare. With her uncertain nod, Rosalie turns around on the balls of her feet and moves to meet her family.
Their looks question the importance of that conversation, and irritated with their apparent eavesdropping she sends a messy glare towards each of them.
…
The mossy forest floor, dampened and muddy dirties her clothes. If only her birth mother would see her now, the blonde would be scolded for hours. Bickered at for not only becoming an unearthly beast, but also participating in such primitive activities. The trees are shrouded in mist, and the constant drip of the excess rain falls onto her raincoat in rhythm, a beautifully offbeat rhythm. This, was another one of her activities she treasured. The woodland, the loud and somehow faint sounds of the wildlife, it was clamorous in predetermined way. The ecosystem had an equilibrium about itself, each sound seemed to have its own purpose and that alleviated the burden of the at times din sounds.
A tree branch is snapped in half, the noise to her left. They still, each drawing in an extended breath. He smiles a warm and puckish smile, turns and darts towards the oblivious deer—the equilibrium must be overtaken, an apex predator must arise over the rest.
They push and pull, both a blur of earnest playfulness. He catches her by her right foot; however she lands in a crouch, ready to bound and tackles him easily. And she lets out a weak chuckle as he flips her onto her back and rifles past her to win the game. She hears the wild shriek, and crack as she lifts to her feet and wipes feebly at the mud littered on her knee-length raincoat. Her mood sours once her boots click together in order to rid them of the caked-on dirt, but there's still a free smile on her lips.
"You'll have your face in the mud the next time you get dirt in my hair," Rosalie sidles next to him, and in an instant shove at him in order to steal the kill. "And that is a promise."
"I would expect nothing less," His inclines his head lowly, southern drawl is even embedded in his amused chuckle. "You have my sincerest apologizes."
Pad of her thumb lifting to the corners of her mouth, she wipes at the stray crimson that's already stained her pale skin. The sticky liquid takes a few rubs into her dark jeans until it's removed from her finger. Reverently Rosalie places the limp animal onto the ground delicately, as if the dead animal would arise from its eternal rest.
Soon they're on a silent trek the same mossy path they had traveled at an inhuman speed, only now at a leisure pace. The moon has arrived to shadow a luminous and moist overcast, and it's the eeriness of it all that reminds her of the query that has troubled her. Jasper patient, controlled and always lost in the undisclosed corners of his mind, tilts his head in her direction. An assertion of his attentiveness.
"You've been distracted," He sticks the observation into the darkness with conviction. "And I assume it has something to do with Bella?"
Rosalie sobers promptly, beautiful face stoned in dissonance. That encounter, contradictory of the rest they've shared, is very unsettling. She's had to ruminate the implications over the course of the day however no rational solution has come to allay her mind. Her soul seemed to be overthrown, emotions unconventional and tamed all at once.
"Yes. She came to me today and our interaction was a bit odd."
"I have never known you to be anxious, and yet today it falls from you in waves." Jasper admits ruefully.
"I wouldn't mind this predicament I have forced onto her if I could understand her. She may be the single most frustrating human I have ever come across." Rosalie admits spitefully.
Jasper notes her inability to call her mate for what she is, and the unaltered guilt that floods into him tells of his adoptive sister's internal feud with the bond.
"And how do you view your ma…" Rosalie shoots him a filthy glare. "…situation as forced?"
"My inevitable death would've been decades ago. Our meeting shouldn't have ever occurred in the first place."
"Can love not transcend time?"
And it's the tilted look of melancholy that bounces off the eternal face of the beautiful blonde that worries his mind most—the life of an once human who craved normalcy, ruined in a single moment.
"Not at the expense of tragedy. However wholesome love is it shouldn't be able to defy the laws of humanity. I would never wish for her or anyone to be forced into a life of such tragic caliber."
Jasper sidles next to his stubborn companion, and comprehends the horrors of fate deciding the unsuspecting life of a human mate.
"Then don't taint a love before it can even bloom. At this rate you'll age dying rose before it has the chance to blossom."
Rosalie chuckles wistfully, bitter sneer of irony on her lips.
"Have I not already?"
…
Rosalie halts before the massive home—a faint prickle crawls up the length of her neck. She almost turns on the balls of her feet in order to paw at the nonexistent offender.
('She needs you').
Rosalie blinks as dread, sudden and fresh ebbs into her chest.
However, that trepidation crawls from the pit of her stomach and into her throat: 'this newfound fear and anxiety is alienated in even her own body', it's not her own.
('Find her').
"Rosalie what—"
Alice bounds from the front door in an instant, Edward not far on her heels. He has a maniacal wildness about his eyes, and Rosalie the vexed peer startles her most. Alice's small hand comes into contact with her shoulder and with a soft 'thud' Rosalie is pushed into a spin. It occurs far too quickly, as that ominous prickle taps repeatedly to the forefront of her brain.
"It's Bella. She's in trouble." Alice breathes out ruefully.
Voice strained and mind in the darkest places she dared to not think of Rosalie stumbles at the hasty hands of her sister. A thunderous rev of an engine sounds wickedly as Edward peels out of the driveway in his straining car.
"She's at the 'Thunderbird and Whale Bookstore' in Port Angeles. You have to go Rosalie. We'll meet you there. You need to go now."
Lost in the inadequacies of her own creation it's her body that voluntarily launches her into any reaction. That fine pull is what has gotten her feet to pound against the forest floor faster than she has ever moved, to create the massive indentions into the ground below her—fear, this time it is her's to own. They've followed her; however, they're long lost in her mad dash.
Rosalie fractures the wind, and the distance the time consumes her fears into the nightmares that haven't riddled her mind in decades. And it almost sickens her, the speed in which she runs, because she transcends the time it should take for any normal vampire. The forest breaks, and soon the city comes into view.
('Faster. She needs you').
…
It's her scream.
It's the desperation, fear, the empty pleas. So wild and bare.
His hands crawl up her jacket frantically, an evil giddiness about his exploration, a vile grin explodes on his lips. There's four hands clamped around the humans' limbs keeping her in an upright position, a stillness overcomes her, a woeful emptiness that no matter how many sound barriers she broken she is still too late. The defilement has already surmounted all ability to forgive and forget.
"Please, no, no, no—don't…"
Rosalie sees it, has come to have known death, and it occurs to her like it always has—in crimson red. A retribution that far exceeds any she has ever come to have known. It's a feral demon that overcomes her. The haunting vision of his lips on her's…her's Bella is her own to protect and she has failed, and these wicked men almost took the innocence of her human.
The first man who dared to have his lips hover over Bella's cannot scream, or yelp in agony as she crushes his jaw with a short twitch of her fingers. The vampire clamps a solid hand onto his shoulder and tosses him as far as possible, however painful it was as she made sure to dislocate his shoulder in the process. The second man does not have the time to withdraw his hand from Bella's pants before she reaches him, Rosalie peers at him (stare desolate, feral, and bleak) as he screams while she studiously twist his wrist and wrenches his hands from the humans' pants. She kicks him with the power and balance to break every rib in his body as he slides across the gravel sickly. The third man is aware, but he has not enough speed to run as the blonde kicks his leg in. The 'pop', and 'crackle' of his bones is not enough. She finds no satisfaction in his howls of pain, so Rosalie goes for his collarbone and pushes his palms deep enough to create an indention—she hears the sharp intake of breath and only then does discard him. The fourth scrambles away, and quickly halts him from any ability to get far by snapping his leg.
It's the fifth, the fifth man whose pants are still down that captures her full attention. He looks to be in his mid-twenties, unshaved face, stained sweat jacket and tattered jeans. Dirty, dirty, dirty—Rosalie advances on him, a silent creep, obsidian black orbs pouring into his foul soul. And his unclean scent drives her wild.
It's then that death walks.
"Wait…please—" A sharp wail comes from his lips.
She does not dare smile, as her hands twitch in sadness. He only cries in anguish as she snaps each of his fingers into warped positions, his left wrist is next. Then his right, and she slams her foot into his kneecaps (the ungodly disfiguration should sicken her). An emotionless trance is how she finds herself to be on top him she wants blood. She punches with little force only to see the spouts of blood that her coughs up, and maybe she's miscalculated because she could have sworn, she hears a splinter of his ribs.
Rosalie punches until the tears in his eyes have subsided into puffy and darkened cheeks. His howls are abated into fitful gurgles as bloods pours from his mouth steadily.
"Rosalie! No!"
She is thrown from her position unsuspectedly so. And her arms locked behind her as a solid body restrains her, but she trucks forward. Balls of her feet upheaving bits of gravel as she digs into the concrete. Her vision is impaired with the hue of red and sorrow. Alice lands before her, hands still on her cheeks, dark irises calm as the small vampire entreats her to see reason.
"You have to stop," Alice's hands remains firm against her jostles. "Rose. You have to stop. Bella needs you. Listen to her heartbeat. She needs you, and you have to get her out of here."
lub-lub-lub-da-dum-da-dum…
Her darkened orbs land on the ordinary human ripped from normalcy. Bella is a mess: tousled hair, hastily buttoned shirt underneath a tattered jacket, Rosalie's devastated peer lingers on torn buttons of the teens dirtied jeans.
(Eternal sadness is what's most akin to the heartache so cold in her chest).
I have another update I will do today, since it's been a minute. I feel like this writing may be a bit more understandable? Let me know if it's still not entirely comprehensible. We'll revisit that dream Bella had. Its all connected to the mating bond which I want to dive a little more into later on.