Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns everything in the Twiverse. I'm just playing around :)
Thank you for all the Rosie love; it really rocks my socks.
This one's a little longer-enjoy!
The Twilight Twenty-Five
thetwilight25 dot com
Prompt: #21, "Shattered"
Main Character: Rosalie Hale
Rating: T
Word Count: 467
Rosalie sped into the forest, a harsh wind at her back. She was being followed, but she wouldn't slow down. Harder and faster she flew, away from the house and all it represented.
Or used to.
"Go away, Emmett!"
"Rosie, please!" His voice was faint but still too close for comfort. "We can talk this out."
"No, we can't. Just…" She wouldn't argue with him. "Leave me be."
She kicked into another gear, leaving him and his concern in the dust. Someday she might feel guilty for shutting him out, but at the moment, she had nothing to spare. She was hard and cold though her very soul was aflame.
She hadn't felt such agony since those three days on the transitional pyre, but there was one salient difference between then and now.
This time she deserved to burn.
Though breathing was superfluous, her hasty exodus proved exhausting, and Rosalie collapsed in a heap beside an enormous felled tree. Her gaze landed on its exposed roots lying thick and obtrusive amid the upset soil, and she studied the scene, wondering how the damage occurred. Was it the wind? A storm? An act of God?
But in a flash of clarity she realized it didn't matter. Reasons didn't matter. Intentions, excuses, apologies…none of them mattered. Because in the end, the tree still fell. The sanctity of the soil was still disturbed.
Her family was still shattered.
She covered her mouth with a shaky hand, her immortal eyes stinging with tears she couldn't cry. She shouldn't have been feeling this way, shouldn't have had to feel this way. She should have been back at the mansion with everyone else, waiting for news. She should have been waiting for confirmation of Bella Swan's death or to find out if Charlie would allow any Cullens at the funeral.
But she wasn't. Not merely because she was hiding in the forest but because that wasn't the news the family was waiting for.
They were waiting to find out if Alice and Bella made it to Volterra in time to save her grief-stricken brother from getting himself killed because he thought the human girl had died when in truth she was alive and well and had not committed suicide but had gone cliff-jumping for kicks.
The situation might have been humorous had it not left her family in ruins.
And not been her fault.
Despite everyone's assumptions, Rosalie had been trying to help. She heard Alice scream when the vision hit her, watched the trauma ripple through her gathered family, and knew she would have to tell Edward because no one else would do it.
No one else could do it.
No one else did do it.
And as she hugged the dead tree in empathy, Rosalie now wished she could undo it.