Shahrazád's Ghosts


Chapter 28: Rosalie Part III


"The flake of snow grew larger and larger; and at last it was like a young lady, dressed in the finest white gauze, made of a million little flakes like stars. She was so beautiful and delicate, but she was of ice, of dazzling, sparkling ice; yet she lived; her eyes gazed fixedly, like two stars; but there was neither quiet nor repose in them. She nodded towards the window, and beckoned with her hand….

The Snow Queen kissed Kay once more, and then he forgot little Gerda, grandmother, and all whom he had left at his home….

"Now you will have no more kisses," said she, "or else I should kiss you to death!"…

Hans Christian Anderson, The Snow Queen

oooooo

When Isabella had grown to the size of a small child, she had utterly confounded Alice's attempts to dictate her fashion choices. She was willing enough for Alice to bury her to her neck in new outfits and miniature accessories on a weekly basis – until she inevitably found that one article of clothing she liked more than any other. It hadn't even been Alice's choice. Esme had come across that sweater after the week Isabella first discovered kittens. The pint-sized half-human had been so delighted by the soft, furry stray kitten outside a diner that she'd talked about little else for days. She wandered the house pretending to be a cat and she diligently hid herself under the bed until Emmett poured her a bowl of milk and set it on the floor for her to lap up with her tongue.

Well, Esme came across that sweater on a shopping trip and with its wide-eyed, fluffy angora kitten and the framing rainbow of flowers around it, she thought their little Izzy just might like it.

She was wrong. Izzy hadn't liked it, she had loved it, and after that day, she refused to wear anything else, unless that sweater was worn over the top. It didn't matter if it was as hot as an oven outside or if it rained cats and dogs, Izzy insisted she needed to wear her "kitty".

Alice tried hiding it… replacing it… and full out bribery, but to no avail. Even with her spotty visions of the child, she could see enough to know that if the sweater "accidentally" unraveled, Jasper would have to spend the next month digging through every shop imaginable to find an identical replacement. So, Alice, didn't bother destroying it. She finally threw up her arms in surrender and let Izzy wear her beloved sweater until it became so small, she could barely squeeze it over her shoulders and she wore a hole in it herself.

It's not that Alice had anything against the sweater, other than her express prohibition against wearing the same thing more than once. However, with the hundreds of times they heated up chicken nuggets and watched the same cartoon musical on repeat, Alice quickly learned that their little Izzy liked repetition. No, the problem was that it wasn't enough for Izzy to wear her "kitty." Izzy insisted on wearing it inside out. No matter what anybody said or the strange looks she got wandering about in diners and department stores, Izzy was adamant that she "loved it" and she refused to let anybody tell her different.

What was, on the outside, a picture of a kitten in a garden, when turned inside out became incongruous chaos. It was all loose strings and frayed edges and a cacophony of colors that did not resemble a "kitty" in anything but the roughest of impressions.

Now, as Rosalie took in their latest "guest," the so-called "Mistress of Neverland," Rosalie couldn't help but think about that sweater. When Darling came, she had seemed all set in order and combed into alignment, but after That Day, it all changed. She wasn't sure if it was the "talk" with Peter or the revelations about Izzy or any of the myriad of tendrils of truths connected to those conversations, but it had turned Darling entirely inside-out. She no longer bothered to hide her frayed edges, gnarled knots, or flashes of brilliant emotion, but walked around like an inside-out sweater, with everything on display. All attempts at maintaining a perfectly manicured façade were thrown out the window.

It wasn't always a pretty sight.

Everyone pretended not to be startled, that night when Darling first laughed. Of course, they knew what her laugh should sound like, because it was identical to Bell's. Laughs were so genetically endowed that it had shaken all the original Cullens to the core, the first time they heard Michael laugh. Accents, word choices, cadences all changed and gave insights into the unique quirks particular to each individual clone. Their laughs, however, peeled back layers of time and socialization to remind them all of the lingering presence of Edward Anthony Masen. No matter how everything else shifted and changed, their laugh remained the same.

They all had to assume that Bell's laugh must be an exact replication of the unique sound innate to the deceased Isabella Swan. It was a way Isabella Swan lived on and whispered subtle reminders of her existence, even from her grave. It was a cheerful, chirruping laugh – one with its own distinct rhythm and tone to it and they had all become accustomed to the sound from Bell. She laughed freely and easily and they were used to the sound reverberating across the courtyards and halls of the castle.

No one had considered how it would be to hear that same laugh coming from Darling's mouth.

By Peter's complete and utter lack of reaction, he must have been more familiar with the sound than anybody else, but for the inhabitants of the Cullen Castle, it was entirely unexpected. It shouldn't have been, but it was not until its presence that anyone truly recognized its previous absence. Afterwards, no one remembered what had been so amusing, but they all remembered the entirely ordinary and yet extraordinary sound of laughter that broke through the room. It was a full-bellied laugh, like the time Bell caught Mikie's face after he tasted grapefruit for the first time. Yet, it came from Darling and it was only then that they realized they had never heard her laugh before.

In the days after That Day, Darling slipped up more than once and gave herself away. Despite all her glowering and too-seriousing, Darling did, in fact, have a sense of humor. It wasn't a soft or gentle humor, but one laced with barbed wire and a bit too much of a dash of sadism to make anyone sit comfortable in their seats, but it was there. It snuck up on them all like a cat pouncing on a bird and just as quickly vanished again, with Darling as smug as that cat with feathers flying all about her head and caught in her pointed teeth.

It was Michael who got it the worst. Rosalie never did figure out just why Darling enjoyed tormenting the poor man so, but she gained some kind of delight in making him squirm and grunt and protest and pace around the room. Rosalie wondered if she kept score or gave herself certain goals or rewards, depending on how Michael reacted to her prodding. She could do it in such a way that no one was the wiser about what was happening. Silently and invisibly, she'd just furl and unfurl that shield of hers, proving to them all how it was just as much a weapon as a shield, and then she'd sit back in glee at Michael's reactions to whatever secret message she'd just sent him.

No one else knew what she'd said and neither of the pair were willing to say it out loud. The only way any were the wiser that it was happening was by Michael's growing distraction and fluster. When the man threw up his arms in frustration and cried out for her to stop, that's when they'd all turn to Darling and find her looking at her fingernails, her face as innocent as a snake, and then she'd just look over at him and do it all over again.

"Darling, let the man be," Peter chided, eventually. "Why disturb the poor man so?"

The answering arched eyebrow and coy smile that Darling gave him won her argument for her without a single word. Peter gave an exasperated groan of surrender, pulled her onto his lap so he could kiss the smile off her face, and then he pretended to ignore the look of smug victory she cast in Michael's direction. Michael's expression of betrayal was so obvious that Izzy laughed like a startled terrier and received her own platter of disgust from Michael in return. It made no difference. Darling was still queen, even in blue jeans, and Peter's allegiances were firmly set in concrete. He permitted Darling's reign of terror to continue, unabated, regardless of Michael's puppy-dog eyes and whines.

Emmett found it absolutely hilarious. Jasper's humor was more restrained and his own interferences were not confined to one particular party or the other. Instead, he sent floods of incongruent emotions over all warring parties and enjoyed the aftermath as much as Emmett.

His humor decreased when Darling began to toy with the limits of his gift. She stirred up some crocodile tears of her own and showed herself so good an actress that Jasper had a hard time figuring out which was the real feelings, and which was the false ones. When he tried to wrap her in a wave of emotions, she fought right back to see if she could keep his gift at bay or overcome it, somehow.

Jasper lost all humor completely when Darling began to test Alice's gift. She experimented with shifting her decisions and settling her mind on entirely outlandish and preposterous ideas and carefully watching Alice for the outcome. Alice couldn't tell which were the real decisions and which were the false ones and it drove her near to distraction, hence Jasper growing as grumpy as a bear fresh outta hibernation.

"Darling, why do I see you on a beach in Tahiti?" Alice said with a dramatic roll of her eyes. "In a snow suit?"

Darling only shrugged. Her eyes danced with the mirth that never quite reached her smile.

Then Alice sighed in exasperation. "I preferred the snow suit."

Despite her meddling and muddling, Jasper liked her well enough, at least when she didn't bother Alice overmuch. It was Rosalie and Jasper who made the most headway with getting her to creak open in bits and pieces.

Rosalie managed to pry a few paragraphs by sheer tenacity and perseverance. She dogged Darling for days, continually asking questions and comfortably waiting out awkward, thick silences until Darling finally gave in and began to answer her, word by pried out word. They spoke little of consequence, but it was enough to hear her voice and see her acknowledge Rosalie's attempts at engagement.

Jasper managed simply by his typical perceptiveness and, despite her wariness of the intrusion of his gift, she could not help but be drawn to him, the same as everyone else. They had even managed a very serious, heart-to-heart conversation, once. Jasper ensured this occurred so far from the castle that no one could hear what it was about, and he refused to speak a word of it after, no matter how Emmett begged and bribed for details.

"It's none of your business, you busybody. If you wanna know something, you ask the woman yourself," Jasper chided and he sent Emmett away again.

Emmett didn't get so far in having his curiosity eased. Most likely it was his own fault because he was still semi-terrified of the vampire queen. It didn't help that his constant cheer seemed to rub her fur the wrong way and made her hiss and spit at him in response or that he tiptoed around her like a mouse with a cat. Rose laughed at him for it, but he only gave her a sheepish grin.

Emmett still referred to Darling as the "Ice Queen" and maybe there was some truth in that. Darling was equal parts fire and ice, darkness and light. The dissonance and contradictions became all the more jarring after the ice suddenly melted away in a glacial avalanche and revealed bare flesh instead of ice, and all the loose threads of an inside-out sweater.

After that, Rosalie wondered if Emmett's metaphor was less apt than she had originally believed. Rosalie wondered if Darling were not more similar to the captive little boy, Kay, than the icy Snow Queen. Kay had been happy and well until the day his eyes were pierced by the splinter of that evil sprite's mirror. Its poison twisted and turned everything he saw from beautiful to ugly and good to bad and bad to worse till his heart became "like a lump of ice" and he couldn't remember anything good or see beauty in anything. Once that little shard of evil glass was removed, his heart melted, and his eyes were able to see the beauty and goodness in the world again. He forgot his Snow Queen captor and was freed to return to his home and the little girl he had once loved and they lived happily ever after, as they were always supposed to.

Rose remembered how long it had taken her to pry that old shard out of her own eye. For more years that she could count, it seemed like everything around her got swallowed up in the black hole of misery which bubbled up like a tar pit in her soul. Too many living things got trapped in her murky mire and became nothing but old skeletons and extinct memories there. It took a lotta time and even more tears to suck that old, sticky swamp dry. Then she could plant flowers there instead and recognize that the sun was still a-shining, even if she couldn't see it.

Then again, Rosalie Hale had been called a "Snow Queen" more than once in her long life. Maybe she fit the bill, sometimes. Other times, maybe it was the bit of glass stuck in other people's eyes that made them see her that way.

Rosalie wondered, sometimes, what her life would have been like without Royce King. She knew Jasper wondered what he would have become without Maria. Rosalie knew their scars dug in deeper than a gopher in grass and tried to chew the life outta all the flowers life could still grow in them. After centuries of tears and laughter, the wounds had scabbed over and healed enough to no longer bleed or fester, but they would never really go away. They were a part of them, as much as their right legs and pinky fingers were, no matter if they were on the inside or the out.

Rosalie thought she understood why it was that she and Jasper instinctively clicked better with the vampire queen. They could understand, too well, the heights one would fall to in order to keep on breathing and how the most dangerous animals were the ones who were afraid.

Of course, wrapped up in a white dress like a living snowflake, Darling looked every part the icy Snow Queen the day she burst into their lives. She had been magnificent in her frigid glory and masterfully sculpted layers of frozen walls. Now, in her "inside-out sweater," Rosalie wondered if that contaminating shard had been removed so her layers could begin to warm and thaw and melt away. While there was still enough cold remaining to be a danger of frostbite and not everyone was brave enough to approach the elusive "queen," the subtle changes were enough to let them all knew that something had shifted and changed and melted.

Whatever the catalyst, from That Day onward, Darling no longer clung to the shadows or bothered stealing spotlights. She stood at eye level with the rest of them, or as close to eye level as her short legs would let her, and she didn't shrink from their eyes or their notice no more. She stared right back and let herself speak, even when she wasn't spoken to. She let herself bark out a laugh, even when it surprised them all like a mouse under a sofa cushion.

Neither Peter nor Darling spoke a word of what occurred between them That Day. However, in the days that followed, the one was seldom without the other and they were tighter than two peas in a pod. Before, they had watched each other like a hawk and a rabbit, but now their eyes were glued together like a pair of swans. Their postures bent towards each other until their hands or feet remained in constant contact. Soon, this extended to elbows and shoulders. Before long, it was not uncommon to find Darling firmly planted in Peter's lap.

Over the days, their orbits shrank inward until they shared the same gravity and the same solar year, and both were as equally engaged with wider conversations in the house as with each other. While Darling would never be called verbose, her reticence melted away enough to see what had once been kept hidden behind thick layers of ice.

oooooo


From twilight to dawn, Darling pushed Bell and tested her in any way she could. With the assistance of both telepaths and the twins, she was able to download hundreds of years of training into Bell's mind. No matter what occurred next, the theoretical knowledge was firmly fixed in Bell's mind, even if the practical experience needed a bit more work.

Rosalie helped where she could. She couldn't deny the usefulness of keeping prying gifts like Michael's and Aro's and Jane's from worming their way into where they didn't want them so she volunteered as a guinea pig whenever she could. This is how she realized the subtle pragmatism of Darling's constant assaults of Michael. Bell was so disturbed by Michael's unease that she was twice as motivated to ease his troubles and she worked all the harder to shield him from Darling's intrusions. While she might have had a hard time visualizing the dangers that Jane and Aro could pose, she could easily grasp and comprehend Darling… and this made her practice, day and night, to keep Darling out.

Gradually, Bell learned to envelope more people than just Michael. Then she learned to pry the shield away from her for brief flickers of thought so she could send messages to Michael, but it was no where near enough to satisfy the exacting queen.

"Demetri can find Michael," Darling warned her. Her darkening eyes burned with her note of caution. "If you want him to be safe, you must learn to use your shield and keep him shielded at all times. Never, under any circumstance, let Aro know of your existence. He would give away half of his guard to get you under his control."

Bell tried to take in the warnings Darling gave her and she stood her ground as firmly as she could, but she unconsciously took a step or two back whenever Darling stared at her too intently. She grit her teeth now and tried to cast out her shield even wider. Michael stood halfway across the courtyard, throwing out bits of encouragement like breadcrumbs, and glaring daggers at Darling whenever she deigned to notice him again.

"Can't he find you?" Bell asked, during her next break. "Demetri, I mean."

"No. He cannot place a track on my mind… or yours."

"What about the others? Those who have fled to Neverland?" Michael asked, turning to Darling with curiosity rather than accusation. "Aro groused all the time about you stealing his people. Why can't Demetri find them?"

"Oh, he can find them, but only if they are not shielded," Darling said. "Once he places a mark on someone's mind, he can track them forever, but he can only track one prize at a time, and only if he happens to find them unguarded."

"Isn't that a risk? I mean, you are here now, so what about all the people you used to shield?"

"It is a risk," she said, one eyebrow arched. "That has always been a risk, anytime I leave Neverland. However, nearly all the people Demetri would seek are not in Neverland right now. They are scattered across the Maghreb and Demetri is welcome to hunt for them, if he so wishes to. He will be hard-pressed to convict them of any particular transgression, as the Volturi do not technically compel guards into service. Each of their deserters left willingly and will prove much less willing to renew their service. If he chooses to cross the Sahara to gather all of Aro's lost lambs, so much the better, at least, until I return to Neverland and am ready to receive him properly."

"You want him to find you," Jasper observed, his eyebrows furrowed. "That's part of the game."

A thin smile crept up one side of Darling's red lips and she nodded in his direction. "Sometimes, a pawn or two must be left unguarded so the queen can take a rook," she answered. "It's all part of a much larger game and one which Aro and I left unfinished centuries ago. We will continue playing until one of us loses."

Then it was Rosalie's turn to be shielded from Michael. She came up with all manner of nonsense she could think about, and she watched Bell struggle to lasso her mind away from Michael's grip. It grew a little easier and she could hold it a little longer, this time.

Still, Darling had centuries of practice more than Bell and it would take Bell more than a handful of days to wield her gift with the same level of mastery as her teacher.

Rosalie hoped and prayed she'd have the time to learn.

Despite the shifts and thaws, beneath it all there remained a shadow, or perhaps a premonition is a better word. It was a sliver of "what was to come" rather than an echo of "what had past". It could be seen in the way Darling clung to Peter with increasing desperation, as if sands trickled through an hourglass and she could feel each grain vanish through her fingers. She rarely sought solitude, grasping to each evaporating moment, with all the desperation of a woman who can feel she will soon drown and takes in as many stolen breaths to postpone the inevitable.

Darling never mentioned the fate she feared, but Rose could feel it creeping in on her as steadily as a first frost creeps over the last lingering remnants of the summer flowers.

Oooooo


All too soon, Darling sought out Rosalie with an armful of borrowed clothes. She placed these in Rosalie's laundry basket and gave a tight, uneasy nod of her head to Rose.

"Thank you. For the clothes," she said.

"You can keep them, if you want," Rose answered. Rose would gladly give away all her clothes, if she could see Alice confounded like that first morning, all over again.

"No. I think they belong here," Darling answered.

Darling now wore a navy-blue satin dress, embroidered with a pattern of silver stars and moons along each of its hems. Diamonds glittered from her forehead and ears and neck. Yet, her feet were still bare. Rosalie realized she had never once seen Darling put on a pair of shoes, of any kind.

"You are leaving?" Rosalie surmised.

"Yes."

Rosalie wasn't sure if she should be disappointed or relieved to have the unexpected interloper disappear, nearly as suddenly as she had appeared. For a moment, the thought of returning to their old routine, their old life, was as delicious as throwing off a pair of stilettos for old, worn slippers. Till Rosalie remembered the they couldn't go back, not to the way things had been. Too much had changed.

"Leave here," Darling commanded them, before she left. "Go somewhere you've never lived before until Aro stops looking for me."

"How will we know?" Jasper asked, rightfully skeptical.

"Oh, don't worry. You'll know," Darling answered, one eyebrow raised in an arch that dared Jasper to question her further.

Darling sought out Alice, not long after that, though Jasper refused to leave the pair alone in close proximity together. He kept close to Alice's side, watching Darling through narrowed eyes as he felt whatever emotions she let roll off her.

She prowled up to the little pixie and frowned, one hand staunchly held on her hip. "I should hate you," she spat out. "I should despise you forever, and you know it. I see it in your eyes and hear it in the way you speak."

Alice's face crumpled with the weight of guilt she still carried on her tiny shoulders, but Darling continued anyway, not minding how her words crushed Alice further into the ground nor the way Jasper moved to stand in front of her to warn Darling away.

"You chose not to see me. You left me there… to die... intentionally. You closed your eyes to my fate, and supported him. As if that wasn't enough, you stole away my baby... and left me again."

Darling paced the ground in front of Alice, hardly daring to look at her but instead watching her own feet make a path through the dew on the grass. Finally, she stopped, directly in front of Alice and her tone shifted from fury to something colder, more resigned. "I should hate you forever… but that would mean I need to hate myself even more, because we are the same."

Then, after lunging forward to place a kiss on each of Alice's startled cheeks, Darling turned away from her again to speak once more.

"I don't want to thank you, but I should. I am glad I didn't have to kill him. I am glad I didn't have to find out if I could. We both were left to deal with his messes, more times than we should have. And my Margaret is happy. That is enough to leave the rest in Barzakh, where it belongs"

Alice opened her mouth once or twice, trying to untangle words which didn't want to come. Instead, she nestled herself into Jasper's shoulder and nodded once.

Peter's farewells were much warmer and easier to accept than Darling's. Bell broke down into unrestrained sobs and begged him to visit as soon as he could.

"You are always welcome. Both of you. You are family, now," Esme told them, as earnestly as she could while she clasped their hands in her own. "Come back again. We will always have room for you."

Everyone would miss Peter, but Rosalie wondered if she was the only one who would miss Darling. She wasn't sure.

Throughout the week, Darling had sought out Izzy nearly every day – sometimes to ask her mundane questions, like her favorite color or the best place she had ever lived, and sometimes it was to ask harder questions, like what she would have changed about her life and how her discovery of her origins had impacted her. Darling insisted on calling her "Margaret" and Izzy still grew as awkward as a walrus on land whenever Darling sought her out.

Still, Rosalie knew that Izzy was glad to know the truths that Darling came with, the ugly ones and the beautiful. She knew Izzy had her own "shards of glass" that had troubled her something fierce. She could tell something had shifted in Izzy too. Maybe a shard or two had been removed. Maybe there was a spring thaw. Whatever it was, Rose hoped it would help Izzy see some of the good things that had been hidden from her before. Some of the lovely things that everyone else could see and so desperately wanted Izzy to recognize too.

After all other farewells were made, Darling strode to where Isabella stood, her hands hidden in the pockets of her jacket and her long hair tied back in a bun. Darling took Isabella's hands in her own and squeezed them, her voice taking on the unexpected warmth she only bestowed onto Izzy.

"I wanted to give you something," Darling told the woman before her. "It is not a pretty story, but it is yours."

Into Isabella's hand, she thrust a tattered, frayed book and then she kissed her forehead.

"Thank you. For living," Darling whispered.

Then, just like that, they were gone. Peter and Darling slammed the door of their rental car. With one last wave outside the gate, they bumped and jostled down the road, away from the castle and back the way they had come.

"Will we ever see her again?" Isabella wondered, once they car was out of sight.

"You won't, " Alice answered, with such an emphasis on "you" and so much melancholy in her voice that Rose silently hissed. It was possible the rest of the Cullens would see Darling again, someday, but not Izzy. Rose could hope it was because Izzy was staying with her own family, whenever Darling appeared again, but something about the tone of Alice's voice made her think that wasn't it.

"What did she give you?" Esme asked.

Izzy flipped through a few pages of the book in her hand. "It's, uh, a very old edition of Peter Pan."

"Huh. Somehow that doesn't surprise me at all," Emmett said. He peered over his shoulder at the book. "Did you hear? Peter told me he started his life as a Pirate? He never had a parrot or a peg leg or a chest of treasure, though."

"That looks just like the version Edward used to have," Esme said. "Though that one was almost new. This one looks like it's gone through a few families of children."

"I wonder why she gave me this?" Izzy asked.

"Maybe to keep you from growing up," Emmett suggested. At Izzy's eye roll, he chuckled and placed a heavy arm around her shoulders.

"Well, what now?" Rose asked.

"Now, we do what Darling suggested and get the hell outta here," Jasper said.

By the solemn faces and shared looks around the group, they all knew Jasper was right. It wouldn't be the first time they packed up and disappeared into the night, long before any of them were truly ready to leave. However fast and efficiently they could up and move, it never got any easier, especially for Rose. She liked to plant herself in one place and not wander about like a tumbleweed. She didn't feel ready to up and roll across the globe again, but it was better to up and move than it was to meet with the Volturi again.

"I'm sorry, Esme," she whispered when she saw Esme's forlorn glance at the imposing walls of the castle.

"Oh, it's just a castle – really, it's a pile of old rocks. It's more important to tend to the needs of the living than get too caught up in the dry bones of this old place. It'll live again, I think, but someone else may have to do the resuscitation." Esme forced a smile, but it didn't dissuade Carlisle from taking her into his arms in an embrace.

"Let's blow this popsicle joint," Emmett said, then he climbed over the wall of the courtyard and swung through an open window into the castle.

Oooo


Author's note:

Not a lot "happens" here, but it's kinda final wrapping up of the Cullen portion of this story. (i.e. we've finished what began with chapter 2) and now we move on to finish what began in chapter 1.

I reference Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen throughout.