Here's a new extended chapter! Thank you so much for your kind words and reviews! I LOVE hearing your thoughts and appreciate your time sharing them with me.
This chapter is in Edward's POV.
Thank you so much for reading! Enjoy!
Delilah
It's a different kind of danger
And the bells are ringing out
And I'm calling for my mother
As I pull the pillars down
It's a different kind of danger
And my feet are spinning around
Never knew I was a dancer
'Till Delilah showed me how
Edward - A Thirst for Learning
"Edward… I have a problem." Emmett paced outside once we'd gotten far enough away from the house.
His feet burned a hole in the grass as he paced back and forth at a meta-human speed.
I knew before he even said it aloud, but nonetheless I waited.
"Now, you can't go squawking this to the first person you see but… I never really learned how to read." Emmett admitted with the most devastating shame in his eyes. "There was never a reason I shoulda learnt how so… I didn't."
"I'll teach you." I offered immediately. "It'll be easy to learn now with your vampiric retention, and I'm a pretty good teacher I'll say."
Emmett chuckled at this, laughing just a little. There was relief in his thoughts, but not much.
"But more than all that, Rosalie's real fancy and I just… Obviously I'm not. I'm not even in the league." Emmett sighed.
"Don't say that." I encouraged.
"I mean, I'm still gonna make her my girl. I'm just very aware I'd be over reaching." Emmett snickered.
Of course.
I couldn't help but laugh at his confidence.
"I'm serious." Emmett nodded, and he was. "She's already caught on to how plain I am. I mean, I don't even know how to talk to her! I was a babbling idiot because I don't know anything about things she likes."
"She just makes you nervous, and you're still trying to get the hang of this vampire thing." I said.
"I'll say." He snorted a laugh.
"You make her nervous too." I said matter-of-factly, rounding the arc.
He looked back up, optimism in his eyes.
"How do you know?" He asked quickly.
I shrugged knowing that I'd said too much and used some suggestive words.
"Did she say anything about me?"
No… I read her thoughts just like I was reading his right now.
"I'm sworn to secrecy." I said knowing that my secrecy was only going to suggest more.
But, he needed a little confidence and a little push to pursue her – also selfishly because I couldn't endure decades of them trying to get together but neither one of them making a substantial move.
He grinned victoriously.
"Lord, I'm just dizzy with that Rosalie Hale," Emmett broke out to a glee-filled run beside me, taking a fast spin around himself and jumping over the stream.
He was just that…
And his thoughts were making me dizzy. His thoughts were fragmented flashes of vivid images of her, but not the way anyone had seen her before.
I was absolutely fascinated with the way he saw Rosalie and the tiny things he noticed about her.
I had been living with her for almost two years now and I could hear her thoughts but, I'd never picked up that she absently braided and unbraided the same inch wide strand of hair over her left shoulder while she read with a book in her lap.
He'd lived in our house for a month and was plagued with the distraction of being a newborn but still he saw it. He noticed it, and was enchanted by such a small gesture.
His thoughts then flashed to a fuzzy human memory, something I hadn't seen before: she was standing over him, sunlight behind her.
'I'm not leaving you,' she said, her voice sounding much different in his ears.
It was angelic and song-like instead of how I heard it…
I found Rosalie's voice incredibly maddening. I hated that she over-enunciated her words, dropping her 'r' sounds and rounding out her vowels to sound swankier like a Hollywood actress.
He adored it.
In my perception of the memory, I saw the thirst in her eyes and knew she was convincing herself not to kill him out of bloodlust. That explained the determination in her voice, but he still didn't pick up on that connection.
He thought she could do anything, that she was limitless.
I had heard millions of thoughts about her from years past and all of them were pretty much the same, but his perception of her was so pure and sanguine that it intrigued me.
I didn't even mind that I was intruding on his thoughts without the disclosure of my 'gift.'
He sighed, slowing down for a moment, still just love-struck as he swung from a tree branch to come back to where I stood.
He turned to ask me something I didn't expect.
It came out of nowhere in his thought process. But it was like a shooting star, immediately as it tore across his mind, it resonated enough that he had to speak it aloud.
"How did she die, Edward?" Emmett asked plainly. "Carlisle said he'd never change people that had another choice. And, I know everyone's story but hers."
"Um…" I stalled to collect my thoughts. "That's something she'll have to tell you."
This satisfied him, and he nodded.
"So, it was bad?" He asked.
"All death is bad, Emmett." I said with a shrug, not sure if I believed that.
He was again mollified with this answer though.
"Mine wasn't. I'm so glad I died." Emmett said contentedly.
I sighed.
"Rosalie's different than the rest of us in that way… She's… not glad." I stumbled over my words trying to explain it to him.
I knew Rosalie would kill me brutally if I had revealed any more than that.
"Does she miss her human life?" Emmett pressed, wanting to know every bit that he could.
He was testing my boundaries as well. I saw this in his thoughts.
I recognized I'd already said too much then, but I had to respond. His eyes were heavy on me.
"Parts of it." I tried to let him know this was all I could really say with a glance of finality.
He stopped in his tracks, seeing some wild roses, avoiding their thorns out of habit as he picked a few.
I rolled my eyes, of course knowing what he was thinking.
"You know her. You have to tell me what she's like." He prodded.
Incredibly difficult, vain, impossible to stand.
"She doesn't like flowers." I played it safe, remembering hearing her distaste for roses and violets after… everything she'd been through.
"You're not… She's not spoken for, right?" Emmett's eyes were wide as he dropped the flowers.
His thoughts sunk deep as he thought irrationally that Rosalie and I were together.
"Oh no. No way." I shook my head.
"Good. I was thinking, I sure don't wanna have to fight you, Edward." Emmett began. "Cause I'd win and humiliate you in front of your girl."
I knew what he was thinking and it was exactly what he was saying. Everything he thought, he said or did.
It was refreshing.
I laughed, actually laughed.
"I might surprise you." I shrugged, still not knowing how to tell him about my gift.
Rosalie was incredibly upset by it, even repulsed, and wanted to keep as far away from me as possible. She felt that the compromised privacy was too much for her to bear.
She'd learned French just so she could think in a language I didn't understand.
He thought briefly about the possibility, but ultimately decided he knew he would win with ultimate confidence.
"I don't get surprised." Emmett said confidently.
Oh, he had no idea.
But, I did see a human memory in his mind that did surprise me.
He was in a dark room and a cloud of cigarette smoke. He spit out blood onto the dirt floor, wiping his mouth with his black and blue knuckles, as he looked down on a man twice his size with a smug smile. People cheered.
As someone grabbed his wrist and thrust his hand into the sky, I noticed his hands were small, his arms were skinny, and his height also suggested he was much younger. No more than a starving twelve-year-old boy.
His hubris delighted me in a playfully competitive way, and the threat of a contest was the only thing that seemed to distract his mind from the dizzying tangle of Rosalie Hale.
"Well you haven't met me." I narrowed my eyes.
"That sounds like a challenge Edward." Emmett grinned an anticipatory grin, thinking about lunging at me playfully.
I anticipated his move, darting to the side so he tumbled forward in the grass, causing a deep cavern of displaced soil as he skidded across the earth.
"Okay… Okay…." He held up his hands in surrender with a laugh as he climbed out of the hole he'd dug himself into. "I underestimated how fast you are."
I winked as he brushed the dirt off his arms.
"I forgot to mention I read thoughts." I said casually knowing now was as good a time as ever.
"You're lying." He laughed heartily and with incredulity.
"Sometimes, vampires develop certain special abilities after transformation." I explained.
He thought I was joking.
"You don't believe me." I said.
"It doesn't take a mind-reader to know that." He responded, raising an eyebrow.
"The memory you visited. You were young, and you won a fighting match of some kind." I didn't know if this was a touchy subject so I treaded lightly.
He thought a curse word I wasn't going to repeat aloud just to prove my point.
"Well, I guess that settles it." Emmett nodded. "You read minds."
He wasn't alarmed or taken aback or disgusted by the lack of privacy. In fact, he was startlingly indifferent and unimpressed.
"So, what is it like? Do you see pictures or is it words too?" Emmett asked casually, as no one had asked before.
"Um…" I was taken aback by his honesty, even as someone that is so rarely surprised. "Well, it's usually just a hum until I focus on something specific or know someone's… well, inner voice so well that it's distinguishable. But, I guess it's kind of a combination of words and pictures. It's hard to describe."
"So… what am I saying?" He tested like a child playing a game and I shook my head in a fit of real laughter.
"You just told me you wish you had a million dollars." I laughed, though that thought was hardly original enough to stump me.
"Hot dog. Well, I guess I do believe you." Emmett shrugged.
"So, I suppose the match is uneven." I sighed confidently.
"Never stopped me before." Emmett prepped, curling his shoulders like he was ready to pounce again. "I'll fight if you will."
I nodded, admitting to myself I was enjoying this.
I saw in his thoughts the memory again. This time he acknowledged I saw it.
"I was twelve and I won ten whole dollars for that one." He grinned proudly, his thoughts in perfect harmony with his words.
We circled one another calculating our moves, the entire woods becoming our ring. It had been so long since I'd just done something for the sheer fun of it.
"It was the first win I ever had and after that I never lost. Before, I just got a couple cents to get the crap beaten out of me every weekend." Emmett shrugged, still full of humor.
He held nothing back and it was refreshing.
I saw blood and bruises and lots of it in his thoughts - sometimes his own, but mostly others'.
His thoughts betrayed that he was distracting me and going to lunge at me from the right, so I readjusted on the defensive before he could even move.
He chuckled at this, returning to the circle we danced around one another.
"So your town had a fight club?" I asked, remembering waiting outside plenty of those for my human kills of shady men during my time away from Carlisle and Esme.
Emmett's thoughts flashed back to that dark room and a cloud of cigarette smoke.
I shifted my weight forward as if I was going to dart at him, and he reacted swiftly and inelegantly. I smirked.
"Has a fight club. It's amazing what some rich people will pay to watch a hungry kid fight for a meal." Emmett said, but his tone made it sound less like a sob story and more of a common, amusing observation.
"So you had to?" I asked without a complete question.
He had to fight to support his family.
He looked like a predator stalking his prey, but his prey just happened to be another predator with a distinct advantage on him.
"Well, sure, yeah I guess I had to, but as I got older and better, I wanted to." He smiled excitedly.
I anticipated the lunge that would send him tumbling to the ground again, hitting a tree with a smack that sounded like a gunshot.
The tree uprooted on the side he'd hit and he looked at me with a goofy smile.
"Whoops." He chuckled then returned to the conversation.
"Once I started getting really good - so good they'd fight me outnumbered and with advantages, more money came and it got more fun. Obviously, I'd get more money the more uneven the match was and the whole time my mama just thought I was just really good at managing our land." Emmett spoke fondly of what seemed to me like a perfect atrocity.
The advantages he spoke of were weapons - chains and baseball bats and blunt objects from darkest creativity. The dim light, the dirt clouds, and the crowd roaring seemed hellish to me, but to him – he looked on it all with nostalgia and attachment.
He took advantage of my distraction, tackling me to the ground with enough brute force that the indention of our bodies would potentially dig a hole to China.
"How'd you keep it from your family?" I wondered as we struggled against one another.
He was ungodly strong, even for a newborn vampire.
I theorized for a moment that strength was his defining gift in vampirism because of his display of it in his human life.
I knew Carlisle would find this interesting.
"I don't know." He said as his back crashed into a boulder from where I'd pushed him, the rock beginning to crumble.
For the first time, his thoughts were inharmonious with his words.
I saw in Emmett's thoughts a flash of him in his youth ripping a man out of a screaming and shoving match with a woman that I recognized he regarded as his father and mother. The man whirled around, rearing back and letting his fist fly as Emmett unsuccessfully ducked behind his arms and ended up with a black eye.
His father…
It's easy to hide bruises from a fight club when you collect them at home too.
I don't think it registered to Emmett that I'd heard these thoughts so clearly and I couldn't bear the thought of taking advantage of his distraction by such a thing, so as he whirled around, pinning my own back to the boulder, I surrendered.
"You win." I choked out as my back crunched against the boulder., almost feeling the wind knocked out of me if it were possible for a vampire.
His grin was intensely satisfied in such a childlike way.
"Two out of three?" He raised an eyebrow.
"No. We need to get some work done." I tried to get serious. "Let's get started."
"Fine." Emmett's jovial nature disappeared as he sunk to sit on the ground like a sullen child.
He looked up at me, ready to be taught how to read, but not really enjoying himself. The self sacrifice in his eyes was so real, and I got a glimmer of something in his thoughts that made it obvious he was capable of falling in love with Rosalie.
He was doing this for her, no matter how much he despised it.
I cleared my throat, taking a stick and drawing some letters in the dirt.
Emmett was willing to learn, and the new abilities of his vampire brain to multitask and compartmentalize and retain made it so much easier for him. He made immense progress in just a couple hours, and as the sun began to sink beneath the horizon, we barely seemed to notice.
He'd gotten the hang of phonetics with ease, and he avoided my eyes always - hating to imagine himself less a man than me.
Emmett was extremely forthcoming and open with his thoughts, but another thing about his thoughts that was refreshing was that he was honest with himself. He didn't like to imagine anyone being better than him, but he never viewed himself as any better than anyone else either.
He was self-aware in a way most people I'd read hadn't been.
It was honestly pretty rejuvenating to my faith….
"Alright. You've done well. Now, you need to go try and win Rosalie's frozen heart." I distracted him again. "Race you back to the house?"
He agreed with a goofily optimistic smile, and I of course anticipated that he was going to cheat with a head start as he jumped from the ground and leapt into a sprint.
It all happened quickly then.
The wind changed and so did he.
He immediately transformed into the monster of nightmares at the scent of a small group of people coming from about 5 miles north.
"Emmett! No!" I bellowed desperately, following at his heels just far enough away from him to not be able to reach out and grab him.
I pushed myself beyond limits, reaching out and almost grabbing the fabric of his shirt.
I was just too far away.
His thoughts were wild and incoherent, but laser focused on one subject - blood.
My throat burned and I fought intensely against the temptation myself.
I was close enough to see the look in the little girl's big blue eyes as Emmett killed her entire family in front of her and then lunged straight for her last, just before she could even muster up a scream.
Emmett held the little girl like he was coming to spin her round in his outstretched arms while she giggled and smiled carelessly in idyllic childhood bliss. It looked like he was whispering something in her ear, but I knew better; her big blue eyes seemed to stare right into mine as the life got sucked right out of her.
Her cupid's bow lips lost all of their color and her mouth was in a little 'o' like she was just getting ready to scream.
Emmett hissed at me over his shoulder as he let her body fall lifeless to the ground right next to the rest of her family's.
I looked upon the little girl, no more than five or six, but she was exceptionally small and starving. She looked like a little porcelain doll, her skin so white and bloodless.
"Oh God…" I could barely function.
A little girl…
Emmett wasn't registering yet what had happened as he defensively turned on me with a snarl.
I still stepped forward, closing her eyes out of respect, my stomach feeling tight and guilty.
Carlisle would be so disappointed in me.
I'd let this happen. I was drowning in shame.
"Emmett, no." I tiredly scolded him, not wanting to fight.
"What have you done?…" I asked rhetorically in a breath, hating to see an entire family slaughtered out of his lust.
His growl turned to something more of a struggling groan.
That's when I followed his wild eyes and noticed something impossibly even more tragic.
The mother had a hunting knife in her cold grip, and one of her children already had a stab wound in its tiny heart.
It was a boy, barely a year old. He'd been asleep when his own mother gutted him.
He was dead before we even got here.
The rest of the family had the intent to die as well.
It was a family suicide…
The spilt blood of the baby is what caught Emmett's attention to begin with. There was no hope against spilled blood.
Emmett was breathing heavily, growling like some sort of wild animal as he dropped to his hands and knees.
He was trying to gain control.
In primal pain, he dropped his forehead to the grass, knotting his fingers over his head as he groaned.
He was realizing what he'd done…
He was letting his humanity back in and it was retaking him in a pained lurch.
"Emmett." I reminded him his name because he was so far gone.
A string of curse words so foul it made me wince poured from his mouth as he struggled.
"Why do we do it?" Emmett asked after a while, his voice hoarse and strained. "Why do we resist?"
I heard his thoughts and it broke my heart.
He was so far from the man he was just minutes ago before he'd done this… Before his first human.
"It's… just… so… good." He spoke, absolutely blood drunk as he looked back up at me with brilliant vermillion eyes.
I shivered.
Energy coursed through his veins and strength like he'd had the moment he woke up filled his every fiber. We were meant for human blood. That's when we were at our strongest…
I understood the temptation. I processed it in his thoughts. He already wanted another.
His throat was a fiery furnace, forging nightmarish desires of death and destruction.
It was tantalizing.
"Because they're people, Emmett. People with lives and families and hopes and dreams… We can't just…"
He sat back on his heels like a deflated balloon looking around at the travesty, realizing he was only to blame for half of it.
His eyes fixated on the little girl's blonde hair splayed like a cloud through the grass. He took in her hollow cheeks and chapped white lips. I noticed she was skeletal, her skin looking thinly stretched over her bones. The entire family had skeletal looking bodies.
"It was mercy." Emmett mumbled.
"No. It's…" I started, but he wasn't listening.
He stared right at the little girl with big blue eyes that were forever closed now.
"In this rotten Depression, it was mercy." Emmett countered. "They were starving to death. Slow. Awful. Painful… I made it quick."
Emmett was talking like a monster. His brilliant red eyes registered the hunting knife and the scene that in just a few minutes more would've looked much the same…
They would've all been dead anyway.
He just sped along the process.
I couldn't even argue with him.
"Her own mother was going to kill her. Put her out of her misery." Emmett observed in a ghostly tone.
"It was mercy." Emmett mumbled as he stood and looked over the scene around him.
He looked at that little girl, the mother that was just a little older than we were, her husband, and the baby boy that was once in the mother's lap but was now strewn lifeless across the bloodied grass.
He saw their faces and imagined their lives. He thought of their hardships. He empathized in a real, connected way.
This was progress toward not hunting humans - just like Carlisle reminded me.
Empathy…
Emmett picked up the hunting knife, noting the stab wound to the little boy's stomach.
It was a baby… Just a baby.
"Mercy, Edward." Emmett countered, turning the knife this way and that in his hands, his bright red eyes fixated on the blood that stained its sheath. "It was mercy."
He wrapped his fingers around the knife, squeezing with the intent to cut his own hand, but this was impossible. Like the consistency of warm butter, the knife molded under Emmett's fingers until it disintegrated into a liquid looking metal swirl.
I started to wordlessly clean up the scene. We'd have to dispose of the bodies.
"She was having another baby." Emmett nodded toward the woman without looking at her. "Another mouth to feed…"
I looked over, noting the roundness of her stomach that betrayed her delicate condition.
It made me remember what it was like to be a human and feel nauseous as I noticed this fact. I could've passed out if I was a human.
This was hellish, barbaric, terrifying… and I could barely stand to stay here a second longer.
A child… A woman… An unborn baby…
Emmett's eyes still fixated on the knife he molded and twisted in his hands like putty.
"It was mercy, Edward…" He repeated again to me, frowning as we began our cover up of the horror scene.
I decided not to speak as I followed the dark trail of his mind, gruesomely disposing of the bodies of a family.
While we worked in silence, his mind was flashing like train lights in the dark. It was mostly nonsensical pictures, memories, and powerful emotions without a visual companion.
I only saw glimpses of himself amongst the monstrosity of being a newborn vampire, but I saw what I needed to see to bring him back between the flashes. He was experiencing a memory dump of his human life now that this part of his brain opened at the thought of empathy.
Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Emmett's back was ruddy and tanned from the unforgiving Southern sun. He wore his work overalls off his shoulders because he wasn't trying to be civilized. Not in this heat. The fabric had hardened because it was caked with dirt and dust. He wiped his sweating brow with the back of his calloused hands, dirt from the land he toiled perpetually under his fingernails.
Hunger pain was clawing at his stomach like a rabid animal and it was so bad it radiated through the entirety of his entire body.
He looked down into the dusty barren ground, leaning into his shovel.
All he seemed to see was brown. It was ever-present.
Everything was brown. His lungs were filled with dust.
His eyes drifted up to the horizon and now he saw red. Red, curly, fiery hair on a little girl no more than seven.
She looked like I'd imagine a feral child raised by wolves would look, though Emmett's memory regarded her as nothing short of his definition of utter royalty and beauty.
Caroline.
Her dress was soiled, stained, and full of holes. She didn't wear shoes on her bleeding, grimy feet. Her cheeks were dusted with dirt and her blue eyes had lost their color. Now, they were a dusty color too. Her lips were white and peeling with dehydration.
She had a stick around her hunched, narrow shoulders with rusted buckets of dirty water weighing each end.
Emmett whistled at her, a smile erupting on his face that betrayed his pain. She looked up, color seeming to enter her face as she met his gaze.
Then, just as fast as it came, the color left and she collapsed into dust.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the soul of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
With the power of thunder rolling and a brilliant flash of lightning, Emmett was arguing heatedly with a man about a head shorter than him, but with very similar dark hair and dark eyes.
This was Emmett's father.
Emmett was roaringly drunk, the world spinning and turning rapidly, too fast for him to keep up.
All there was was pain.
His father pushed on Emmett's chest with fervor so Emmett toppled over in his drunkenness down into the mud, flat on his back. He stood back up defiantly spitting on the muddy ground at his father's feet only to get pushed right back down into the mud.
A girl with the same raven black hair as Emmett's was sobbing uncontrollably in the muggy humidity, and even the bugs seemed to buzz lazily under the heat.
The young girl Emmett knew as his twin sister Dorothy had a little round belly on her skeletal frame but was now prematurely empty of the out-of-wedlock abomination.
Was it mercy? Emmett's mother and father had fervently insisted that the baby had been an abomination of God. A punishment for sin.
Now with the pain Dorothy was in, she more than atoned.
She was on shaky knees in the dirt floor of a lean-to surrounded by three other girls doting on her, petting her, and giving her any sort of comfort they could.
The shack seemed to have been designed for animals, but they'd all died of starvation last winter.
Now the remaining McCarty children were the animals living there, and with each passing day they looked more and more feral.
One of the youngest McCarty girls, Annie May, affectionately picked lice out of Dorothy's long black hair while she cried.
Emmett's mother was wordlessly washing the blood out of the back of Dorothy's dress thinking this couldn't have just been God's will.
This was his wrath.
Now, Emmett knelt into the dust, scooping Dorothy up in his arms. She cried out in pain before she buried her head in his shoulder as he carried her to the rusting silver basin of dirty water.
She had on her dress and boots, but Emmett still lowered her into the cool water. In a sad baptism of sorts, he cupped his hands to pour water over her head of raven black hair.
Again Emmett was digging, this time it was a torrential downpour of rain, and this time there was nothing but black.
Things were darker. Everything was black.
Emmett's father's black hair was sticking to his head and rain dripped off his furrowed brow over his black eyes. He stood with his arms crossed as he stood over Emmett; the hole was getting deeper and deeper, and Emmett was getting lower and lower under his relentless gaze.
Then, Emmett crawled out of the hole to make room for the coffin.
He stood over his father in a sort of dark challenge before they both looked out onto the empty field, flooded, and barren.
Nothing could grow in this desolate land, but somehow in spite of it all, and by some cruel dark twist on a miracle… Emmett had.
Time elapsed in a sharp, lurch now and darkness surrounded the memory like I was looking through a key hole onto the scene.
"Emmett?" I started, still not able to decipher all that had rushed through his mind, like a faucet let run free.
It cut off now, absolute radio silence in his mind as he looked back at me.
He was in there.
"Emmett, we have to go home." I said.
Home.
This set off a little avalanche in his thoughts.
"I don't want to." Emmett gritted his teeth, snarling at me.
"Yes, Emmett… You do." I argued with him.
I could see the war in his thoughts.
"Carlisle will forgive you." I said, thinking this was what the theme of those flashes of vision had been from his human life.
"No, he won't." Emmett shook his head, dismissively. "Because I'm not sorry."
He turned his back to me, but I saw in his thoughts this was only half true.
I just had to keep digging.
He was smoldering. I dared not reach out, but I approached slowly.
He growled, lowering his chin to threaten me.
"I don't like your stupid rules." Emmett spat. "We're vampires. I'm only doing what I am designed to do."
"But, it doesn't have to be that way." I challenged, knowing a part of him no matter how small agreed with me. "And that's not why Carlisle changed you. That's not why Rosalie brought you to us, and…"
He didn't say anything. He just stood his ground.
I heard the question in his mind I wasn't the one to answer.
Then why?
Rosalie would have to answer that one.
"Come on." I urged.
"No." He protested. "I'm not going back."
"You need to at least tell the others what you've decided." I pushed him. "Then you can be on your way."
"Fine."
"You have to tell Rosalie." I let the final blow linger in the air.
He clenched his teeth, growling like he was fighting something. Within his mind, it was a war zone, but her name in his mind was like a bomb.
It had obliterated most everything else going on. Even the monster within was no match for the sound of her name.
It rang in his mind and through his ears until he shook his head.
I could tell he needed to see her. He wouldn't be able to leave once he saw her face.
At least that's what I hoped. Eventually, he calmed down enough to walk with an alarmingly cold space between me back toward our house. His head was down and his hands were in his pockets.
Emmett's thoughts shifted quickly and back and forth between monstrosity and humanity. Even though he was an open book, his thoughts were scrambled and illegibly incoherent.
I didn't know what was going to happen. I couldn't say anything for certain.
His mind was a tangle.
As Emmett bounded up to the back porch, I opened the door and prepared myself.
Selfishly, I was concerned about Carlisle's own view of me. I had proven I wasn't worthy.
Rosalie sensed us.
Undoubtedly, she smelled the human blood on him…
It was hard to miss.
I heard her close her book. Her mind was scarily quiet.
What happened? Rosalie called to me in her thoughts with desperation.
I couldn't even see her eyes, but already I felt her punishing icy glare.
As Emmett and I rounded the corner, I was met face to face with her.
"Edward?" Rosalie asked aloud now, her amber eyes filled with unreadable emotions as they darted between Emmett and I.
"Where's Carlisle?" I asked her evenly, though I knew the answer right after I'd asked.
I heard him move in concern at the sound of Rosalie's voice.
"In his study." Rosalie said, struggling to keep her voice even as she looked at Emmett in what could only be described as sheer horror.
EDWARD! She screamed at me in her head, her eyes widening and taking in Emmett's disheveled appearance.
She panicked like a mother that had found her child in disarray after a weekend excursion with its extended family. If vampires could have a panic attack, Rosalie would've had one in this moment.
It was beyond conspicuous what he'd done even though he still avoided her eyes.
"Emmett?" She addressed him directly now, her voice rising in pitch slightly.
He didn't answer her call, but I watched her voice melt him.
"Are you all right?" She breathed a question I hadn't expected from her.
No condemnation was present in her tone, just.… concern.
Now, he looked up at her.
She took in his brilliant red eyes, a silent pained hitch in her breath.
Her hands twitched ever so slightly as they stayed cupped in front of her in those perfect white gloves.
I half imagined she'd shock us all and reach out for him, but she didn't. She just rethreaded her fingers within her own, and stayed distant.
Her voice was slowly pulling him back out, but it was still a deep, murky mud to sift through to find his true self under all this.
I noticed Emmett and Rosalie's eyes met for a long lingering moment as both of their thoughts darted and twisted around one another's but there was no intention to share their burdens.
Neither one of them would break first.
He broke her heart before he turned his back on her wordlessly and followed me toward Carlisle's study.
We drug our feet like naughty school children going to the head master's office only this was so so much worse.
I tried to maintain a cool expression as I knocked on the door to Carlisle's study.
His thoughts made it obvious he knew what we were going to tell him.
Emmett clenched his teeth, and I heard a tiny voice in his mind that didn't want to disappoint Carlisle. The entanglement of his thoughts about Carlisle as a father figure danced between the desire to please, the habit to rebel, and the instinct to revel in his monstrosity apart from any human tendencies toward bonding.
As the door opened and Carlisle met Emmett's new red eyes, he didn't shrink down from them though he knew what they symbolized.
"Come in." Carlisle spoke evenly before putting his hand on Emmett's shoulder in a gesture of solidarity.
Emmett's muscles tensed just slightly at the affection. He expected nothing like the reaction he received.
Carlisle's thoughts were pure and patient with Emmett.
This confused Emmett more than his own mind did.
Then, Carlisle looked over at me.
"Let Emmett and I talk alone for a moment, Edward." Carlisle dismissed me aloud, but let his eyes of unconditional love rest on me enough to communicate his thoughts and true feelings.
He wasn't disappointed in me. He couldn't be.
He understood my pain and discouragement. He'd shockingly even gone through it with Esme.
I nodded, turning from the room but not feeling any more absolved of my sins especially with Rosalie still looming.
I exhaled as I heard Emmett begin the confession to Carlisle just as the door shut behind me.
Emmett's voice was uncharacteristically low, almost silent, and he spoke void of all emotion.
Carlisle was too good for this world. He spoke to Emmett with unconditional absolution and an open heart.
I retreated from the room, my chest still feeling tight, when I was met with Rosalie's icy expression.
"How could you?" She accused in a heartbroken breath.
Her thoughts were assaulting.
"Rosalie, you don't understand…" I tried to reason with her, but I knew it was no use.
"No. Edward, you don't understand." Rosalie was on fire.
I couldn't read her thoughts because all of them were so overwhelmingly loud.
Then, I caught something important.
A pattern.
Flashes of human memory - a baby…
A distant echo of baby talk… Dimples… Dark, curly hair…
A bear… Emmett… The indention of a dimple on his cheek as he grimaced in pain…
She shut herself off to me quickly, but I'd seen enough to know what she was afraid of.
She was afraid that this had darkened him… His light, his goodness… She was afraid I'd ruined him…
More than all of that though, she was afraid he'd never been good in the first place…
She didn't know him… But, she perceived such innocence in him it was astounding - if not a little naive…
I felt the blame heavy on my chest.
I softened and motioned for her to come outside with me on the back porch and shockingly, she complied.
Her thoughts were mostly blank as she tried to calm them, but I saw flashes of violence and fear and I heard screams.
She was imagining the worst, but even that wasn't scratching the surface of what had really happened.
Emmett and Carlisle were talking too low for Rosalie to hear.
She couldn't be prepared for this…
My stomach dropped.
As Rosalie floated like a ghost out the back door, she sat down on the back steps, wrapping her arms over her knees like a human would do if they were cold.
She looked childish and vulnerable.
She was worried, and she dropped her forehead to her knees.
I sat down next to her wordlessly.
We remained this way for quite some time.
She thought exclusively in French.
"He's thinking about leaving, Rosalie." I prepared her before I said anything else.
That was in fact, the worst of it and I decided it best to lead with this.
It hit her like a speeding train.
She hadn't been ready for that. Nothing could have prepared her.
She looked out on the horizon, gathering her composure.
Her mind was an open wound now, pouring with pain before she stitched it up like Dr. Frankenstein. She hid her vulnerability masterfully, but there was still a festering scar.
I wasn't fooled.
"Well, all right." She clenched her jaw, sitting up straight and with sickeningly perfect posture to her defiant chin.
Her thoughts didn't betray her, but I knew it was just like an avalanche, just one inch of ice had to melt for the rest of it to come tumbling down.
But, she wasn't melting today.
"You'd be all right with that?" I tested.
"He doesn't answer to me." She answered diplomatically, but still avoided the question.
I sighed.
"Rosalie… You can make him stay if that's what you want." I told her, knowing she needed to be reminded of her power in this situation.
"What makes you think that?" She remained icy, looking down at her hands that were perfectly pristine in her white gloves.
She wanted me to tell her that he loved her, but she also dreaded hearing it.
Her mind was a confusing place in this.
She was playing games. I was impatient with her irritating pig headedness.
"Because he should've died Rosalie, but you didn't let that happen." I pushed just as far as I'd imagine I needed to.
She pushed back.
"He should've died? Who are you to decide that, Edward?" Rosalie asked sharply.
She was immediately offended.
"I just meant… it was natural for him to die." I clarified though she already knew my meaning. "But, you…"
"Is that why you let him do this? You're getting back at me?" Rosalie didn't misinterpret my intentions, she was just being ridiculous and challenging.
God, she was difficult.
I'd had it.
"No, Rosalie. You know that's not it." I sighed exasperatedly.
"You're punishing me by playing with human lives and his eternal morality." She scoffed.
"No! You're just the only one that knows why in God's name you wanted to change him in the first place." I shouldn't have lashed out, but I did.
Rosalie challenged me with her gaze, keeping her thoughts in perfect control as she closed herself off to me.
"Carlisle made the decision." Rosalie narrowed her eyes, using my devotion and admiration of Carlisle against me.
She diverted the responsibility, but also denied her true thoughts and intentions. She was running away…
"Because you asked it of him! He couldn't deny you!"
"Carlisle would never deny you anything. No one would. Because we can't live with your misery." I corrected.
"That's not my problem."
"Yes, but Emmett is. He is your problem, Rosalie!"
Rosalie frowned at this and I knew she was calculating another way to lash out at me so I interrupted her.
"You've got to be the most selfish person I've ever met." I growled. "You've been nothing but miserable and you hate this life so much… But still you did this to him."
She had damned him to an eternity in hell to satisfy a selfish whim of hers. It hit her right in the solar plexus, the gravity of the situation.
"Lower. Your. Voice. You. Vile. Snake." Rosalie spoke through tight teeth, her eyes narrow.
This hit her where it hurt so she retaliated.
Through the ice, anger…
Rosalie and I had a distant mutual agreement to be civil for Carlisle and Esme's sake, but all civility had been shattered as we glared at each other in burning hatred.
Her steely exterior did little to reveal the turmoil her mind was in though. I heard it rushing like a white water rapid, unable to focus on anything because of my own rage at her.
"Miss Rosalie?"
Neither of us had heard him approach; we were both too busy being awful to one another.
Nothing but panic and shame rolled through Rosalie's thoughts.
She hadn't wanted him to see this nasty part of her. She thought that's why he'd resorted to the distance of using her proper name.
I clenched my jaw.
The distance in his thoughts was for an entirely different reason. He didn't feel worthy of addressing her as an equal.
Don't leave me alone with him. Rosalie thought loudly and desperately at me.
I barely moved my chin, letting her know as much as I despised her in this moment, I still would do this with her.
Emmett stood in the doorway vibrating with nervous energy.
Rosalie stood to her feet, smoothing her dress and dismissing the previous casual seated position she'd been in.
Their eyes met.
He was worried about her. He sensed her displeasure, misinterpreting it to be something he'd directly caused.
"I did somethin' you won't like." He admitted to her in a mumble.
His childish confession was honest and open, much like the rest of him.
His accent was thick when his voice was filled with emotions.
He was fully in his mind now, all thoughts of leaving long gone as he stepped forward onto the back porch with us.
I exhaled.
He looked over at me.
I nodded him forward, also in this way letting him know I hadn't told Rosalie anything.
"It's… pretty awful. You can't even… imagine." Emmett prepped her, his brilliant red eyes staring into hers now.
Rosalie didn't flinch away as I imagined she would.
She transformed, an immediate metamorphosis at the look of conflict in his eyes.
He took a deep inhale, intoxicated by her, but now intensely wrought with thoughts of inferiority in her presence.
I willed them to dissipate.
"I can take it." Rosalie answered his unspoken words as only she could, not looking away from his eyes.
At the sight of him and sound of pain in his voice, something new was budding inside of her thoughts that I didn't even think she realized or acknowledged.
She didn't want him to be alone in this. She was taking on his burdens.
She was learning what it was like to care for someone else…
Rosalie surprised me more in this moment than I'd ever imagine she could've. Just his presence had obliterated her excessive selfishness as she responded to his need.
Their eyes stayed hopelessly lost in one another's as he told her everything and I mean everything. He held no gruesome detail back.
It wasn't in his nature.
His honesty did little to shake Rosalie. In fact, it almost… refreshed her.
No one had ever been this candid with her. They'd always cut her off from honesty, imagining nothing should be going on in her pretty head but pretty thoughts.
Emmett's view of her was shockingly different than anyone else's. To him, she wasn't a 'lady of society' she was just… Rosalie.
Her thoughts remained startlingly calm, and even though I watched her eyes after he'd tell her something especially horrendous, she didn't flinch. She didn't turn away.
She listened to every tale of brutality, sensing that he wasn't exactly sorry for any of it.
Even though he wasn't sorry, Rosalie's perfection and presence had him thinking he ought to be.
When he was finished and it was hauntingly silent, he communicated a need for her without anything but his gaze.
"I'd… I'd like to stay and… try to be better though." He drug the toe of his boot across the ground in front of him finally looking down and away from her eyes.
He was unwilling, but the look in her eyes had him thinking he could do it. If that's what she wanted.
"You can." Rosalie said calmly and evenly in a blanket statement.
She was giving him permission to stay and encouragement to be a better man. She genuinely believed it was possible for him, and this alone proved the growth in her heart.
Then, he did something thoughtless because it took me by surprise.
It never even ran through his mind before he did it.
It was instinctual.
"Thank you. " He exhaled as he put his arms around Rosalie, pulling her into his chest in an embrace.
I heard her mind go haywire and I immediately grew concerned.
Rosalie kept her arms stiff and shocked by her side at his contact, completely frozen. Her head barely cleared his shoulder at full height in her heels, but now, she ducked her head defensively so it was centered on where his heart would've beat.
Emmett was pretty much thoughtless, just relying on Rosalie like a candle in a dark corridor. I looked on this exchange with wide eyes and anticipation for how on earth Rosalie would respond to this unsolicited and unexpected affection.
I heard even Carlisle and Esme shift their weight so we were in view from the window in the living room.
Then, after barely a human second had passed of their embrace, Rosalie wrinkled her nose and pushed him away, smoothing her dress and looking away from him.
He stood a few feet back from her now, his eyes darting over her because he didn't understand the horror struck look on her face. He couldn't imagine showing connection, approval, friendship, love, happiness, satisfaction, trust, or any of it without physicality. Every emotion solicited a physical response to him. Even his negative emotions, he assigned a physical response though of course that looked a whole lot scarier.
Emmett was tragically physical, and Rosalie… well, that was her undoing.
It made my stomach turn as I was let on to this insight.
I almost believed whatever hope there had been for something to happen between the two of them, it was now completely gone. This was a wedge too great to conquer between them.
Rosalie's eyes were wide and purposefully away from all of us. She was shaking like a leaf, too small for the human eye and even a vampiric eye untrained to notice how she trembled.
Her standards for him were impossibly high; killing humans had been forgivable, but this…
This she would punish him for.