I am so sorry for my delay! I have been super busy with my master's degree and I reworked some things over and over to get it right, but this ultimately is what felt best. Thank you so much for your love and support and time reading this. This chapter is one of the last ones setting up their early relationship so wooo get ready for some ExR coming soon!
I'd love your thoughts, and reviews and I appreciate your time sending them to me!
These chapters were VERY hard to write though in the emotional sense. It is HEAVY, and I understand this deals with a lot of dark topics. Because of that TRIGGER WARNINGS EXIST FOR THESE CHAPTERS.
TW/ CW: Abuse, violence, suicide
Seven Devils
Holy water cannot help you down
Hours and armies couldn't keep me out
I don't want your money
I don't want your crowd
See I have to burn
Your kingdom down
Seven devils all around you
Seven devils in my house
See they were there when I woke up this morning
I'll be dead before the day is done
Edward - Betrayal
Emmett's thoughts betrayed him of course, so I knew where Rosalie had gone before Carlisle even asked him when we got back to the house and it was empty of her.
Apparently, she'd lied to Esme and said she was just going to town, but Emmett didn't have it in him to lie so now the four of us inhabited the same room filled with nervous energy not knowing what could come of Rosalie's carelessness in going to see his family.
I knew Rosalie was doing this for Emmett, but mostly she was doing this for herself and his view of her. She was so selfish sometimes that it clouded her judgment. I was still concerned that she'd gone to meet them and talk with them and allow stories and rumors to circulate with her name and description around them.
If Rosalie could control her thirst that was.
Who was I even kidding? Rosalie had sickening, borderline annoying self control that wasn't noble like Carlisle's. Her control was more long-suffering and motivated by vanity, so I don't know why I even imagined she couldn't control herself, but that didn't mean she could totally be trusted around humans. What if they noticed something off or different about her?
What if the weather forecast on the radio was wrong and it suddenly became sunny?
I didn't have much more time to fume over the piano at Rosalie's constant selfishness and thoughtlessness, because I heard her outside, walking up the front steps in a trudge.
Her shoes didn't sound like hers, but her scent came in with the rain so I knew it was her and my fingers slowed on the keys.
Her scent was mingling with that of a human's in a way that was so strong I was curious.
Rosalie's thoughts were lazy and unformed like she was thinking in cursive letters or in a drunken stupor even though this was impossible, and so nothing betrayed her inner workings to me.
As muddled as Rosalie's thoughts were, Emmett's were equally as sharp with concern. He stood, opening the door for her before she had even reached for the door knob.
Immediately they inhaled in unison, and he met her eyes as she stood outside in the summer rain, drenched and downtrodden like he'd never seen her before.
She saw him differently now, but her thoughts were so wild I couldn't put my finger on what it was about her perspective that had changed.
I hadn't even turned my head, but I saw her so clearly in his mind, it was like I'd looked before I even saw her.
She was wildly different to him in this moment. He saw her differently too.
His lens had changed now, but… so had she.
He noticed first that her blonde hair was uncharacteristically unfixed and uncovered, free to flow around her face and stick to her long neck in the rain.
Then, he noticed the look on her face.
"Rose." Emmett's eyes were desperate for her, registering her state from where he stood just over the threshold.
His fingers dug into the frame of the door from where he'd held it open to stare at her.
She smelled like a human…
But, not even he could register that much in his newborn mind.
He was panicked over something else entirely.
Rosalie was wearing Emmett's sister's boots and her very favorite dress.
"Rosalie, what?…" Carlisle was calm and understanding, but concern and worry was evident in his voice - not just for Rosalie's well being, but for our secret's integrity.
Had she let it slip?
Her thoughts didn't betray her, and I turned the corner to finally to see her standing on the front porch in a way I'd never imagine I'd see her. She was dirty, messed up, rained on, and wearing rags. The dusty rose colored button front dress had a muted floral pattern that had long been worn out and washed away. Rosalie didn't have her hair done, and perhaps most shockingly…
She was without her long time security blanket of pretentious snow white gloves on her fingers.
"Are you okay?" Emmett, interrupting Carlisle like no one else on the planet existed but he and Rosalie.
She nodded, looking up at him with huge golden eyes like something was on the tip of her tongue.
Actually, there were a million things on the tip of her tongue. Her thoughts ran through them all.
"And… she's all right?" He said in a half question.
Dorothy.
The black haired one. His twin.
Rosalie just nodded again knowing exactly whom he cared to ask for first. A ghostly removal floated in her eyes like she'd done something terrible.
Rosalie's thoughts were inharmonious with her nod to Emmett. I saw nothing but struggle and violence and hell surrounding his sister Dorothy. She was covered in bruises and cuts…
I stared at Rosalie, hoping she felt the weight of my eyes, but she didn't.
She couldn't.
I realized then that she hadn't done something terrible. No, something awful had happened - something that had Rosalie feeling out of control and weakened.
I couldn't read anything substantial or telling in her mind as I usually could, and I frowned.
This genuinely concerned me now.
Emmett sensed this as he looked over at me, and the unknown terrified him.
I clenched my jaw as I felt Carlisle and Esme's watchful eyes on me also looking for answers.
"And the rest of them?" Emmett wondered, acknowledging Rosalie hadn't told him about the rest of his family and perhaps this was why she was downtrodden and hesitant.
Rosalie looked up at him with failure in her big, round eyes
Immediately he thought of death, but it was somehow worse in Rosalie's perspective.
"They miss you." Rosalie went on, using the tenderest voice I'd ever heard her use.
Her voice shook nervously.
She looked up at him with a trembling bottom lip.
The longer she and Emmett looked at each other like I'd never seen two people look at each other, the more vulnerable Rosalie got.
She was like a melting popsicle in the heat of July.
Eventually she burst into a tearless, wrecking fit of sobs.
But more surprisingly than all of that was how she reached both of her arms out for Emmett as the only comfort and lifeline during the hell, horror, and violence in her head.
He was just as surprised as she threaded her arms under his and around his waist, ducking her head into his chest as she cried her tearless tears.
"I know… I know…" Emmett spoke to her about something I couldn't understand, even reading their thoughts.
Suddenly, it felt incredibly intrusive to be in the room with them.
He cradled her head to his chest carefully, physically acting as a haven for her even though heartbreak and hurt was evident in his own eyes too. He used her as a haven too even if she didn't know it, and obvious pain reeled through him beyond the slow burn of a human scent to his throat.
"I'm… sorry…" Rosalie sobbed.
She was sorry for changing him and cursing him to a life she despised so much, but she was also sorry for something else...
All I could see in her mind were flashes of scenes she'd seen in her outing today.
Most significantly though, I saw dark bruises on battered women and girls.
I saw fear.
I saw tears.
I saw…
Oh God.
I immediately got a sour taste in my mouth.
Carlisle and Esme immediately looked at me like I would know what was going on, and I tried to hide my expression.
I don't think I even knew the half of it, but I knew Rosalie was reminded of a time when she'd been bruised and battered too.
It was all an unintelligible tangle of questions in everyone's heads and it was overwhelming me to try and process it all at once.
"I know…" Emmett sighed, holding her tight as she continued to cry.
But… he didn't.
He didn't know. He didn't know exactly what she was struggling with about all this.
He just took it in the generally tragic sense, but he couldn't know what demon was running rampant in Rosalie's mind right now.
I looked down and away, hating this moment and hating what Rosalie had just thought in her uninhibited vulnerability.
This experience just further proved to her that men couldn't control themselves, particularly their anger, and particularly around women like her. She saw patterns. She saw repetition. Seeing the man that raised Emmett had left her thinking maybe he'd been raised to be the same, or at least he had it in him to be that way…
Rosalie didn't trust anyone, and this experience hadn't really helped to change that in a way, but something opened her up to Emmett now where she'd been previously unreachable.
Something had changed within her.
"Tell me they're all okay." Emmett requested after a long moment, having waited long enough now, and Rosalie's tears were worrying him that something terrible had befallen his little family.
"Ruthie's healthy… and happy considering." Rosalie answered after taking a shaky breath.
She knew this was why he sent her and she had to pull it together and report to him.
"Was she talking?" He asked a question that initially seemed strange, but in his thoughts I registered something about his sister that in later medical advances decades down the road would have been commonly diagnosed as some sort of autism spectrum disorder.
He and I would be sitting in a high school psychology class in 1994 when he'd first connect the dots, but he'd have nearly forgotten most of his specific human memories by then and not really remember why it made him sad…
He would have forgotten his sisters's names a few years prior.
Except Dorothy…
"No." Rosalie frowned, not aware of what Emmett's thoughts revealed to me.
Emmett's thoughts revealed that at one time… Ruthie did speak and function socially, but she was no longer in an environment in which she could continue development. Too much had changed around her and the constant shadow of the death of her family members caused her to withdraw and regress. In another environment, Ruthie could have been thriving and healthy…
"And Annie?" He pushed, eager to know.
"Annie's…" Rosalie exhaled a little laugh which is something I'd never heard her do. "Just like you. She's strong, and bold, and quick witted. She's hunting. Dorothy taught her how to shoot a gun."
Emmett's dimples showed as he smiled down at Rosalie in his own little laugh. He was temporarily distracted by the things Rosalie had noticed about him, and seen in his sister.
He smiled and tried to be weightless, but he was still heavily weighed down with worry and questions.
"But, she needs a doctor." Rosalie swallowed, shifting from her previous lightness and recounts of pleasant happinesses to Emmett. "A good one."
His eyes went dark. He hadn't known she was sick. She wasn't before he'd been gone so he was worried and expecting the worst.
I heard Carlisle's thoughts rush with empathy and compassion, his frozen heart wrenching in ghost pain.
"I… gave your mother all the money and… I told her to run. To take your sisters with her." Rosalie said heavily. "But… But she said she wouldn't. She… couldn't."
Emmett clenched his jaw. I heard in his thoughts that he knew Rosalie's adverse reaction had something to do with his father.
Frustration, not at Rosalie, but at his mother for denying his sisters a better life than the one he'd had flared through his mind, but he focused.
Carlisle and Esme looked over at me now, trying to read me unsuccessfully.
"Rosalie…" Emmett spoke desperately but low and only to her, his eyes wide and open.
He was truly sorry.
Then, I noticed red hot anger and rage bubbling up like magma within him.
He hadn't wanted Rosalie to feel this way any more than he wanted to hear bad news. He wanted Rosalie to meet his family, to know them in a way that let her know him. In his idealism, he forgot that fighting is what his family does best these days and that they couldn't be normal for five seconds. He thought they'd pull it together for a guest - for someone as special as Rosalie… He wanted to be proud of them and proud of where he came from, but right now he was nothing but ashamed, and he hated feeling that way.
"Rosalie it's…" Emmett took a deep breath, his eyes darkening at the human scent on her, but even he couldn't bring himself to even think of the human scent as appetizing; just painful and distracting.
"I… couldn't…" She admitted, thinking of nothing but her own failure.
I wondered briefly if this mission had been something egotistical that she couldn't accept this issue in his family had nothing to do with her, but I didn't cling to this thought too long.
"Hey, listen to me… It's all right." He told her with sincerity.
Rosalie nodded, but didn't truly accept his words. It wasn't all right yet.
"But about Dorothy… I have to tell you…" That's when Rosalie's thoughts betrayed the stupidest thing she had ever done in the history of her existence which was certainly saying a lot where I was concerned.
"What?!" I asked her aloud, unable to mask my surprise. "You didn't…"
Rosalie nodded, still not even looking at me or pulling away from Emmett.
"I did." She cried anew, covering her face by burying it in Emmett's chest.
"What happened?" Emmett asked her, panic in his eyes as he pushed back and away from her to make her look at him and answer honestly and up front.
"I sent… I sent Dorothy to Rochester to live with my old friend Vera. She's… on a train right now." Rosalie winced like he was going to explode and yell at her.
He didn't.
He reached for her again. His first thought was that he wanted to kiss her. His second was how hard it was not to.
He was relieved.
He didn't understand.
Carlisle's eyes widened and even he looked slightly unnerved that Rosalie would do something so stupid.
"God damn it, Rosalie." I growled under my breath, immediately stressed.
Emmett looked at me like he could've killed me, and his thoughts told me he could have, but I didn't even return his glare. I was too worried.
"Rosalie…" Even Esme looked concerned about our secret.
"What was I supposed to do?!…" Rosalie's voice rose in pitch, panic setting in.
"She couldn't stay there." She returned to a tiny, insecure voice.
Emmett looked like someone had all but impaled him, and he made a face that suggested something painful was brewing deep below the surface of his conscious as he looked away, trying to fight it.
Rosalie's eyes looked to him in a searching manner and the thought that 'he knew that she knew' flew across her mind.
"I just… I thought she'd be safest there with Vera…" She said again, her exterior hardening as she pulled herself together. "They're the same age and…"
Her thoughts almost lined up with her words.
She gave Emmett's sister her clothes, her shoes, her hat, her gloves, her money…. and her name.
This was easily the dumbest thing of all.
Rosalie wanted Dorothy to be the reincarnation of Rosalie Hale…
She wanted a second chance for herself as well. She was really so unbelievably selfish.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, not wanting to lash out and kick her while she was down.
Don't act so holier than thou, Edward. You can't afford to. She yelled at me mentally.
"What's going to happen when she hears your name or sees your picture or?…" I began, reacting to the anger in her thoughts.
Emmett frowned, looking over at me.
"I didn't tell her my real name." Rosalie mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.
I sighed.
"And your picture? You already have plenty of stories floating around Rochester, Rosalie." I went on, resenting her.
"None that I created." Rosalie stupidly countered.
"Sure…." I snorted, thinking about the latest news cycle being littered with 'unexplainable murders' of five sons of rich men, including Royce King II….
People weren't that superstitious or quick to believe in ghosts and haunting, but something sinister had connected Rosalie Hale to these unexplainable murders in the minds of some people in Rochester…
She'd left a wedding dress in the place she'd killed Royce. I'd read the papers…
She wanted people to connect his death to hers…
Even in her stupid wishes for haunting tales told for years to come, she was vain…
Anger flared in her eyes at my allusion to her killing spree.
"Both of you…" Esme exhaled, but she didn't know how to finish.
I knew she wanted us to stop fighting.
"Regardless, none of those stories would stick with her even if she heard them." Rosalie's eyes narrowed at me.
She really wasn't worried one bit.
"Rosalie. You know the importance of concealing our existence." Carlisle said.
"Of course. And I've done nothing to compromise it!" She responded quickly, back on her game. "Nothing I did suggested anything she could follow."
"You sent her to live your life." I accused now.
Emmett looked at Rosalie now, and he wondered what that meant.
"You don't understand." Rosalie said to both of us in a growl though she was looking at me.
Her mind was concealed to me now that she wasn't vulnerable any more.
Maybe I didn't understand, but I couldn't see any other way to react to this careless neglect than paranoia.
"I did nothing wrong." Rosalie insisted.
Emmett's watchful eyes were on her, darting over her face.
"And even if she did suspect something it wouldn't be right, and who's going to believe her anyway? How would she even follow a fake name and a foggy description across a continent? Plus, the risk would be too great for her to say anything." Rosalie countered. "She wanted out of there. She'll do whatever it takes not to have to go back. She'll play whatever role she has to play. She knows it's safer for her to never be found and… She… Can't…"
Rosalie's bottom lip started trembling again.
Emmett's already pale skin went paler, and he looked down at his feet.
That's when I heard it, from deeply suppressed in his painful thoughts…
My stomach dropped to the floor and he caught me looking at him, knowing I knew.
He clenched his jaw and looked away.
"Edward, we weren't there, so it's impossible to understand the entirety of the situation." Esme tried to reason with me, siding with Rosalie apparently now.
Something had shifted for everyone else too even though they couldn't read Emmett's mind, they saw his reaction and Rosalie's display of emotion.
Esme pitied Rosalie.
Who wouldn't after that emotional display? She was impossible to deny.
I pitied her.
And I… I truly I hated to do so…
But, Carlisle pitied her too. Anyone that knew what happened to her would pity her.
"So… really though, what are we going to do about Dorothy?" I asked aloud.
Emmett and Rosalie both darted their eyes in my direction fierily.
"What do you mean what are we going to do about her?" Emmett was defensive and on edge.
His paranoid newborn tendencies shone bright in his eyes.
"Well… We can't just let her…" I began.
"What are you even suggesting then?" Rosalie's voice was terrifying enough now to send a chill down even my spine.
Emmett and Rosalie looked like hell in all its fire and brimstone as they stared at me.
I didn't know what I was suggesting. We were powerless now.
Carlisle's thoughts overwhelmed me then as if he was speaking out loud.
"Edward, we could all very well be overreacting. I think Rosalie understands the grave importance of concealing our secret." Carlisle said aloud. "If she says nothing's at risk, I trust her judgment."
And he really and truly did trust her judgment.
He was sensitive to Rosalie in this way, and I knew it was a projection from his own relationship with Esme. In the beginning, Esme questioned herself and her judgement relentlessly because of her past when she had been unable to see the man she would marry would end up being abusive, controlling, and not who she thought he was.
She assumed this one judgment lapse filtered into her other decisions and so it paralyzed her often. Rosalie had a similar affliction, but had not yet realized it because she overcompensated for this insecurity through withdrawal and self reliance.
I softened to her plight, but I still didn't forget how careless this was.
My jaw clenched.
"Now, we'll let you both catch up before we have to regroup." Carlisle insisted. "We'll talk about this again with fresh heads."
Just give them a moment alone. Carlisle thought at me, but I barely heard him over the mental screaming that Emmett and Rosalie were doing in this moment.
Until Emmett and Rosalie were in the same room, I had no idea thoughts could be so. loud.
I did hear Carlisle though, and so I nodded discreetly, before ultimately following he and Esme to the study.
Emmett and Rosalie barely knew we'd left the room because they were already deep in conversation and a connection that had been tethered with iron to just one another exclusively.
While they spoke, they hovered around one another, somehow privately and intimately connected without touching one bit.
It was unlike anything I'd ever seen, and I had to look away now.
They spoke so softly in a contradiction to their loud thoughts, only to one another that even to our vampire hearing, they were just a low hum when we were a couple doors down.
"Edward?" Esme's concern immediately became vocal.
I exhaled as the door shut behind us.
"I don't know…" I admitted, but I was sort of lying.
They waited silently.
"Rosalie saw some things today she wasn't ready for." I mumbled, feeling like I betrayed her as I told Carlisle and Esme.
Esme was just more deeply confused by these words. I thought about killing Esme's abusive husband, and how I could lapse on my morality once more and kill Emmett's father if I wanted…
He was exactly the kind of man that I would've easily disposed of.
"There's a lot of violence in Emmett's family." I revealed, knowing it was not my story to tell. "He knows she's aware of it now."
Esme understood and a darkness filled her eyes. She swallowed, concerned for Rosalie now; even though I was still angry though and paranoid she'd ruined everything for us, I was concerned for her too.
"She wasn't ready." I whispered, keeping my eyes down. "I could've warned her if I'd known she…"
Carlisle placed a hand on my shoulder.
"No. Edward. You can't blame yourself." He was incredibly understanding and compassionate in a way I always wanted to be. "This is Rosalie's journey, and that's Emmett's business."
Esme looked down and away.
"But he couldn't have known how it would affect her." I defended. "He doesn't know… I do…"
"No, he couldn't have known. But, today was Rosalie's experience. She's strong. She'll be okay. She's just processing…" Carlisle nodded in encouragement to me again, and I admired him so. "And, that conversation would be different coming from you and you know it. She and Emmett will have it when she's ready. If it's necessary."
How could he be this incredible?
"He… will understand… What happened to Rosalie… Emmett's sister, Dorothy…" I connected the dots as the words heavily weighted my mouth.
"No…" Esme covered her mouth, unbelievable sadness in her eyes.
I nodded. I didn't know much, but I saw this connection within their thoughts.
"Rosalie talked to her… Like she hasn't talked to any of us." I told them.
Esme and Carlisle's eyes held deep emotions that prompted them to reach for each other's hands and intertwine their fingers.
The only thing darker than the root of our existence was Rosalie's reason for being like us.
"I truly didn't know what Royce and his friends were going to do to her. I hadn't heard anything in their thoughts that…" I trailed off, my thoughts going incredibly dark incredibly fast as Esme and Carlisle looked on.
I wanted to absolve myself to Carlisle, and have him state his approval and acceptance of me.
"I know that." Carlisle nodded. "Rosalie knows that. He fooled everyone."
"Even a mind reader…" I snorted, but I worried that maybe I didn't listen closely enough.
Then again, what could I have done? I couldn't have intervened… Could I?
"Edward, she doesn't blame you. It's just easier than blaming herself." Esme spoke in a trembling voice.
She let me into this insight that seemed incredibly personal to her too.
Her thoughts were tender and kind, but with a bit of an edge that only she could understand through her experience.
Esme spoke as if she could read Rosalie's thoughts in a way I couldn't… Esme saw the things inside Rosalie that she hadn't even connected within herself yet. I only read thoughts. I didn't read people.
Rosalie wasn't thinking and processing this healthily yet. She still had some growing to do. I thought maybe this experience would be a catalyst.
"What are we really going to do about Emmett's sister?" I asked extra quietly.
Carlisle and Esme's thoughts were unmoved.
"Rosalie seems convinced she hasn't revealed anything that would be of detriment." Carlisle reasoned with a sigh.
"Do you believe her?" I asked.
"I have to." Carlisle nodded resolutely, and his mind was made up.
Dorothy - Remind Me
I took a deep breath as I stood on the front porch of a beautiful yellow house with white shutters. There was a white porch swing and a lovely pink rose bush in the front yard.
It was in bloom.
My taxi driver insisted this was the right house, but it wasn't like I knew any better. I just hoped for the best as I clutched the bag full of money close to my middle.
I took a deep breath of the New York air, feeling change in every bit of oxygen.
My heart ached like the bruises on my skin that were now mostly covered with Vivien's white scarf. I wondered if I made the right decision. I grieved my lost family, my lost brother, my lost love, and I grieved Dorothy McCarty…
Everything that name meant was back in Tennessee, and though I grieved my home and my previous life, in a way… I felt lighter. I felt… free.
That name had been attached to so many bad memories, so much tragedy, that now I got the chance to start over and become someone new…
Someone named Rosalie.
Who was I now? Who could I become?
It took all my courage to finally rap my knuckles on the door to Vera's. I expected this place to be some sort of haven, a shelter, a…
"Can I help you?" A woman about my age opened the door.
She had curly brown hair the color of chocolate that twisted in unruly ringlets down to her petite round shoulders. Her big green eyes were framed with a light constellation of freckles on her sun kissed skin.
Vera.
Immediately, I felt her warmth.
"Y-yes. I… I think you can." I stumbled over my words, still in shock that I was standing here.
She looked on me with curious eyes that took in my appearance without judgment or pity. She was just listening and gathering information in a way that suggested she cared.
Her charisma was magnetic.
"My name's Rosalie." I remembered to tell her.
Immediately her face went pale and her eyes began to glisten in wistfulness and memories.
"Rosalie?" She repeated the name as if it had meant something magical to her.
I nodded as I watched her change, opening the door a little wider so I could see she was wearing a beautiful green house day dress the color of a granny-smith apple, and her stomach was hugely round with an unborn child that was due any day now.
In a visceral reaction, my eyes started to burn with the threat of nervous, vulnerable tears. What would happen if she turned me away? What would happen if she didn't?
"It's been a while since I heard that name." Vera exhaled like something heavy had just been lifted off her chest and I wondered how Vivien knew this reaction was going to happen because as if this name had been some sort of password or magic key, Vera opened up for me.
"I just arrived from Tennessee. My family passed in a fire that destroyed my home, and the only family I knew of was a very distant cousin that lived here in Rochester, but it must've been outdated information because I can't find him anywhere… and no one seems to know where he's gone."
"Do you know his name?" Vera furrowed her brow.
I remembered what Vivien told me to say.
"Carlisle Cullen." I said, still not sure what it meant, but Vivien knew and Vivien said this information would protect me. "But, I've never met him."
Vera's eyes filled with distant recollection then faded as she pouted her bottom lip in thought.
"I haven't heard anything about the Cullens in quite a bit, but they've since moved on." Vera sighed still thinking before her eyes focused on mine yet again.
She was exactly as Vivien had described her, but I wouldn't feel safe until I knew for sure…
"That's too bad." I sighed. "Someone in town mentioned you might have known them."
Vivien was very specific about the words I could use, and as much as I wanted to ask questions, I was more concerned with getting out of Tennessee and away from…
I swallowed, thankful Vera had begun to speak again before I'd gotten too lost in thought.
Vivien and I had an unspoken 'need to know' agreement solely built upon my desperation and her mystery.
"Yes, Dr. Cullen was my little boy's doctor a few years ago." Vera nodded. "I didn't hear much about where he was headed when…"
She trailed off, realizing the unimportant details were unnecessary.
"Please. Come in. Let me make you some tea, Rosalie." Vera gave me a soft smile that was full of memories, nostalgia, and connection to my new name that I didn't understand as she finally invited me in.
"I would like that very much." I returned her smile, my heart jumping up to my throat.
As I stepped over the threshold, the overwhelming scent of baked bread and cinnamon flooded my senses and my stomach growled audibly.
"You must be hungry after your travels!" Vera noted, her big eyes even wider with shock at the terrible sound of my stomach that I'd grown to ignore.
"Oh I'm… fine." I lied.
"I was just about to make lunch. Really." Vera was too kind for this world, and hospitality emanated from her pores.
Her house was modest and cozy, but it was beautifully decorated and homey. I noticed that there were a few children's toys strewn in the living room floor, but I didn't see a child…
Vivien had said I should ask to be the nanny.
I remembered clearly.
"If it's really no trouble." I smiled politely.
"Oh, your accent." Vera grinned. "It's just darling. If you'll just sit at the table and talk to me while I make us some sandwiches…"
That's when a flash of raven black curly hair barreled into the room in a squealing fit of laughter.
Vera knelt and awaited the toddler with open arms as she scooped a two-ish year old little boy up and covered him with kisses. He was radiating with light and full of vibrancy.
"Rosalie, this is my son, Henry." Vera grinned, absolutely beautiful with maternal energy.
I noticed I was smiling too, really smiling for the first time in a long time.
Then, I noticed the dimples on Henry's cheeks as he twisted away from his mother's smothering affection with an adorable squeal.
I gasped, my breath catching in my throat, and my eyes getting glassy with the threat of tears.
"Is everything all right?" Vera asked, noticing my change.
Her voice sounded like it was far away and under water but I nodded.
"He… just reminds me of my brother" I breathed.
"Really?" Vera smiled, showering her little boy with more kisses before letting him run off and play.
"Yeah." I answered in a breath. "He died recently."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Rosalie, really." Vera's sincerity made me shiver as I followed her into the kitchen.
"It's okay. People say he's in a better place." I mumbled.
"Is that not what you say too?" Vera asked out of true care.
"I guess I would." I swallowed. "But… I still don't believe he's really dead."
They always said twins had this sort of cosmic connection that was beyond understanding…
Now, it was like the signal had been jammed.
I furrowed my brow, feeling heavily weighted as my eyes started to burn with the threat of tears.
"Listen… Vera, can I be honest with you?" I exhaled, sadness and despair creeping in after I'd long held it off.
It was like Emmett crawled into my head, then and jumped straight out of my mouth.
He couldn't tell a damn lie if his life depended on it, and that's exactly the sort of dire situation I was in right now.
Vera nodded, looking up from the counter with curious eyes.
"There was no fire. I ran… from an abusive family and a really… terrible situation. I got a one way ticket here wanting a better life and a new start." I admitted, and as I slightly moved the scarf off my neck, I noticed Vera's eyes lock onto the bruises that still throbbed there.
I clenched my jaw, seeing her skin pale to the color of milk.
"My brother's wife showed up yesterday out of the blue, and gave me all this money and this dress… She told me to run. She said that's what he would've wanted…" My voice broke and cracked with emotion. "For me to be safe. And, I really need somewhere to stay, at least until I get on my feet. Please. I can't go home. I can't. I can do anything you need around the house. I can cook and clean and… and I'm good with children. Really. I don't need any money. I just need…"
Panic set in and I felt my heart racing in my chest as I watched Vera process all this.
I wondered if the elaborate plan Vivien had orchestrated was now all for naut as I watched Vera frown.
"Please." I breathed. "I don't have anyone left."
Vera took a shaky breath, looking down at her child and giving him a big kiss.
"Yes, you do. You have us." She looked back up at me, a covenant in her eyes. "Please. Stay as long as you need."
"Oh Vera, thank you so much." I exhaled thinking I could just burst into joyful, relieved tears.
"You know… You remind me of someone too…" Vera mused, giving me a little smile.
"Really?" I asked.
"An old friend..." She said with ancient sadness, but now there was hope in her eyes that matched mine.
Edward - Detached
I fumed, absolutely hell-raisingly angry now as Carlisle and I followed their scent. I think Carlisle followed me because he was concerned, not only for Emmett and Rosalie, but for me too. I think he was afraid of what I'd do alone because I was so angry at her.
Why in God's name did Rosalie think it was a good idea to take him off somewhere, alone?
She couldn't control him.
And, he was powerless to her…
This was a dangerous combination.
The further we followed, the angrier I got until finally, I realized what they were doing.
Rosalie was taking him home.
We were supposed to leave for Denali a few hours ago, but Emmett and Rosalie were missing. They'd been all but inseparable and intimately involved in conversation none of us could think of intruding on since Rosalie got home yesterday afternoon.
But now, when we were supposed to be moving on… They'd run back…
I don't think I'd ever run so hard in my life, and Carlisle and I were silent as we moved.
We both knew Rosalie was a creature of vengeance, but we still had very little information in the long term on Emmett.
I assumed Rosalie was projecting her own ideas of justice and was supporting an idea that Emmett could potentially find peace if he found his own revenge and tied up his own loose ends if he kill his father.
Somehow, I imagined that Rosalie had convinced him to do it. She was actually the devil on his shoulder when all this time he'd thought of her as his angel. He didn't need permission to give into his darkest impulses, but Rosalie was feeding them. For Christ's sake he was a newborn.
Rosalie was insanely irresponsible, and this could set off a murderous chain reaction. Maybe this wouldn't be enough for him…
Maybe it wouldn't ever end…
Maybe he'd realize he was addicted to the high of killing…
Maybe he wasn't like her and he couldn't just turn it off...
We'd all be responsible for the destruction in his wake…
Then, the Volturi would get involved…
I didn't let Carlisle into these musings I was having because he'd be heartbroken, and I didn't know for sure yet, but the closer we got and the more rural our scenery began to be, I realized I was right and it terrified me.
God, Rosalie…
Carlisle and I were smart though and in Carlisle's long experience on tracking and Emmett and Rosalie's general carelessness around each other, we found a way to cut them off on a winding dirt path within the hour.
At the initial threat of our unannounced presence, Emmett predatorily growled at us, and Rosalie protectively put her hand on his arm as if she could've held him back.
He didn't snap at her, and was oddly re-centered at the tangible contact. Her hand on his arm tethered him to the reality that he wasn't just some mindless newborn, but she quickly dropped it back to her side.
Rosalie's eyes were wide as she met mine, but she wasn't guilty as I glared at her accusingly.
"Rosalie, this is ridiculous." I hissed at her.
She narrowed her eyes, thinking only in distance. She assumed I didn't approve because I just didn't understand.
"Then why did you follow?"
"Rosalie. You and Emmett need to come home." Carlisle extended both of his palms upward and to them, inviting them back like prodigal children. "We came for you. We want you home, and we want you to be a part of our family. You know the sacrifices we have to make in this life in order for us to live like we do…"
Carlisle did have an idea on what they'd come here to do. He recognized that look in Emmett's eyes. It was in Rosalie's just a short while ago.
Emmett and Rosalie had only been gone a few hours, maybe only getting around a ten minute start on Carlisle and I before we found out they were truly missing. However, they'd still left home and it still broke Esme and Carlisle's hearts - infiltrating into Carlisle's thoughts as a sadness he wouldn't recover from.
Carlisle would ultimately forgive them because that's who he is, but he and Esme would forever know that Emmett and Rosalie ran off without saying goodbye.
For Rosalie, this was the second time she'd made it obvious there was a detachment. Esme and Carlisle took it as a sign that no matter what, Rosalie would always feel disconnected from what they tried to make a family unit. They felt like this was Rosalie's way of telling them it wasn't enough for her - their unconditional love, their acceptance, Carlisle's mercy... It all still wasn't enough.
There'd always be a mistrust of Rosalie after today, and maybe she didn't deserve it because she wasn't thinking clearly right now…
Neither of them were.
Emmett was beyond himself at the moment. He was just a newborn, thirsty not just for blood, but for death and destruction. He was incoherent in the face of revenge and the thought of killing.
He was a slave to his anger…
Rosalie knew all too well what this was like though she was far too vain to admit it.
"Come home…" Carlisle slowly reached out his hands for them again, benevolently hoping. "Please."
But at the mention of home, Emmett's eyes darted away from Carlisle toward where I saw in his thoughts that his human house was.
He was still attached in a way none of us were.
He ached. He was left wanting…
Everyone else had gotten their 'answers' or their closure.
Emmett hadn't.
I noticed his pain is something he misinterpreted as rage and he directed it all into his mission.
Emmett was still hellbent on going to kill his father, and we were just a football field's length away.
He had just wanted to be able to do it without hurting his other family…
That's where Rosalie would come in…
I saw their plan clearly, but then I realized it wouldn't matter.
The house was quiet… Too quiet.
There weren't even dreaming thoughts in the dead of night…
The house is empty. Carlisle thought at me, retreating from his previous mission to remind Emmett and Rosalie of who we were and what we stood for.
Emmett's house was truly empty. Surely, his senses revealed that to him.
Rosalie realized the same thing we did and looked over at me, her thoughts confused.
It had just been yesterday the house had seemed full to her…
I realized Emmett's peripheral senses registered the memories around him on this land he called home for so long…
It seemed so foreign to him now.
His memory was fuzzy, but I saw laughter and playing and people and life.
But, he was focused on that door, clear and crisp in front of him…
"Emmett, I don't think anyone's home." I countered his thoughts.
"No." He said this not arguing with me. He was agreeing with me, but he was in a trance as he confidently walked straight for the front door he'd walked through thousands of times.
Emmett realized something was wrong too, as if he'd been denying it.
Then, my own senses revealed…
There was blood… But, it wasn't hot and wet and…
Edward? Carlisle questioned as we followed Emmett.
I didn't hear anything from inside. None of us did.
What is he walking into? Rosalie asked me, shocking me with just how protective of him she mentally sounded in this moment.
I just furrowed my brow, shaking my head.
I didn't know.
There were no thoughts.
Rosalie eyes were full of questions and apprehension as she looked from Emmett's back and over to me before she followed close behind him.
He was going to find an empty house…
By now, he knew that.
In an odd way, this was the best case scenario. This meant that we wouldn't be found out. It meant he wouldn't kill anyone. It meant that at least for today, revenge and violence would not be a cycle.
It meant his family got out.
Emmett could revisit his childhood home and reminisce, then we could be on our way.
Then, Emmett opened the front door and we never could've imagined in a thousand years what we'd be greeted with.
The house wasn't empty.
In the split human second that Emmett's eyes registered the black pair of boots floating six inches off the ground, Rosalie had already taken a sharp inhale and looked over at Emmett in deep concern.
Her hand had flown to her mouth in a gasp, unable to believe what we were seeing.
Even after the atrocities we'd borne witness to in this life, this was probably one of the most unimaginable things I'd ever come across.
"Emmett…" Rosalie softly spoke his name.
Emmett's eyes traveled upward, finally settling on the makeshift noose his father was hanging from.
Carlisle's thoughts revealed that medically, he couldn't have been dead for more than a couple of hours…
But, Emmett's thoughts went far and away from the present.
Cacophonous sounds banged through the air as it woke Emmett from an exhausted slumber in the corner cot at the other side of the room.
'Emmett!' His father's voice called from the front door, urgency in his tone.
Emmett was young, no more than twelve or so, as he sat up and rubbed his eyes.
'I'm coming.' Emmett's voice cracked, and he stood up on the knobby knees of an awkward preteen.
Emmett's father caught himself on a side table before Emmett got to him.
'I got it. I got it.' Emmett's father mumbled, but he grinned at the sight of Emmett, reaching to pat the top of his head like Emmett was a little child.
'You've gotten taller.' His father hiccuped almost unintelligibly, sliding to the floor in a drunken stupor.
'Not since this morning.' Emmett chuckled humorlessly as he ducked to put his father's arm around his shoulders so he could help him back up to his feet. 'Come on. You need to get to bed.'
'No. No, just come on down here and sit with your old man.' He shrugged away and beckoned to the spot next to him.
It was presently right under the space he was hanging now…
Emmett apprehensively took the spot next to him sitting with his arms around his knees and his eyes purposefully away from his father's.
'You're such a good kid. You know that?' His father told him, brushing his knuckles over Emmett's face.
Emmett didn't flinch when he raised his hand to him, but I could see how hard it had been not to. He'd never had his father's hand on him when it wasn't packing a punch.
'Yeah. I do.' Emmett gave a little mischievous half-smile. 'Yes sir.'
He corrected himself, no humor in his eyes now.
'Come 'ere' He pulled on Emmett's arm, but Emmett stiffened, fighting him in his reluctance thinking he'd responded wrong and was about to be punished.
He knew how important it was to call him sir. He'd slipped.
'I said. Come. Here.' His father requested angrily through his teeth, but something was breaking in him.
Desperation was evident in his eyes that perfectly mirrored his son's, and so it was easy to see his anger was a mask for something else.
Pain.
Emmett just nodded, complying in apprehensive awkwardness as his father pulled him into his arms.
His father inhaled deeply, ducking his head to sob into Emmett's unruly black hair. Emmett stiffened in his father's strange embrace, not knowing what to think or feel as he heard his father start to cry.
In Emmett's mind, at twelve he was fully grown, and right now his father was treating him like he was a baby.
'Sir?…' Emmett was on edge, knowing his father was drunk, but never having seen him quite like this.
He addressed his father formally and removedly, but his father clutched to him like a life line, so close it took the breath straight out of his chest.
'Just a kid…' His father finally spoke a nonsensical, drunken sentence holding Emmett so close it was like he could've absorbed him.
Emmett could barely breathe, but he didn't dare move.
His father mumbled nonsense after nonsense until he shot to sit up and he grabbed Emmett's face in his hand in violent urgency, looking straight into the mirror of his eyes as he cursed and cried.
'You goddamned son of a bitch.' His father's words slurred, and his grip on Emmett's face turned into something differently desperate.
It was still violent, but it was… afraid.
Emmett was still as stone, not intimidated by him in the slightest, mostly just confused.
'Your age… I was… War…'
'I'm just twelve.' Emmett corrected him.
'A kid.' His father frowned, not really hearing his son's response. 'Just a kid…'
Emmett's eyes were wide just staring as his father gruffly held onto him calling him names that didn't seem to really be directed at him. Emmett knew that by now. It was becoming nonsense that his father spewed, just blind anger and drunkenness.
His father mumbled more unintelligible words, spitting in Emmett's face before he finally wrapped his arms around him again pressing his hands into his back as he cried heartbreakingly.
I now heard a woken baby crying in discord, and I noticed Emmett's mother standing at the threshold now, looking on in haunted horror as she bounced the disturbed baby on her hip.
Emmett's other sisters didn't even bother coming in the room though they had to have been awake. They were afraid to look.
Emmett was the one holding his father in his arms now, soothing him like a child. He shook his head when he made eye contact with his mother, communicating the need to leave them alone. His mother took the crying baby back behind the corner silently.
'Shhh…' Emmett encouraged, letting his father wallow in his arms, crying like I'd never heard someone cry.
'Lost… Come home…' Emmett's father was talking nonsensically as he sobbed into his son. 'Home…'
'Shhh… You're home.' Emmett whispered still trying to convince him, as he cried into Emmett's shoulder. "You're home."
—
"I have to bury him." Emmett immediately processed and coped by realizing there was something he could do and control.
I tried not to look too in the know on his reverie, but I saw that this was the memory he always visited to forgive his father for everything. He justified and forgave based on this one moment in time that I assumed was only once in his lifetime.
Selfishly, I shivered at the look of his father's eyes in that memory. One day they'd call it PTSD and Emmett would briefly think about his father…
I thought about my own desire to enlist in that war… I had been too young, but I imagined how my life had been different if I had been born just a year or two earlier, being the same age as Emmett's father and getting shipped off to that so called Great War. There was nothing great about it, but it was such a noble notion to enlist - to be a soldier and serve the country. I'd been hypnotized by it, by the romanticism…
I realized then as I looked at Emmett standing under his father's strangled corpse in his childhood home that time had passed and Emmett and Rosalie were from a different generation than me. I might've had children a little younger than them by this point, but I was still seventeen. I looked seventeen and my body was frozen at seventeen, but for the first time as I looked at Emmett's face - he looked like a child and I felt like the thirty five year old man I was inside.
Emmett was a kid… He was just a kid.
I wondered if this is how Carlisle felt as he watched generation after generation move on around him…
"Edward and Carlisle can…" Rosalie suggested to Emmett softly like she was talking to a fragile toddler.
"No." Emmett cut her off strongly, not even looking her way as he started to pull his father's corpse down from where it hung. "I can do it."
Emmett worked like he was cleaning up a mess he was embarrassed for us to see as his father lie flat on the floor now and Emmett crossed his arms over his chest.
"Carlisle…." Rosalie requested in a whisper with wide, concerned eyes.
She assumed Emmett wasn't thinking clearly, but she would've been wrong. After a momentary lapse, his mind had become crystal clear like a glassy lake. I saw straight down to his depths.
He thought incredibly practical things as he considered his father's burial. There was no coffin. Did he remember all the words you were supposed to say on his own without his mother reminding him? Surely he'd been to enough funerals in the past few years. But his father was a soldier. He had a special funeral right?
But… he didn't know he was lying to himself in his thoughts. He was in denial.
"My sisters are buried just a little west of the barn." Emmett's voice was unweighted and easy like he was talking about the weather.
Carlisle and Rosalie exchanged a look, both incredibly worried about him inwardly spiraling.
Carlisle thought it would be best if someone would find his body, hung as it had been before our interference, but there was no way Carlisle could find to talk to Emmett about this.
"Let me help you, Emmett." Rosalie offered, her voice soft and testing as she reached for his hand as he worked.
Emmett froze and looked toward her.
"I've. got. it. Really." He said, slowly for her to understand his sincerity - then his eyes caught the piano in the corner over her shoulder.
The piano's keys and frame were beaten into oblivion with a blunt object, and splinters littered the floor.
This was his mother's prized possession. In many ways, this was a tangible manifestation of her.
To Emmett, and even to Rosalie who'd only met her once, this piano was… her.
He took a swift inhale, his eyes getting impossibly darker.
"It's okay." Rosalie didn't even have to look over her shoulder to know what he was looking at.
Her heart had already shattered over it too.
Emmett nodded, mostly expressionless.
His thoughts went chaotic and his eyes took in all the devastating details of the destruction.
"I'm fine." He answered a question she hadn't asked and a doubt began to creep into his mind that told him maybe… he wasn't.
Emmett moved abruptly then and walked through the rest of the tiny house, looking for the rest of them but obviously knowing in his conscious mind that he wouldn't find them.
He wanted to be sure.
As he left the room, Carlisle knelt by Emmett's father whispering something silent and private into his dead ear that I didn't hear because Rosalie mentally spoke over him.
Edward? Rosalie's thoughts were loud though she spoke more softly than I'd ever heard her speak to compensate.
I don't know what to do. She thought.
Rosalie felt guilty, wildly guilty and she tried desperately to avoid acknowledging the death in the room.
Carlisle opted to fray the top of the rope quickly to look like it had naturally fallen from decay. He'd tell Emmett when he returned and try to talk him into this rational closure. It was his family home, his land. He could still be laid to rest here, like this…
I still kept my eyes down, but my eyes shot up to Rosalie as I heard her own sidebar mental conversation.
She blamed herself. I thought about what Esme had said earlier that Rosalie placed blame every where else because it was easier, but now, in this moment she blamed herself.
I didn't know what to say.
Emmett was finding no trace of them either. I noticed how different things looked to him now here even though it was his home. Ruthie had taken her favorite doll that had been Dorothy's so many years before. The trunk his mother had brought here from Alabama was gone. Annie May's boots weren't in the corner.
Emmett knew they'd left then, but he couldn't bring himself to feel any relief yet.
"Emmett!" Carlisle called in a panic.
In all the chaos, Rosalie, Carlisle, and I hadn't acknowledged the smell of approaching humans. But, Emmett just had.
There was only one way out of the house, and we were standing in front of the door, but as desperate as Emmett would be for blood, he wouldn't be that stupid to try and face us head on.
In less than a millisecond, Carlisle reacted, and knew before he did it that he'd go out the window and we had to cut him off.
Rosalie, Carlisle, and I threw open the door and ran out into the impossibly dark night after him.
There were seven ghosts with a dim lantern coming just up the hill passing the barn a little west of here. They seemed to float menacingly, and I was disgusted by their thoughts for the brief moment they still remained.
I realized Rosalie didn't want to catch Emmett. Her thoughts were obvious.
She wanted them dead.
Carlisle was closest though and would've been able to grab Emmett to stop him and save those seven human lives. However…
Carlisle hesitated.
It was barely for less than a human second, but Carlisle hesitated, knowing what these white robes were and what hate they represented. This was directly against everything Carlisle stood for, but so was allowing them to be murdered in Emmett's blood lust. It was a complicated moral philosophy dilemma that he had to solve and act on in the blink of an eye - or less.
It wouldn't appear that way outwardly, but he did let Emmett go.
For the rest of eternity Carlisle would hold this dark secret, and I would hold it for him too.
This would be something we'd share privately that would contribute immensely to the depth of our relationship and his special connection to me beyond just being his first transformation.
In an of itself, I saw that it really was a moment of humanity in a centuries old vampire…
Because of Carlisle's hesitation, Emmett cut those men's atrocious thoughts off, but instead of immediately feeding, he did something especially surprising given his newborn instincts.
It was so unfathomably gruesome that those men's next thoughts would haunt me as some of the most hellish thoughts I'd ever hear in my existence.
Impossibly, Emmett's human emotion of rage was even more wild than his vampiric blood lust as he violently dismembered all seven of them like he was just easily pulling meat off of a bone. To him he was their butcher and, that's how easy this was to him. Before they could even scream, their tongues had been ripped out or they were gurgling on their own blood.
There was no more white.
There was only red, bright red.
My throat burned intensely, but I was… I was afraid.
Emmett was wild, like I'd never seen anyone or anything wild before. His eyes were impossibly chaotic but focused with hate and rage like I couldn't have ever imagined.
I'd never seen a newborn vampire allowed to act freely and it was scarier than anything I could've ever imagined. Rosalie, Esme, and I had Carlisle as our conscious, but Emmett…
Emmett's instincts were beyond control. Even his human ones.
While I had been learning how to play piano and all about Victorian manners, Emmett had grown up wild like an animal and being a vampire only enhanced this.
He growled torturously. He wished it would've been more difficult to kill them. He wished he could feel their struggle. He wished his muscles would've strained in effort, but it was all too easy.
Even stopping to give in to bloodlust and indulge in everything his torturous imagination could cook up, Emmett's massacre took all of forty-five seconds. I knew those forty-five seconds would haunt him forever though – and for us forever was an awfully long time.
Carlisle looked away in utter heartbreak, and I grimaced.
Rosalie watched Emmett's display of unthinkable violence without flinching. She observed him descend into the role of the demon that she'd damned him to be.
Blood ran down his chin and stained his hands until they were covered and dripping. He dropped the detached spine he held in his hand, when he finally registered one of their mangled faces, on a decapitated skull.
Emmett recognized him.
A Protestant preacher from town - that had violently raped his sister and killed Emmett's best friend.
I realized in Rosalie's thoughts that's why they were here again. They were coming for Dorothy. Emmett didn't know they'd come back in his absence, and this wasn't the first time.
A complex story unfolded I couldn't truly follow in both of their wild thoughts, but I understood enough to know if Carlisle hadn't hesitated and I knew what I knew now, I would've even fought Carlisle to make sure Emmett got to kill all those men.
The number of men lying dismembered in the grass was personally significant to Rosalie and she looked on this scene with tragic familiarity before she zeroed in on Emmett.
Rosalie brought him here not just to kill his father, but to kill them. She thought it would bring him closure. She thought it would bring her closure. She thought it would be justice for Dorothy and protective of any other girl that could've fallen victim to these special kinds of monsters.
But I saw in her thoughts now that her own vengeance hadn't brought her any solace.
She still felt empty, and now…
Emmett looked down at his bright red hands, taking a sharp gasping inhale as he realized…
All of that still wasn't enough for him.