Quick note: Thank you endlessly for your reviews and encouragement! It makes me SO HAPPY to see your responses! Thank you for investing in me and this story! In this uncertain time, I hope this story provides you some sort of escape or comfort. I'm sending all my love to you all.

A chapter with Dorothy is next!

Side note: PLEASE BE STAYING HEALTHY AND TAKING CARE OF YOURSELVES!

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TW/CW: Just a little more easy peasy lemon squeezy (teaseyyyy) in here ;) you were warned!

No Light, No Light

You are the hole in my head
You are the space in my bed
You are the silence in between
What I thought and what I said

You are the night-time fear
You are the morning when it's clear
When it's over you'll start
You're my head, you're my heart...

A revelation in the light of day
You can't choose what stays and what fades away

And I'd do anything to make you stay
No light, no light

Tell me what you want me to say

Rosalie

"Emmett, stop it!" I shrieked, following him in a desperate sprint.

I knew it was dangerous, but I had to stop him. I'd never forgive myself.

He whirled around, snarling at me villainously, swiping at me to stay away from him so he pushed me off balance and ripped the sleeve of my dress.

The two men were dead before they could even think to scream. Emmett was efficient if anything, but he savored the girl.

She didn't scream. She couldn't. It was happening too fast.

His eyes lingered on the girl before he drank from her. She was about our age, but had a dainty tiny frame, so she stood no taller than the center of his chest.

Braids and ringlets of unruly, red curly hair made a halo around her innocent face, a few freckles dotting her little but aesthetically pleasing nose. Her round navy blue eyes were exquisite behind a veil of black eyelashes and as she looked up at him in shock, they sparkled in a way only human eyes could sparkle.

A tinge of irrational jealousy infected my heart and made me yearn for my own forever-lost violet eyes. How they would've sparkled as Emmett made me laugh, as we were married in a church, as we were grey-haired and surrounded by grandchildren.

I clenched my jaw, and even though just a second had passed for the human, I had mourned the losses of an entire lifetime before her cheeks drained of color that mine would never flush with.

Emmett held her almost tenderly even in his ravenous hunger. He cradled her head, his fingers in her fiery red hair.

She grasped onto the collar of his shirt desperately.

His lips pressed to her neck like he was kissing her, and soon her fighting was no longer as arms drooped to hang limp at her sides and the big blue eyes I'd envied moments ago rolled back in her head.

Her skin grew pale and her lips grew white as she swiftly became bloodless and lifeless.

My hands came to my mouth in shock as I watched him hold up her limp body by her chin, her lips parted like she'd just started to scream before she lost consciousness.

My bottom lip trembled and I approached him with otherworldly slowness so I wouldn't startle him.

I was frozen in fear, but I had to do something.

After the red head fell limp into his chest, he let her hang over his arm like a drunken harlot. I reached out at glacial speed to put my hand on his shoulder.

He whirled over his shoulder too quickly for human standards to meet my gaze with a snarl that knocked me back, but it was what happened next that changed everything.

Emmett's powerful protectiveness over the frenzy of his hunt knocked me flat on my back and he was over me in a flash.

I was frozen, just like I'd been in Rochester, but I stared up into his eyes, begging him to come back into them.

He growled, a menacing awful sound, inches from my face and I saw blood still staining his teeth in something out of a horror movie.

My lips parted and my eyes widened, frozen. I trembled, feeling my terror vibrating through my limbs as he crouched over me... His weight on his hands, framing either side of my shoulders.

Vermillion blood tainted the corner of his mouth and my throat burned. I was thankful for it though because the sensation tethered me to the reality of the present.

I clenched my jaw and though it took every bit of control I had over my fear, I buckled down and reached up to ground myself and him tracing my fingers over his mouth to wipe the blood off his lip.

"Rosalie…" Emmett choked out my name, grabbing my wrist, his eyes coming to the tips of my fingers, tainted with her blood.

He came back into his eyes in a painful jolt then, pushing off of me in a flash, stepping back and looking around.

"I… I..." He grimaced the words, wild disembodiment in his eyes, coming to terms with all he'd just done.

That's when I heard it… There'd been onlookers. I heard the word… vampire.

We didn't have much time.

"Emmett…" I cautioned him in a low, cold voice, my eyes stern and serious as I stood to my feet.

We had to catch the onlookers.

"Emmett, you have to listen to me…" I said swiftly, taking his face in my hands before any of the human's reactions could progress into turmoil.

We had to react quickly.

"You have to go kill those people. They saw…" I told him easily as if I was talking about something as simple as going to the store. "Come on."

He just nodded, his eyes an intimidating, awful red color as we turned east, hearing them scrambling through the woods. They couldn't outrun us.

We hunted them like animals, and it felt disgusting and awful to do now. But, I had to.

We had to.

I caught one of them easily by the arm, her dark grey eyes meeting mine with terror as she whirled around, meeting my gaze.

As good as I was at killing, I couldn't bring myself to…

She took a deep breath to scream and I saw the way her veins and arteries wound down her neck. I clenched my jaw.

Emmett, still in his trance, saw my struggle and longed to take the burden from me.

I closed my eyes right as Emmett snapped her neck.

The rest of their scrambling panic stopped within moments. I heard their strangled screams fall into silence and my hand came to my mouth in fear and heartbrokenness.

Moments later, he brought the bodies back to the little clearing, tossing them into the pile of his destruction.

Emmett'd killed another 5 people in just a couple minutes.

His count was increasing and this time it was no one's fault but my own. I hadn't been careful enough. I hadn't kept watch. I hadn't…

As he stood over the tragedy he'd left in his wake, I noticed his pants were still undone and his dishevelment had everything to do with what we'd just done together.

Our closeness seemed a lifetime away. It seemed so far from where we were now.

My embarrassment flooded over me like a wave and my pride was squashed anew.

I couldn't think of how… it felt… touching him because there was one thing he wanted more than me…

Blood.

It was hard to come to terms with the part of him that wanted me was secondary to the predator I'd made him into.

I hated it.

It made me angry.

I was filled with rage, and I was humiliated beyond belief.

My hands clenched into fists. I was shaking.

His eyes fixated on the pile of bodies in front of him emotionlessly.

"I'm sorry." He mumbled, totally monotone.

I didn't respond, still in a sort of shock from all the day's events.

Everything had happened so fast. I crossed my arms over my chest, and this helped me remember that in his blood lust, Emmett had ripped the fabric of my dress so its left side was ragged.

I was ruining so many of my favorite dresses for him.

He started on redoing his pants, his eyes still far off and glazed in his blood drunkenness as he tucked his shirt in.

With the same sort of routine as getting dressed, Emmett began expertly disposing of the bodies so there'd be no trace.

It was silent afterward, an icy, empty silence.

"I told you I was sorry." Emmett's voice was sharp, and he kept his eyes away from me.

He seemed to feel my judgment and shame.

It annoyed me.

I frowned.

"I heard you" I responded sourly.

"And you forgive me?" He tested presumptuously.

Human blood vastly changed him.

He looked at me, his eyes dancing over me in a tragic waltz before his face flooded with an emotion I didn't understand.

We stared at each other in this terrible silence for a long, excruciating moment before his red eyes fell away.

I could forgive him for killing all of those people, but forgiving him for physical rejection… Forgiving him…

For the euphoria in his eyes as he sunk his teeth into that red haired girl's neck outweighing the euphoria I sensed in him during the progression of our physical relationship that had happened today…

Forgiving him for that was awfully hard to do in my self-conscious vanity. I was prideful and miserably desperate for his approval in this area, and this distraction seemed to be a knife in my heart.

I clenched my jaw.

He reached out for me, inviting me into his open arms, but I couldn't.

I couldn't do it.

I was too hurt, and it was the most painful thing in the world when the person you'd run to to comfort you in your hurting is the one that hurt you.

He read it on my face.

"Rosalie, baby, please." He stepped forward, a pet name in his sultry Southern accent making me weak at the knees, but my heartache was too deep to falter now.

I was mortified. Humiliated…

I'd never… been second place to anything.

Ever.

And now, I was… falling for him and he tragically chose blood over me.

It was absurdly stupid!

I was angered to the point of absolute blinding rage then.

Vulnerability manifested itself in my spiked, offensive armor as I sourly shrugged him off.

"Don't touch me." I snarled, hating him more with each passing second because he was the face on my insecurity right now.

It was a curious thing how ego, vanity, and self-consciousness and insecurity were so intertwined…

"Rosalie? Come on." He painstakingly ignored my request, taking my face in his hands.

They smelled like humans.

I caught them on his breath.

I hated it.

I hated him.

I hated the part of myself that needed his approval, his attention, his affection…

He let me go then, seeing something in my face that made him realize the importance of it.

"You hurt me." I admitted to him, the words slicing through my throat painfully.

"I know." He swallowed torturously. "I know…"

I turned away from him, tortured by his presence.

"I can't even look at you." I mumbled.

"Then don't." He was pained. "Close your eyes 'cause I wanna talk to you, baby."

I took a deep, exasperated breath, hating how he tried to reason with me, hating how my stomach flipped when he called me baby, hating that I couldn't hate him.

At last though, I turned my back to him and I shut my eyes tight.

"I'm angry with you." I said, and it was shockingly, substantially easier to talk to him like this.

He knew.

"You have every reason to be." He assured me of my rationality.

"I don't… want to go backwards." I growled. "And now… Now you're going to have to go through all of that… conditioning with Carlisle again. Your mind's going to be so… tangled again, and you aren't going to be yourself again. I'm going to have to watch you go through hell… again… and you were just starting… We were just starting…"

"I know, and… God, I hate that part." I heard his voice strain with tension.

I did too.

"But, I let you down." He sighed, these words having profound imprints on him. "That's the worst of it."

I just nodded, keeping my eyes shut and my back to him.

"It disappoints me that I couldn't do right by you, by Carlisle…" He went on, trailing off.

"And… I… Well, it was pretty shitty timing to lose control." His voice was a low rumble in his chest, and I heard him shift his weight forward.

I stiffened hating the pit in my stomach.

"I… really liked being with you, Rose. And I'm sorry that was overshadowed by how crummy I am at resisting…" He said, speaking too fast in his nervousness.

"This is hard for me." He admitted, his sentence running together. "I don't have the control you do. I don't have the strength you do. I can't…"

Emmett took a deep breath. I shut my eyes tighter knowing he was potentially not just talking about control regarding blood lust.

"I just… I need you to be patient with me." Emmett expressed. "I know… I know that's asking a lot of you, and that's unfair to do, but that's…"

"That's what I ask of you…" I breathed, finishing his sentence in the way I knew he wouldn't.

He didn't respond immediately.

It stung coming out of my mouth

I heard him shift his weight, seeming to process.

"It's different." He finally mumbled, trying to absolve the space between what he thought and what he said.

"It's not." I shook my head.

"I ask you to be patient with me…" I breathed, letting this resonate in my own thick, terrible skull.

We paused for a moment, and for some awful reason it felt like we were moving apart.

"I care about you, Rosalie…" He started, and I was shocked by how physically close he was to me now after the sensation of moving away from him had seemed so real. "So I'd do anything you asked of me."

In the silence, he put his hand on my shoulder and I tried to keep from melting into his touch.

"I know." I exhaled, believing it, and that's what made it so heartbreaking.

He'd do anything for me, and I was being unreasonable.

It was my mind that was a tangle right now…

"And that's what we're promisin' each other we'll do, Rose. Take each other as we are, you know?" He tried to sound optimistic and encouraging, but it rubbed me the wrong way. "Stick it out."

"But is it supposed to be this hard?" I whispered, afraid of saying it out loud.

I hated the thoughts that came to my head next, that it'd never been this difficult for me with anyone else. Things hadn't been so excruciating and painful and heavy with anyone else. I had never had so many hiccups in courtship, and it felt like all odds were stacking against Emmett and I.

Wasn't falling in love supposed to be easy?

Maybe we weren't meant to do it…

Maybe I couldn't…

"What do you mean?" He asked, his voice low in his chest.

"I mean, there's always… something. Some sort of friction, some sort of obstacle, some sort of burden…"

He waited, obviously unsure of what to say, but his hand got heavier on me.

I kept my back to him and my eyes closed, but I melted into him then, and he wrapped his arms around me from behind.

"It won't always be hard for us, Rose." He mumbled.

"But, it's hard now." I breathed, a ghostly shiver going through my body.

"We can take it." He said, rubbing a circle on my shoulder where he'd ripped the fabric of my dress. "I told you that earlier."

"You seem so sure." I mumbled.

"Aren't you?" He asked, this seeming to be an important arrangement of words for him.

I paused for a very long moment, waiting on the tangle of my mind to clear, but it was hopeless.

My silence seemed to make him restless.

"Rosalie, stop torturing me." He begged, ducking his head so his lips were at my ear.

It wasn't designed to be sensual, but I definitely felt it that way in my body.

I clenched my jaw, hating the way my very core wanted him.

"Please." He begged me, but this time I heard the heavy seriousness in his voice. "If you care about me at all. Stop it."

He wasn't playing.

"I'm being reasonable thinking about this." I argued.

But maybe I wasn't being reasonable.

After all, I'd never been in love…

Maybe he knew better than I did.

I hated the thought.

"No, you aren't." His voice was strained. "You…"

"I don't know if we can ever stop hurting each other." I breathed heavily, the weight of the words awful and suffocating on my chest.

"Rosalie, come on." He tightened his arm around me and I could feel how desperately he wanted to look into my eyes. "What happened to before? I thought you decided that you were going to try… for me… for us?"

I could tell this wasn't a conversation he was used to having and the desperation in which he spoke of attachment to me seemed to pain him.

I took a deep breath, hating that I was hurting him.

It was hurting me too.

"Do you really think we're meant to do this?… To be together?" I asked, realizing just how afraid I was of his answer.

"Yes!" Emmett's passion when he spoke of things he wanted was unparalleled.

It made me shiver.

"I've always known that. Rosalie, don't you understand? Since that day in the woods, seeing you that first time… flying…"

I clenched my jaw and swallowed.

"You were my angel, and it was so easy to get enchanted by you. You saved me… Gave me a life I couldn't…"

"You're just grateful to me… It's clouding your mind." I mumbled thinking back to the time I spent at his family home, Emmett's devotion to the women that 'saved' him.

"No! Don't tell me what I feel and know, Rosalie." He stepped back and away from me, obviously angered by my clashing objections. "I care about you… deeper than you know. You make it so goddamn hard sometimes, but I still care about you."

I clenched my jaw, hating him stepping away from me and hating even more that he called me out on my shit.

"And I care about you…" I exhaled, feeling that he sincerely doubted it in this moment.

"Then act like it!" His voice rose. "Stop putting me through hell!"

"You put me through hell every time you go back to square one!" I snapped.

"I'm not denying that." He growled."You are the one going back to square one all the time!" He snarled at me, grabbing my arm but I shook him off, shutting my eyes tight. "Just when I finally get close to you, you push me away… Again."

I got defensive, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

"But, you're yet again trying to talk yourself out of being with me because I fucked something up. Why are you always doing that?!"

"Here we go again. Keeping a running list of my fuck ups so you can justify pushing me away." He went on.

"You sound just like your father when you argue." I said, knowing that would hurt him and remembering hearing his parents arguing when I drove up.

"Don't you dare." He growled. "Stop comparing me to my father. You don't know what you're talking about."

"I do. I heard him yell at your mother." I challenged, knowing I was being terrible, but I was doing it anyway.

"Oh my God." His voice rose. "Sometimes you absolutely repulse me."

I felt my icy blood start to boil then.

"Why do you think I can't even look at you?" I complained.

We yelled awful things back and forth at one another until we were breathless.

"Goddamn it Rose. Let yourself be happy. You are the only thing in your way! Don't you see that?" He was pacing behind me, passionately arguing with my back.

I hated the pit in my stomach and I crossed my arms tighter over my chest.

No. There was something else in my way.

He seemed to scarily read my mind.

"You were hurt by someone before and they're exactly who you keep trying to make me into. I'm not them. So stop it. It's not fair to me and you know it."

I snapped my eyes open, whirling around, having to look at him to ground myself by realizing the truth of what he just said.

His black, unruly curly hair that waved to the top of his collar.

His slightly disproportional, but perfect ears that I tucked his too long hair behind sometimes and he'd protest and shake his head seeming to take some boyish insecurity in his ears.

His wide mouth that even in his anger had ghosts of a smile on it, with a frame of dimples that made my dead heart skip.

Not a trace of blonde hair and light eyes and that awful wolf in sheep's clothing smirk.

"Rosalie." Emmett said my name in his perfect, deep voice that was sultry as a Southern sunset.

I swallowed.

He frowned, his awful red eyes darting over my face.

"You don't know what you're talking about." I shot back before I could even think.

"No, because I have to always guess with you." He raised an eyebrow. "Talk. to. me."

Something dark and deep in me rejected him even when I was also so outwardly full of desire for him. I was frustrated with myself – angry.

But, mostly I was ashamed.

"It's pointless to talk now. I'll have to wait until human blood is out of your system to get the chance to speak with you rationally again."

He growled in exasperation, clenching his hands into fists and pacing in a quick circle around himself as his hands rose over his head in a sort to tantrum.

It proved my point, but it was indeed perfectly rational for him to react this way.

I was being awful.

I just couldn't stop.

I felt vulnerable.

"Fuck, Rosalie!" He clenched his hands into fists again pressing them over his eyes, obviously not wanting me to see him emotional.

My stomach dropped as I watched him deflate. He was exhausted with me.

I was terrible.

I was afraid he would leave me.

I felt powerless.

But, I wasn't.

So I reached out to him, putting my hand on his shoulder, asking…

He shrugged me off though and I thought I could die right there.

"Rosalie, please. Stop messing with my head." He begged me, a sad desperation in his voice. "I can't take it anymore."

"You wish you were human. You wish you had all those things from your fancy, perfect life before. You are comparing me to someone else and you wish I was him, or… I don't know you wish I didn't remind you of him… Either way... You won't let go. You're still... holding on and it kills me. You wish you hadn't saved me and drug me into this… But this is what happened." He said in a strained voice, tilting his head up to the sky but keeping his fists over his eyes.

"You chose this. You used me, and now that you think you know me… I don't know… You're deciding you don't want this anymore and you're blaming me for it." His voice was full of emotion, pulling to different levels on this high of an emotional pitch.

"That's not what I'm doing." I breathed, but he dismissed, shaking his head.

"I know this isn't fair to ask of you, but please… Do this for me. You can be sad… But please, I'm begging you to do this for me because I can't live without you. I won't." He pleaded but he wouldn't look at me. "I want to be with you. Can you do that for me? Please?"

I clenched my jaw just staring at him.

"You are selfish and vile and manipulative and… sometimes I look at you and all I see is that ugly, black spot on your heart that makes you torture me!" He told me, his hands unclenching from fists and the heels of his hands pressing into his eyes. "Sometimes I actually, whole heartedly hate you!"

I'd never seen a man cry before, and though vampires couldn't produce tears, this felt an awful lot like what it would be like to watch him cry.

There was absolutely nothing worse in the entire world.

I'd felt pain before, but the pain of watching him suffer…

There was nothing that hurt as much as that…

"But God, in spite of all that…. I love you!"

He said this strongly, but with tenderness I couldn't comprehend as he dropped his hands and looked over at me desperately.

It was the sweetest arrangement of words I'd ever heard and my ears rang with their glorious sound.

"You make it so hard sometimes… But I love you." He said again.

I took quick, shallow breaths that barely filled my chest.

I was frozen.

"I don't wanna lose you." Emmett said heavily. "I lose everything. And everyone."

I heard him like he was a thousand miles away, the words looping through my mind.

"Please." He whispered.

That's when two years of my cold exterior came crashing down and I covered my face.

"I'm sorry." He repeated softly, but he wasn't apologizing for these moments.

This was all the assurance I needed.

He was apologizing for what had made me unable to love and experience receiving love. He was apologizing for my need for reservations and desperation in masking vulnerability. He was apologizing for my fear. He was apologizing for the wounds he had nothing to do with but wanted to stitch up for me. He was apologizing for the weight of my past, and insisting on bearing my burdens.

This forced me into a spiral of emotions I couldn't process or understand, but instinctually they felt like the most natural feelings to ever be housed in my body.

"I think I love you too." I said on pure impulse to the labyrinth of feelings aforementioned.

His eyes darted and searched over my face, but he kept his hands by his sides. I couldn't believe what I'd just said and his confused expression suggested he couldn't believe it either.

I took a running start, jumping to wind my body around his and crash into a kiss full of passion and desperation. I wrapped my legs and arms around him like vines, holding him to me.

We'd never kissed like this. Nothing had ever felt like this. Our hands were grasping at each other, and I pulled away just to correct myself.

"No, Emmett, I know I love you." I said, winding tighter to him as he pressed my back into a nearby tree, kissing down my neck.

Where we often stuttered in communicating with words, physical touch seemed to make up for it in this moment.

We were communicating perfectly with our bodies.

I kissed him again.

He was pleased with what he heard and the position we'd found ourselves in, and I wanted to please him further after all the torture I'd just inflicted upon him.

"I love you." I said confidently, but my hands started to shake as I started on the buttons of my dress, making myself exposed to him.

He pulled his suspenders off his shoulders and I knew I was shaking as my feet touched the floor again and his hands explored under the fabric of my dress. I sighed against his mouth as his hand spread over the lace of my bra.

We kissed, hard and fast and desperately wanting.

It felt good. It felt right, and I knew exactly what was motivating my desire as I longed to proceed.

I slipped his shirt over his head, practically melting as my hands met the muscular planes of his bare back.

That gave him the go-ahead to try something new as his hand crawled up my skirt.

My knees buckled the moment his fingers found the lace between my legs and he smiled against my mouth.

"Make love to me." I said in a tiny, frightened voice wishing with everything in me that I'd sound more confident than I felt.

I was shaky and nervous as my hands reached for the button of his pants.

"What are you doing?" He asked, pulling away and searching my face.

"I love you." I wasn't privy to the details on how physical intimacy should occur and I wasn't sure if he was offended that I'd started on his pants. Maybe he was supposed to do that part.

I was uncertain and my head was cloudy.

He looked into my eyes for a long, terrifying, hanging moment then he sighed.

"Shit. Godmotherfuckingdammit." He cursed a string of curse words too foul for me to even process as he pushed me away and turned his head. "Gimme a second."

A few long seconds later, it appeared he collected himself.

He paced in a circle then returned to me, taking my face in his hands. He took a deep breath then, pressing his forehead to mine. I could feel his exasperation.

"You don't have to do that, Rosalie." He said in a low voice, pained, as if what he was saying just about killed him.

"Do what?" I practically panted, out of breath as I anxiously approached this boundary for myself.

"You don't have to prove it to me." His tone was even and calm as he traced a pattern on my cheek, innocent and removed.

I was silent as I retreated, unsure and humiliated.

"I mean, obviously I want you to." He said, his eyes darting down guiltily.

I clenched my jaw, irresolute as to how I was feeling in this moment. On one hand, I felt worthless and mortified. On the other, I felt more valued and cherished than I had in my entire life.

"But, you don't have to." He reached out for me taking my hand and thus lifting my gaze. "Not like that… when you don't really want to. You're terrified."

"What?!" I protested. "I do want to!"

"You're trembling." He breathed.

"That doesn't matter." I said too quickly and too high pitched. "I love you."

"It matters to me."He responded plainly, raising his eyebrow as if he was observing something I couldn't see. "And, I... love you. God, so much more than you know... But, like, I said – you don't have to prove it to me."It angered me.

"I'm not proving anything to you." I said sharply as I stood to my feet.

"If not to me, then to yourself." He shrugged, seeing into my soul as he looked down at me.