Chapter Summary: I was only tickling her to hear that sad girl laugh for once. That's all. But then her look implied so much more. Then she invites me into her bed? With that look? No, she is an innocent. She cannot know. But if I join her in that bed ...

Supper was chicken noodle soup with PBJs.

That's what Rosalie's surprise was, I guessed, while I was napping on top of her vampire code book, she was out hunting for more than just herself. She had gotten another jar of peanut butter.

She also insisted on making the sandwiches herself, and she insisted in such a way that it would be rude of me to continue to hint about me making them possibly producing more than zero sandwiches. So I resigned myself to missing out on the PBJs for supper, too. But she surprised me there. She made the sandwiches quickly, and I couldn't tell that she was being careful, but, obviously, she was paying attention because I got the sandwiches to go with the soup. Without slivers of glass, either, so that was a plus.

This was my lucky day, I guess.

I sat at the table as Rosalie put the filled soup bowl in front of me and added the sandwiches on a plate beside it. I looked down at the feast, then looked up at Rosalie sitting across the table from me.

"Are we going to pray before I eat?" I asked. I tried to keep the sneer from my voice.

Rosalie seemed unmoved. "If you wish," she shrugged.

I looked back down at the food, my stomach grumbling ... why am I not eating now? ... and looked up to Rosalie again.

"Do you pray before you, um, eat?" I asked her.

Rosalie shook her head in a no. "No," she answered, "but Carlisle does, before every animal he kills, every morning before he goes to the hospital, and before and after every surgery he performs. He prays in thanksgiving for the people's lives he saves, and he prays every day for the people who he couldn't save. That list now is quite long, given the wars he's been in."

"Wars? Was he in the Great War?" I asked. I wondered if he served with Pa ... silly thought that ... Dr. Hale looked too young to serve in the Great War.

"Oh, no," Rosalie answered. "The Civil War really took a toll on him, so he stayed Stateside for this last war. It turns out that he was needed here, after all, given how the Spanish Flu would have killed so many more in Chicago if he hadn't been working nonstop for weeks going from hospital to hospital."

Dr. Hale looked much younger than Pa, but ... "Did you say 'the Civil War'?" I asked.

Rosalie nodded.

"The Civil War, like, the Civil War? You know, like, the one that happened, like, here?" I confirmed. That put him around one hundred years old, give or take a decade. But then, what's a decade between acquaintances? He sure kept himself spry, I'll give him that. He was quite the looker for a centenarian.

"Yes," answered Rosalie, regarding me closely, even though her regard looked casual, "and before that he was a surgeon in the Revolutionary War."

I swallowed. She had to have meant the American Revolutionary War. That just added another one hundred years to Carlisle's life. Well, 'life' like, 'whatever'.

"... and he would pray at each person he tried to save," she continued thoughtfully, as if she were discovering this for herself for the first time, "and being a surgeon with no little experience, he saved the lives of quite a few of them."

Then she paused and added darkly: "... that is, the ones that could be saved. The Great War gave us the term 'triage,' but the toll of it was just as terrible before the word existed."

Then she turned spiteful.

"'Great' War!" she added, "there's nothing 'great' about young, stupid, idealistic boys, just like Edward, killing and maiming other young, stupid, and idealistic boys. Each patriotic musket blast in the wars preceding made a new patient for Carlisle, and each patient Carlisle loses is another baby that will never return to his mother or another young and now dead husband that has left a widow and an orphan to fend for themselves in the war ravaged countryside. And Carlisle knows that, and works so desperately to save each and every one of his patients, but ... well, I can see what a comfort Esmé is to him at times ... well, all the time ... and so he prays for each of his losses, every morning. Carlisle's quite the prayerful man," then she grimaced and added ruefully, "well, prayerful vampire, that is."

But I wasn't thinking about Carlisle now. I was thinking about something else Rosalie just said.

"Edward fought in the Great War?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

Rosalie saw right through it. She frowned at me. "Eat," she commanded waving to the food in front of me. "Or pray and eat."

Carlisle was more than two hundred years old. I couldn't get my head around the fact that a man that looked half Pa's age was in fact at least a century, if not a lot more, older than he is. That meant ...

"Rosalie, is Mrs. Hale as old as the doctor? ... is Edward that old?" Then I thought of something else. "Are you?"

"Hmmmm," Rosalie's thoughtful hum was displeased. "I told you about Carlisle for an entirely different reason, that is, that he prays, than what you've seemed to have latched onto. Besides, you know about my human life, you've collected the information on that. You know my age."

"Yeah!" I was suddenly shouting, "and Doctor Hale is a twenty-something-year old person who just moved into Ekalaka, according to the town records! How old are you all really!"

"A lady never is asked or tells her own age," Rosalie scolded firmly, "and I've unintentionally trespassed on Carlisle, it appears, I will not repeat that mistake for Esmé and Edward. That is their secret to keep or to share with you, not mine. Besides, age does not matter to us any more, for we are eternal now." Then she added angrily: "And I am a Hale, not Doctor Cullen, are you saying that I'm not?"

"No, Rosalie," I said, not wanting to offend her precious Haleness, "I didn't mean that, but you could be Nathan Hale's mother, for all I know."

Rosalie gasped, her mouth falling open. Then she became rigid in her chair, shutting her mouth, and shutting right down, looking away from me with arms tightly crossed her chest.

"Eat your soup before it gets colder," she spat the words to the wall.

I could see the steam rising from the soup. I don't think that was the problem.

I wondered: was she angry with me (again) because I figured out that she could be really old? All this talk of being eternal, but she still cared about a century here or there?

I picked up my spoon, and looked down at the bowl. I was hungry, but I put the spoon right back down.

"Rosalie, I'm sorry ... again," I apologized sincerely. "It seems every time I open my mouth I say something stupid ..."

Her head whipped around and she glared at me: "Don't say that!"

"... that makes you angry, like right now." I looked down from her angry eyes. "You said before that you shouldn't be talking to me; well, I should be the one who never speaks again, and after you've slaved over a hot stove to prepare this feast for me, too. And how do I thank you for it? By opening my big stu-... my big mouth. Well, that's gratitude for you."

I buried my face in my hands.

My hands were gently removed by marble stones that smelled exactly like heaven.

"Perhaps," Rosalie said, towering over me, "you can show your gratitude by eating the food I 'slaved over a hot stove' for you," here she grinned slightly, "and by telling me what you think of it?"

I swallowed and nodded mutely. Rosalie smiled at me, picked up the napkin and blotted the tears from my cheeks.

See? I insult her, and she turns around and babies me, like a mother would nurture her only child, ... even if she was Nathan Hale's mother, even if she gets angry when I tell her that's what she's doing. Her taking care of me only made me feel worse about myself, but I put on a brave face, smiled weakly back at her and picked up my spoon.

Rosalie returned to the other side of the table and sat, looking at me expectantly. I noticed she still had my napkin. I looked at her hand holding it for a second. She looked down at it, too. She returned it to me from across the table.

Did she do it hesitantly, or am I just imagining things?

I put that thought out of my head and took a spoonful of the soup in, after blowing off the steam — Rosalie frowned at that action — and tasted it.

Hm. Chicken-y hot water.

"It's, um, it's very good ..." I said, and couldn't help but add the thought: for a first try.

Of course Rosalie read my mind. She grimaced. "You don't like it," she said.

"Rosalie ..." I began.

"Tell me what's wrong with it," she said.

"Rosalie," I said more firmly this time, "let me tell you something that I learned from my Pa. I've cooked for him for years, and some meals worked, and some ... didn't, but he always ate what was placed in front of him and said 'thank you' for the meal and meant it. And with so many people these days not knowing where or when they're going to get their next meal? And me being hungry now? And you giving me all this? It's soup, and it feeds me, and I'm thankful for it."

I slurped in another spoonful to show I meant what I said.

Rosalie grimaced again. "That's very admirable, but it does not help either of us. I cannot make it better next time if I don't know what to improve."

"Well, ..." I said. Rosalie nodded encouragingly.

"Okay," I said business-like, "remember the circles that you cut into the bread for lunch, right? Well, you don't want to put the chicken breasts whole like that into the soup, you want to cube them smaller than those too-small holes in the bread ... much smaller ... to expose more of the chicken to the broth? And speaking of broth: boiling the chicken from straight water? Not good. It needs diced veggies, right, to make a good base? Like carrots? And celery? And some salt, too, right? But not too much salt? ... just to taste, right? And you really, really need chicken bones to give some, you know, umphf to it, right? And maybe some corn starch, you know, to thicken the broth a bit, so it's not so watery, right? But you just can't throw corn starch into boiling water, you know that, right? You have to mix the corn starch into cold water first, right? And the noodles? Well, it was good that you threw them in the last minute, but elbow macaroni is better than these long noodles, but if that's all you've got, you should break them up smaller, like halve them first, right?"

I looked at Rosalie, sitting there, reeling from my few suggestions, so I ended weakly, "... but, besides that, it's ... really good ..." took another slurp, and couldn't help but adding the whispered: "... if it had a pinch of pepper, too, maybe?"

Rosalie shook her head. "No, no, Li-..." Her grimaced deepened at her mistake, but she soldiered on: "Don't hold back: tell me what you really think how it could be improved."

"Um," I said helpfully. I took another apologetic sip from my spoon of the chicken-y water.

Rosalie stood. "Stop," she commanded, "just stop. Let me get rid of that. I won't serve something so entirely unsatisfactory, and I can't stand to watch you eating something that pains us both."

I grabbed the edges of my bowl before Rosalie could.

"No, Rosalie, you stop," I ordered her. "If you can't stand to see me eating this, well, then, you can sit and watch me eat it. Or you can go someplace and not watch me eat it, but I'm not going to allow you to throw away a perfectly good meal just because you think it's an offense to your pride or something."

She didn't give in. "A Hale does not ..." she began.

"I don't give a damn what a Hale would do here," I interrupted. "I'll tell you that I'll be pretty ticked off at you if you waste all this food and the work you put into it when all it needs is just a bit of salt" and a good deal more "to make it just fine."

That gave her pause. "You mentioned much more than just salt just now."

When is she going to lay off the mind-reading?

"Tell you what, Rosalie," I compromised, "let's cut a deal. If you let me eat this soup now — that's perfectly fine, by the way — then I'll show you how I make it some other time."

"You'll show me tomorrow," she said firmly, but she did go back to her seat, after she grabbed the big bag of salt and put it on the table.

"Okay, fine," I concurred.

Chicken noodle soup two days in a row. Oh, well. As a kidnapped girl, I couldn't be too picky about the meals, I guess. I mean, did other kidnapped girls get meals at all? And not-so-wanted school lessons and not-so-quiet time?

Put that way, this cabin was kind of like the Ritz ... right?

I took out a pinch of salt from the bag and sprinkled it into the soup, then stirred the broth and took a tentative sip.

Hm. Slightly salty, chicken-y water. I took a bite of chicken and nibbled on the plain-tasting chicken thoughtfully.

Well, I discovered the one thing that Rosalie couldn't do perfectly. She sat glumly in her chair, looking at me eating.

But then I brightened up. This was something that I could help her with; something I was better than her at, and something that we could do together. I couldn't sleep for her; I couldn't cry for her, really, but she and I could make chicken noodle soup together!

Rosalie looked quizzically at my cheeriness.

"Hey, Rosalie, wanna know a secret from the old country?" I asked, glowing in the thought of the happiness to come.

"Tell me all your secrets, oh sage one from the 'old country'!" She smiled slightly, playing along with me, and brightening a bit herself.

"Har-har!" I stuck my tongue out at her teasing, and she gave me a shocked look at my effrontery. "Well," I continued, undaunted, "this is a magic spell to make both chicken noodle soup and a peanut butter sandwich taste sweet. Watch!"

I dunked my sandwich into the soup for a few seconds and took a bite out of the soggy part.

"Mmm-mmm!" I hummed in delight. The magic always worked, and it did wonders for both here.

Rosalie brought her hands to her cheeks and opened her mouth in mock amazement.

"I am moved beyond words at the impressive show of your mystical might!" Rosalie exclaimed.

Hmmphf! Miss Sarcastic over there sure used a lot of words to say she was speechless.

"First 'toad-in-the-hole' and now this! What is your next miracle, pray tell?" she continued delightedly. "A hershey's bar used as a scoop to eat the peanut butter?" Ooh! That actually sounds tasty! I thought. "Do you need to utter an incantation when you do this, too? If you did, I missed it. You truly are an enchantress beyond compare." She was just glowing at her own commentary.

"Okay, okay," I groused back, but I couldn't help a small smile edge my lips upward, "so it's not as impressive as all your many magic powers, but a girl's gotta start somewhere."

"I don't have any magic powers," Rosalie responded, sobering up.

"Oh, and purring me to sleep and reading my mind don't count, then?" I countered.

Rosalie sighed, and made to say something, but my stuck-out tongue shocked her into silence again.

"I win," I crowed.

Rosalie chuckled. "Yes, you, and that mischievous tongue with a mind of its own, wins."

"Ooh! Wow! Somebody's got to record these victories, really!" I was just so pleased.

"Don't worry," Rosalie said, tapping her head. "I'm doing that. But, actually, you should have some of your own happy recollections to read."

She brought out my journal and flipped to an empty page and handed me a pencil. I looked at the blank page and looked back up at Rosalie.

"What do I write?" I asked her, suddenly at a loss for words.

Rosalie frowned. "Why does writing things that create impositions for you come so easily to you, but you find your own happiness so difficult to express?"

"It's not that, Rosalie," I said quickly. "It's just that I don't know what to write."

"Is this how you see the world?" she asked sadly.

I bit down on my lip, biting down on my retort at the same time. I could ask her the exact same question, except I was a million times more right that she was.

Rosalie sighed with disappointment in me. "I will help you," she said finally. "Take dictation."

And I wrote the words as she spoke.

"'Victory number one: earlier today Rosalie admitted I was write.'" Oops! I erased the word 'write' and replaced it with 'right.' 'Cause 'right' is the right word, not 'write' ... 'write' was wrong.

"Is it okay if I add to that?" I asked permission.

Rosalie gave me a quizzical look. "Yes," she said, "it's okay."

"Okay," I ordered, "don't look and don't read my mind!"

Rosalie rolled her eyes, but did look away.

I scratched out a note below it: I looked in the mirrors for three seconds today and that made Rosalie happy, and she said she was so, so proud of me. I like seeing Rosalie happy. I like seeing Rosalie smil-...

I thought about those last two sentences. I'm sure Rosalie would be reading my journal again. I erased my editorializing. Vigorous. Let's just keep to the facts, okay? I told myself.

"Okay," I said, "I'm ready for the next one."

Rosalie looked back at me. "I think you've got the hang of it," she said.

"I want to hear you say it," I answered, pencil poised on the paper.

Rosalie resumed dictation after giving me a chiding look. "'Victory number two,'" she continued, "'I made the watery chicken soup taste better with my magic from the old country.'"

I chuckled as I wrote that and added the letters 'PBJ,' sure that they would trigger this memory. I also wanted to add something about a mischievous tongue, but couldn't quite think of just the right words for that ... putting 'mischievous tongue' ... I mean ... just those words? Doesn't that sound a little naughty?

I blushed at my own thoughts. I wondered what I looked like to Rosalie, with my mischievous tongue. What was I thinking, being so impertinent like that?

I closed my journal quickly, blushing harder, and handed it and the pencil back to Rosalie. She took both, regarding me quizzically, so I grabbed the PBJ and dunked it in the soup again.

I took another bite of dunked peanut butter sandwich and chewed thoughtfully for a second. Rosalie, I had to admit it, was no expert PBJ maker. The sandwich was lumpy, the peanut butter wasn't spread evenly at all, but clumps of it were embedded into the bread thickly in some places and hardly at all in others. AND she had put on the peanut butter first; I saw her do that when she made the sandwiches — when she insisted on making the sandwiches — biting my tongue to keep from telling her the proper way to make a PBJ. Everybody who's made more than a few PBJs in their life knows you put the jelly on first. But making PBJs for me seemed to be something important that Rosalie had to do, so I didn't wish to spoil her moment with my pestering.

I could have gloated that Rosalie, the perfect marble statue that I thought she was, had feet of clay. But I didn't feel like gloating, ... quite the opposite, in fact. Perfect Rosalie was perfectly unapproachable: beautiful and terrifying. But Rosalie now, cooking me supper, that didn't turn out quite right, but her heart was in the right place? And this light banter now? It made me feel ... well, ... it made me feel like she was more human. It didn't want to make me gloat that I could do something better than her ... no, it endeared me to her.

"Rosalie ..." I said quietly.

"Why is it that I feel the ground shift dangerously whenever you begin a question like this?" Rosalie demanded.

I dropped my eyes. "It wasn't a question," I corrected her softly. "It's just that ... I prefer moments like this and conversations like this — you know, ones where you're not shouting at me? — to ones like we had during, um, 'quiet' time."

"Hm," she said. "I prefer conversations and moments like these ones, too."

"So, why can't we just have these ones, then?" I asked, looking back up at her.

"We can," she said, "insofar as you do not err in how you speak or think about yourself or about me."

"So I have to see myself as beautiful, even though nobody in the world does?" I asked.

Rosalie's features hardened.

Jeez! Here we go, again.

"I do not care one iota what errors anybody else entertains, and I particularly dislike the errors you entertain," she stated fiercely, then added angrily: "... and I am not nobody."

"So then you're not kind for thinking I'm beautiful and graceful?" I countered. I mean, really: c'mon! Me? Beautiful? Graceful?

But I wanted to see her counter that one. If she can force me to her point of view — which she can't, because it's just not true — then I can force her to accept mine.

So there.

"Correctness does not necessarily have anything to do with kindness," Rosalie's reply was resolute.

I had forgotten there was just no reasoning with Miss Stone Wall sitting so imperially across the table from me. I wonder if she was related to that Southern General Jackson.

"Oh, brother!" I grumbled. "Just never mind, okay?"

"No," Rosalie snapped back. "I always mind, and I always will!" Rosalie crossed her arms and glared at me, not even allowing me to try to diffuse the situation.

"Okay, okay, already!" I shouted. "Can I please just finish my supper?"

Rosalie glowered at me, but waved condescendingly for me to continue.

But I found I couldn't. Why did even just one second of anything resembling a moment's truce or ease between us always end up in more anger and shouting?

Tears splashed into my soup.

Rosalie looked at me in confusion. "Why are you crying?" she asked.

Oh, besides the anger and shouting? I looked away from that image of perfection that couldn't make a proper PBJ but that I could never please and shook my head, making more tears spill out.

When I looked back across the table, she wasn't there any more.

She was standing right beside me, looking down at me as I now looked up into that beautiful, cruel, kind, indiscernible face.

She reached out with her hand, and a cold-rose-scented-marble finger captured a tear spilling down my cheek.

I stopped breathing as she brought her finger up to her face, examining it pensively.

Oh, my God! Oh, my God! My dream from last night was happening for real right in front of my terrified eyes.

This time, instead of wiping it away in disgust, as she had done this morning, she brought it to her lips.

I watched, transfixed by the terror of seeing my dream happen to me, as the tear disappeared into her sealed lips. I looked up into her coal-black eyes.

They weren't coal-black anymore, they were two scorching golden suns, just like in my dream, and the fire in them was blinding and overpowering.

"So sad!" she sighed. I could have said her words in exactly the way she said them for her. I could say her next words for her. She was going to tell me not to be sad. And then she was going take me to the bed, press down on me, bite my neck and suck out all my blood. My heart was beating a million times a minute.

I opened my mouth to stop her, to beg her to stop, to recall her to herself, but I was so scared out of my mind that no words came out.

She lifted me out of my chair with no effort at all, and my toes just barely touched the floor as my pleading eyes met her golden ones.

Her coal black eyes that I had been seeing exclusively of late were so beautiful, so perfect in their obsidian impenetrability, but they held nothing to the scorching clarity of these twin golden suns.

I was glad, in a way, that I knew this was the end: that these eyes would be the last thing I would ever see, for I couldn't imagine seeing anything more beautiful.

As Rosalie lifted me up my by arms glued now to my sides, my cheek must have brushed against her lips, because I saw the wetness on them from my tears disappear into her, as if she were absorbing me through my tears.

"Ahhh!" she cried out, and her eyes burned hotter. And she held me at arms' length, and she said it.

"Don't be sad!" she sighed out.

Oh, God! This was really happening. She was going to take me to the bed and press herself on me, and I would cry out, begging her to take me, not being able to stop myself, and then she would take me, and I would die in her arms, feeling her suck my life right out of my neck. Oh, God!

I had to stop this before it happened. I had to.

"Rosalie!" I gasped out desperately, "please!"

She rotated so easily, as if I weighted less than a feather. My back was now facing that bed, and she took a step toward it, with me, captured in her arms.

"Please, Rosalie!" I begged. "Please!"

Something like reason returned to her perfect golden eyes, but there wasn't a trace that she recognized me at all.

"Hm." She paused in her march to what would be my death bed, and her eyebrows pulled together in a quizzical look. "I wonder ..."

I was gasping in shallow breaths of her as the tears fell, and I concentrated everything I could into saving myself.

But I could only repeat my plea: "Rosalie, please!"

Then delight lit up her face. "Ah! I know!" she seemed to be speaking entirely to herself. She seemed to be looking right through me.

Right where we were, she laid me down on the floor as if I were a sheet or a towel. Before I could open my mouth, she sat on me, and got this playful and wicked and terrifying smile on her face that I've never seen before.

"Tickle-tickle," her voice sang out happily.

"Wh-..." I began in confusion, but then I felt the touch of ten feather-light fingertips caress my stomach and sides.

I screamed in laughter and surprise and confusion. I couldn't help myself from squealing as Rosalie tickled me all over. It seemed she knew every ticklish bone in my body, and she beamed as she tickled me. I was laughing so hard that I could only draw gasping breaths to laugh more and convulsively under her exquisite attack. I tried to bat away her hands with my own, but that allowed her to grab both my wrists in one hand, lift up both arms and tickle me mercilessly on the insides and outsides of my arms and elbows and all the way into my armpits. I didn't know I had so many parts of my body, first of all, and I didn't know how each of them were so very and so differently ticklish, too. Her tickling went on and on and on, and she joined me with her own gay laughter at my own helpless laughing screams.

It just didn't stop ... I thought I would die laughing, but then, eventually, she slowed and then did stop the irresistible tickling, and the last gasps and spasms of laughter eased out of my lungs.

I felt like jelly: euphoric and weak. I looked up at her, and she smiled sweetly down at me.

God! She was so, so beautiful ... and I wasn't dead, as I had dreamed in my dream last night ... although it was really hard to draw each breath from my poor overworked lungs and tummy.

She looked down at me and reached out her hand very carefully to my face and collected a tear from my laughing fit. And I watched her, helpless again, not knowing what would happen next: we had departed so far from my dream. The tear disappeared into her sealed lips, and she sighed contentedly.

"There," she said happily, but then she became pensive, her eyes darkening ever so slightly. "But ... why are you still sad?"

I looked up at her, at perfection, at pure beauty.

There was nothing in me, her own words to the contrary, that she would ever see in me other than something to fix and then to forget. An ugly duckling, Bella 'Cygnet' Swan, to make a little bit less ugly. I thought this thought and despaired. I love her so much, and my playfulness from before and my fighting with her, as much as I used them to hide this fact from myself, could not cover this truth. I love her, but she will never see anything in me. Ever.

Two more sad tears joined my laughing ones.

Rosalie's eyes darkened further as she looked down at me in confusion.

But then I realized something.

This was not my dream. We were not in the bed, her legs were not between mine, but ...

She was sitting on my hips, anchoring me to the ground, and her hips pressed down on mine, not like the dream, but I felt the weight of her on me; I felt her joined to me. I felt her. I looked down from her darkening eyes to where her hips connected to mine and looked back up at her now coal black eyes.

Those eyes widened in shock. She was off me and had bolted to the door before I could even open my mouth to say what I had no idea what I would say.

Before I even knew it, I shouted: "Rosalie, stop! Wait!" as she put her hand to the latch to make her escape.

Chapter end notes:

Nathan Hale was an American Revolutionary. He was caught by the British and executed for treason (espionage). He is famous for being attributed with the line "I regret I have but one life to give for my country."

Of course, it is improper to cool soup by blowing on it. One tilts the soup bowl away from oneself and exposes the soup at the bottom of the bowl to the air above the bowl by gently scooping tiny spoonfuls of soup in a very elegant milling motion. Of course. ... And of course, one doesn't slurp one's soup. Evah!

I am grateful to my brother, the dad of marissasbunny(dot)com, for instructing me on the fine art of turning what I make (utter fail) into palatable chicken noodle soup.