Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. But I use stories like this to imagine I did.
A/N: I'm so incredibly sorry for the neglect I've been showing this story lately, I got caught up in my other one, and thats no excuse, I'll be posting them more quickly now, because I'm pretty sure I know where I want this to go. Enjoy!
So Emmett stopped running. In the direction he'd been running at least. Emmett turned around and went back to where he'd heard Rosalie. She heard him first, probably because she was listening the hardest. Her wild and violent screams quieted before he'd fully come into view, and by the time he'd slowed to jog, they were sharp cries of "Emmett?? EMMETT!!??" He hung his head, and though he knew he should have something more articulate on his mind, all he could think is she's gonna rip off my dick. Pray God she doesn't throw it somewhere. Or hide it somewhere, gah, that would suck. And with that on his mind, he stepped out in front of his family.
Rosalie looked at him for long time. Probably trying to remember the best form of Chinese Water Torture, he figured. Edward coughed, and then shook his head minutely. Emmett sighed in relief, then sighed again, in something that was definitely not relief. He looked Edward straight in the eye. We need to talk, you and me, when I'm done with Rose. Edward tilted his head a little, confused. You'll hate me. I'll deserve it. And you'll probably want to hurt me, which is fine. Just...don't kill me, kay? I might deserve that too, but don't do it to Rose. I've caused enough damage to last a lifetime. Though Edward still look perplexed, he nodded. Emmett met Rosalie's gaze head on. "Do your worst, Rosie. Just know that I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Rose." He hung his head lower.
She started walking towards him, slowly, like at any time he may disappear and she wanted to be ready. When she was close enough, she touched his chin, tilted it up until they were eye to eye. Then she did something no one expected: she collapsed in his arms. He caught her before she could hit the ground and pulled her close. Her breaths was coming in gasps as she commanded him, "Never, EVER, leave me, again. Ever. I. Don't. Care. I don't care what the, problem is. Don't LEAVE Emmett. You can't leave me." She said. And he knew that he'd broken her worse than anyone ever had, which was saying something, considering all she'd been through. He stroked her hair, kissing it as he went, and murmured softly. "I'm not going anywhere, Rosie. I didn't...I didn't know how to handle some things. But I do now. I will now. And I'll never leave. I'll always be here, okay?" He whispered. She nodded, and Emmett raised his eyes to Carlisle. "Has she fed?" He shook his head. Emmett knew she wouldn't go with anyone but him, but he needed to get this thing with Edward out of the way first. He whispered to Rosalie.
"Okay, Rose. We're gonna go get you something to drink, alright? But first I need to have a conversation with Edward." She growled. "Its gonna be a silent one, sweetie. I'm not going anywhere. But he might want to hurt me after. And if he does decide to hurt me, you've got to promise me you'll let him do that, okay?" She snarled openly. "Rosalie!" His voice was low and menacing, one of command, that the family almost never heard him use. "Are you going to do what I"m asking you to do?" She nodded quietly. He looked at Edward, and suddenly couldn't figure out where to begin. "Best to start at the beginning," Edward prompted, and Emmett nodded. He started with the night he'd left, the run he'd taken, the things he'd thought about. He remembered Rosalie's anger, and the panic he felt when he'd heard Edward coming. He remembered calling Bella, laughing with her before Edward came to her at night. And lastly, he remembered last night.
When he was finished, Edward was snarling, dropped into an attack position. Emmett shifted Rosalie behind him. I'm not going to stop. You're not going to kill me, and I'm not going to stop. He though, vehemently. This pulled Edward out of his reverie. "You're not going to stop? You're not going to stop!!?? Look at what this is doing to our family! Look what its doing to Rosalie. You're going to stop." He snarled at Emmett. But Emmett saw nerves in Edward's eyes, and it made him less convincing than he should have been. Emmett took Rosalie by the hand and together they turned their back on Edward, rushing off into the forest.
Her hands were doing the laundry, but her mind was torn. To call Emmett, or to let Emmett call her. Would Emmett call her? Probably not, wouldn't want to hang around a basket case all night, a small part of her thought, but the larger part was pretty sure he'd call her. Her stomach growled. Time for lunch, she thought.
"You haven't eaten." A familiar velvet voice replied, and she spun around, stifling her scream, somehow transforming it into an appropriately breathless, "Edward!" His eyes were dark, but not from hunger, she didn't think. He was angry, it was radiating off him. "You were expecting someone else?" He strained to make it sound like a question, but his face said he already knew. Yet and still, she lied. "I wasn't expecting anyone, Charlie's fishing with Billy this weekend, and I thought you'd be gone until Monday." she replied, picking up the clothes she'd dropped in her initial panic and putting them in the wash. She then headed into the kitchen to make herself lunch.
Tension was thick in the air around him as he made himself comfortable at her kitchen table. She pulled out all the makings of a turkey sandwich and began to prepare her meal. Struggling to sound conversational, he said, "Emmett came home today." It would be a source of great pride for her, in the years to come, that she did not drop the knife she was holding. Her eyes went wide, but her back was to him, so it didn't matter. She forced out a bright "That's wonderful!" Followed by a more subdued, "How's Rosalie taking it?" She put some chips on the plate with her sandwich, and went about pouring herself a glass of lemonade.
Could Emmett have been lying? Edward thought to himself, as he watched her pour yellow liquid into a glass. She doesn't seem nervous at all. "She's thrilled, he's back, I mean, that's what she wanted, and she got it. But...I have a feeling it'll always be different now. There's the possibility that he'll leave her, something she'd never even thought about before. It'll haunt her I think." He mused.
At this point Bella was sitting at the table, looking at him steadily. "I know how that feels," she said, never taking her eyes off of him. Shame like he'd never known washed through him, and all the sudden he understood Emmett's intentions a little better. He'd left for Rosalie, not for Bella. He'd left because he didn't want to hurt Rosalie, of course he'd ended up hurting her more than he'd ever imagined, but he'd done the same to Bella. Edward found couldn't judge him so very much then. He reached out to touch Bella's hand. "I hurt you," he began. "You do," she nodded. He pulled his hand back, shocked. She looked at him tiredly, because his reaction was expected.
"You think the hurt is gone, just because you're back, but its not. Everytime you leave, every time you're out of my sight, its like you take my air with you. I can't breathe. Walls start to close in around me, because you left me. I realized you can leave me, and that if you do, you take every part of me with you. I realized that I'm just a shell of a person without you. You hurt me everytime you leave, everytime you're not touching me, it hurts." She paused, gauging my reaction I suppose. "Whatever you hear in Rosalie's head now, whatever Jasper feels, I'd bet its gonna sound, or feel like exhaustion. She's tired of hurting, so she's just blocking it. The real pain will come after. When he was gone and it hurt, it made sense. It may have seemed a little excessive, but it made sense, to her and everyone around her. Now when it hurts, she won't be able to explain it in a way that'll make sense to you. She'll be angry with herself. She'll feel like it'll hurt for no reason, but it won't stop it from hurting, and she won't be able to tell anybody, not even Emmett, because she'll fell like if she does something wrong he'll leave her. Because she knows now, that he can leave her." Edward was shocked, and completely ashamed. She was talking about Rosalie, but she was drawing from personal experience. She'd never said this before, never explained to him how deeply the hurts were.
"So when we can't be....intimate like you want..." he said. "When you leave, afterwards," she corrected. "It hurts you," he finished. "It does." She nodded. His face darkened. "So you call Emmett," he supplied. And she sighed, finally, they'd reached this part. "So I called Emmett. Only the once, only last night. And nothing happened. Surely he showed you that nothing happened." She said, amazed at how calm her voice sounded. Amazed at how calm she was. Yes, Emmett had been there, but it had been nothing wrong, it hadn't felt like anything wrong, and she wouldn't make Edward turn it into something wrong. "He said he wasn't going to stop." Edward retorted, "So it doesn't matter that it was only once, because he'll keep doing it. Everytime I'm not here, he will be. It won't take long for something to happen, not with the way he's thinking." But Bella didn't believe that. She was amazed, amazed at herself, at the fact that she was doing this, that she was arguing with Edward.
"He's a good friend to me. Like Jacob was. You remember Jacob? My best friend that doesn't speak to me now because I chose you. Because I love you? You remember that? Emmett is good to me that way. And I know how he wants me. He told me. But he won't do anything I don't want to do. And I don't want him that way. Plus, its nice to know...to know that he would. To know that if it went there, he wouldn't stop, he wouldn't leave." She muttered the last. Edward's hands tightened on the table. Bella took a long swallow of her lemonade. "And what happens when you decide that you do want him like he wants you, what am I supposed to do then?" He asked. And she couldn't look at him, because she didn't know. She knew it was possible, but she didn't know what anyone would do. Staring at the completely untouched food on her plate, she said, "you should go, before you break the table. Charlie likes this table." And with that he was gone again. But she wasn't sad this time. She was thinking of Rosalie, and wondering if ROsalie would ever find someone to fill the void the was Emmett had filled hers.
A/N2: I need three reviews before the next chapter goes up. Seriously.-Shy =]