I was going to write this chapter entirely my own, but Rosalie's story is so well told (in part) in Eclipse that I blended the words. Think of this as the first chapter of Eclipse. The first numbered chapter will take place after Carys knows Rosalie's story, and will be from Carys' POV as usual. I just feel like Rose deserves her voice alone in this.

I'm going to reply to reviews and shout-out next chapter as well, just feels not quite right over Rosalie's story.

Trigger warning: references to rape, torture, and death.

Rosalie

My human life feels so far away now. Few memories before the change remain, and they rarely seem enough. There are parts that I remember far more I would wish to, and parts I wish I had retained.

My early life was filled with what I was given.

Beauty was my hallmark. It was what carved me out from before I was old enough to walk. What a beautiful baby girl; what a beautiful little girl; what a beautiful girl; what a beautiful young woman I made.

I was admired and treasured for my beauty, even as a human. It taught me who I was. Who I could be. What belonged to me. What I could desire. What I could achieve.

My beauty was currency for my parents.

My beauty was my life.

My beauty was my death.

My beauty is my past, present and future.

I was raised in the expectation that the day would come when I would be married off. That was how it was for women like me - it was what I saw in my mother's role, my friend's roles, their mothers as well.

When I was young, my brothers - two and four years younger than me, respectively - were my hangers on at home. We would play games, wander, dance and sing, but where they were allowed to run roughshod through the gardens, I was taught: walk, don't run; speak, don't shout; give yourself a chance to be admired wherever you go; hold your opinions to yourself; remember, as always, there are things even a beautiful woman cannot say or do.

My parents were thoroughly middle class. My father had a stable job in a bank, something I realise now that he was smug about - he saw his prosperity as a reward for talent and hard work, rather than acknowledging the luck involved. I took it all for granted then; in my home, it was as if the Great Depression was only a troublesome rumor. Of course, I saw the poor people, the ones who weren't as lucky. My father left me with the impression that they'd brought their troubles on themselves.

It was my mother's job to keep our house - and myself and my two younger brothers - in spotless order. It was clear that I was both her first priority and her favourite. I didn't fully understand at the time, but I was always vaguely aware that my parents weren't satisfied with what they had, even if it was so much more than most. They wanted more. They had social aspirations - social climbers, I suppose you could call them. My beauty was like a gift to them. They saw so much more potential in it than I did.

My beauty would bring them a son-in-law. My marriage would buy them the greater standing that they craved. It would open doors for both them and my brothers.

They weren't satisfied yet, but I was. I was thrilled to be me, to be Rosalie Hale. Pleased that eyes watched me every where I went, from the year I turned fourteen. Delighted that my girlfriends sighed with envy when they touched my hair. Happy that my mother was proud of me and that my father liked to buy me pretty dresses.

I knew what I wanted out of life, and there didn't seem to be any way that I wouldn't get exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be loved, to be adored. I wanted to have a huge, flowery wedding, where everyone in town would watch me walk down the aisle on my father's arm and think I was the most beautiful thing they'd ever seen. Admiration was like air to me.

A book had come out when I was a girl. It was called The Great Gatsby. One summer, my brother read it and took to telling me I had a little of Daisy about me. The ambition of my parents, the beauty, the love of admiration, the expectation of what I would be.

In those days, overlooking the disastrous match she made, her downfall, all that came before and after, I supposed there was a crude likeness from the outside. I, of course, was destined for brighter things than Daisy. There would be no Gatsby. And my Tom would not treat me as Daisy's had.

But I was destined for that world, at least - to be admired always, my attention coveted and craved as anyone who met me hung on my every word.

I almost had it all. Everything I wished. Everything I craved.

And then, a week before my wedding, it was brutally, horrifically torn from my grasp.

I was murdered.

Transformed.

Reborn.

Looking back, my life was peaceful, and it was shallow. I was admired not for who I was, but what I was. I knew it, and it took me over. I enjoyed it all.

The lessons had changed by the time I reached my teenage years. I was taught how to comport myself in a manner befitting both my parents' station, and the one they wanted.

I saw nothing wrong with this.

If you tell someone their only worth is in one thing for their entire life, they can internalise it. It can make them up.

But by then, I had my hopes and dreams.

My parents' influence, and the influence of everyone and everything around me, had been such that part of my dreams involved the material things of life. I wanted a big house with elegant furnishings that someone else would clean and a modern kitchen that someone else would cook in. And I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't get these things.

My very closest friend was a girl named Vera. She married young, just seventeen. She married a man my parents would never have considered for me - a carpenter. A year later she had a son, a beautiful little boy with dimples and curly black hair. It was the first time I'd ever felt truly jealous of anyone else in my entire life.

My dreams were not simply limited to the material, you see. I yearned for my own little baby. I wanted my own house and a husband who would kiss me when he got home from work - just like Vera. Only, I simply had a very different kind of house in mind.

When I was eighteen, my parents chose a husband for me. My mother conveniently forgot to send my father's lunch to work with him one day, and asked me to go in her stead. It was then that the wheels were set in motion.

I remember being confused when she insisted that I wear my white organza and roll my hair up just to run over to the bank. How naïve to forget their plans for so much as a moment.

In Rochester, there was one royal family - the Kings, ironically enough. They owned the bank my father worked at, and nearly every other really profitable business in town. That was how and where their son saw me the first time. He was going to take over one day, and had begun to oversee various areas.

It was a clever plan, really - to have made him think he had chosen me.

I didn't notice him watching me that day. Everyone watched me. But that night the first of the roses came. Every night of our courtship, he sent a bouquet of roses to me. My room was always overflowing with them. It got to the point that I would smell like roses when I left the house.

I remember when I first met him - when I first realised I had met him. He was handsome. Rich. Vain. He had lighter hair than I did, and pale blue eyes. He said my eyes were like violets, and then those started showing up alongside the roses.

He was everything my parents had ever dreamed of. And he seemed to be everything I'd dreamed of. The fairy tale prince, come to make me a princess. Everything I wanted, yet it was still no more than I expected. We were engaged before I'd known him for two months.

Even then, I knew less about him than was usual.

We didn't spend a great deal of time alone with each other, you see, and when we did, he talked much more than I did but of so little consequence. He told me he had many responsibilities at work, and, when we were together, he liked to show me off. He liked people to look at us, to see me on his arm. I liked that, too.

There were lots of parties, dancing, and pretty dresses. When you were a King, every door was open for you, every red carpet rolled out to greet you.

It wasn't a long engagement. I was caught in a whirl of wedding plans - it was to be the most lavish wedding. It was going to be everything I'd ever wanted. I was completely happy. When I called at Vera's, I no longer felt jealous. I pictured my fair-haired children playing on the huge lawns of the Kings' estate, and I pitied her.

I did not fool myself, exactly. I didn't find myself waking from dreams of loving words I thought he might give me, but I thought he was simply a different kind of man - more reserved in that regard because we were so rarely alone. I dreamed instead of the little boy I could chase around the lawns, and a little girl who's hair I could braid with ribbons and tut over when she lost one to the shrubs, playing games I was never allowed to.

I was at Vera's that night. The night I died. Her little Henry really was adorable, all smiles and dimples - he was just sitting up on his own. I hugged him, held him sometimes as we talked, cooed over him as he cooed up at me. He even slept in my arms for a while, and I felt so excited that this would soon be how I filled my days. I lingered over the visit.

Vera walked me to the door as I was leaving, her baby in her arms and her husband at her side, his arm around her waist. He kissed her on the cheek when he thought I wasn't looking. That bothered me. When Royce kissed me, it was never quite the same - not so sweet somehow.

I shoved that thought aside. He was my prince. Someday, I would be queen.

It was dark in the streets by the time I left, the lamps already on. I hadn't realized how late it was. It was cold, too. Very cold for late April. The wedding was only a week away, and I was worrying about the weather as I hurried home - I can remember that clearly. I didn't want to have to move the wedding indoors.

It was on the walk home that everything changed, and my dreams were shattered, battered, bruised, torn, beaten as I was, beyond recognition.

It was he who did it to me. Him and his friends.

I remember every detail about that night. I clung to it so hard in the beginning. I thought of nothing else. And so I remember this, when so many pleasant memories have faded away completely.

I was a few streets from my house when I heard them. A cluster of men under a broken street lamp, laughing too loud. Drunk.

I wished I'd called my father to escort me home, but the way was so short, it seemed silly. And then he called my name.

"Rose!" he yelled, and the others laughed stupidly.

I hadn't realized the drunks were so well dressed. It was him and some of his friends - the sons of other rich men.

"Here's my Rose!" he shouted, laughing with them, sounding just as stupid. "You're late. We're cold, you've kept us waiting so long."

I'd never seen him drink before. A toast, now and then, at a party. He'd told me he didn't like champagne. I hadn't realized that he preferred something much stronger. He had a new friend - the friend of a friend, come up from Atlanta.

"What did I tell you," he crowed, grabbing my arm and pulling me closer. "Isn't she lovelier than all your Georgia peaches?"

The man he had spoken to was dark-haired and suntanned. He looked me over like I was a horse he was buying.

"It's hard to tell," he drawled slowly. "She's all covered up."

They laughed, each and every one of them.

Suddenly, he ripped my jacket from my shoulders - popping the brass buttons off. They scattered all over the street.

"Show him what you look like, Rose!"

He laughed again and then he tore my hat out of my hair. The pins wrenched my hair from the roots, and I cried out in pain. They seemed to enjoy that - the sound of my pain...

The hours before they left me used, destroyed, to die alone were filled with pain, my muffled screams, and their laughing, malicious faces.

After a while, they broke so much of me that...

They left me in the street, still laughing as they stumbled away. They thought I was dead. They were teasing him that he would have to find a new bride.

He laughed and said he'd have to learn some patience first.

I waited there in the road to die. It was cold, though there was so much pain that I was surprised it bothered me now. It started to snow, and I wondered why I wasn't dying. I was impatient for death to come, to end the pain. It was taking so long...

Carlisle found me then. He'd smelled the blood, and come to investigate. There were no footsteps when Carlisle approached. Not that I can recall.

I remember being vaguely irritated as he worked over me, trying to save my life. I'd never liked Dr. Cullen or his wife and her brother - as Edward and Esme had pretended to be then. It had upset me that they were all more beautiful than I was, especially that the men were. But they didn't mingle in society, so I'd only seen them once or twice.

I thought I'd died when Carlisle pulled me from the ground and ran with me - because of the speed - it felt like I was flying. I remembered being horrified that the pain didn't stop.

Then I was in a bright room, and it was warm. I was slipping away, and I was grateful as the pain began to dull. But suddenly something sharp was cutting me, my throat, my wrists, my ankles. I screamed in shock, thinking Carlisle had brought me there to hurt me more. Then fire started burning through me, and I didn't care about anything else. I begged Carlisle to kill me.

When Esme and Edward returned home, I begged them to kill me, too. Carlisle sat with me. He held my hand and said that he was so sorry, promising that it would end. He told me everything, and sometimes I listened. He told me what he was, what I was becoming. I didn't believe him. He apologized each time I screamed.

Edward wasn't happy. I remember hearing them discuss me. I stopped screaming sometimes. It did no good to scream.

"What were you thinking, Carlisle?" Edward said. "Rosalie Hale?"

I didn't like the way he said my name, like there was something wrong with me.

"I couldn't just let her die," Carlisle said quietly. "It was too much - too horrible, too much waste."

"I know," Edward said, and I thought he sounded dismissive. It angered me. I didn't know then that he really could see exactly what Carlisle had seen.

"It was too terrible. No one should ever suffer in such a way, or to die like that. I couldn't leave her... I couldn't leave her," Carlisle repeated in a whisper.

"Of course you couldn't," Esme agreed.

"People die all the time," Edward reminded him in a hard voice. "Don't you think she's just a little recognisable, though? The Kings will have to put up a huge search - not that anyone suspects the fiend," he growled.

It pleased me that they seemed to know that he was guilty.

I didn't realize that it was almost over - that I was getting stronger and that was why I was able to concentrate on what they were saying. The pain was beginning to fade from my fingertips.

Carlisle had told Edward to leave.

"What are we going to do with her?" Edward said disgustedly - or that's how it sounded to me, at least.

Carlisle had sighed. "That's up to her, of course. She may want to go her own way. Now she will have the choice, at least... If you have nothing of use to offer, I say again: you may leave, Edward."

I'd believed enough of what he'd told me that his words terrified me. I knew that my life was ended, and there was no going back for me. I couldn't stand the thought of being alone...

The pain finally ended and they explained to me again what I was. This time I believed. I felt the thirst, my hard skin; I saw my brilliant red eyes.

Shallow as I was, I felt better when I saw my reflection in the mirror the first time. Despite the eyes, I was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

It took some time before I began to blame the beauty for what had happened to me - to wish that I had been... Well, not ugly, but normal. Like Vera. So I could have been allowed to marry someone who loved me, and have pretty babies.

That's what I'd really wanted, all along. It still doesn't seem like too much to have asked for.

My record is almost as clean as Carlisle's. Better than Esme. Better than Emmett, or Alice. A thousand times better than Edward. More so than Jasper.

I've never tasted human blood.

If you can really call them human, I suppose I have killed seven in my long life.

I had my revenge.

I was very careful not to spill their blood - I knew, young as I was, that I wouldn't be able to resist that, and I didn't want any part of them in me.

I went through them one by one, careful in my torture so that they suffered for at least as long as I had before I allowed them their deaths.

I saved him for last.

I hoped that he would hear of his friends' deaths and understand, know what was coming for him. I hoped the fear would make the end worse for him. I think it worked. He was hiding inside a windowless room behind a door as thick as a bank vault's, guarded outside by armed men, when I caught up with him.

Killing the two guards was the work of a moment.

I was theatrical when it came to him. I wore a wedding dress I'd stolen for the occasion. He screamed when he saw me. He screamed a lot that night. Saving him for last was a good idea - it made it easier for me to control myself, to make it slower, to leave him broken in every way.

Carlisle turned a blind eye to my vengeance.

He welcomed me after each as if I had simply been on a hunt. He even, after Royce - because I suppose you might want his name - nodded. I think that was his way of accepting that it was done.

Over the years, I have learned a little more about Carlisle's compassion - I wonder if he thought my having killed them was a compassionate act, as it rid the world of them...

I had been a vampire for two years when I found Emmett.

I was on a hunt when I smelled his blood. It reignited my thirst - there was so much of it, and though I had just had my fill, it was hard to ignore.

I remember so clearly when I saw him. He had been attacked by a bear - very Emmett way to die, as it would turn out. I approached him. Ridding us of the nuisance of the bear, I was by his side in an instant.

I noticed so many things about him at once. I remember thinking that I couldn't let him die. Another thought took hold almost immediately. If I had met this man before - I knew it was silly to think, but I couldn't rid myself of the notion - could my dreams have become a reality?

I know now that I fell in love with him when he opened his eyes and whispered, "Angel". Sometimes it can capture you in an instant, and other times it can take years to take hold, but all I know is that I was drawn to Emmett as I had never been drawn to any other - before or since.

I gathered him into my arms. He was far larger and heavier than he had looked at first, but that made little difference. His eyes, once opened, didn't close. He gazed up at me as I ran with him - for hundreds of miles, every part of my vampiric senses telling me to stop, to sink my teeth in and feast on what was left of him - and took him home to Carlisle.

His gaze felt different to the admiration I had recieved as a human. It was, and is, different still to the stares I recieved as a vampire. Even as a dying human, Emmett loved me in the way I had always dreamed of being loved.

At first, Carlisle didn't understand what I was asking of him. It was Edward who heard what I was thinking, what I was begging Carlisle to do for me, and explained.

"Oh," Carlisle had said.

Oh... Then just like that, he changed Emmett. For me... Because I had asked...

I stayed with Emmett through his change. I sat with him as Carlisle had sat with me. He didn't scream as much as I remembered doing. Sometimes Carlisle would come to check on him and he would clutch at my hand despite the pain, clinging to me as if he was fearful I would leave.

Emmett had thought I was an angel, that Carlisle was God. He told me later that he hadn't been surprised by the fire - he had guessed that the preachers were right, and it was his judgement after all the gambling, carousing and drinking. With me, his angel, by his side, he had been sure he could make it through, suffer the pain and all that came with it.

Emmett took to vampirism far more easily than Carlisle, Esme, Edward or I. He surprised us. When he explained that if Carlisle and I, his angel, were vampires, he imagined it couldn't be quite so bad, I realised that I would never leave his side again.