Chapter Summary: Well, I said it. Kinda. God, I'm such a wimp.

Rosalie kept looking up at the sky, but after a while, I found I'd rather look at something else.

So I very quietly turned a little bit, and rested my head on my arm, ... and looked at her.

She looked so peaceful, just looking up at the sky, so different from before, when her face was twisted with anger, and irony, and hate, and other things that I couldn't really identify, but scared me, because I hadn't seen them in her before, and there she was just ... just so right in front of me, not giving me any space to breathe and not giving me any time to think.

Now, she was different. She was quiet, and if she were having thoughts, they didn't rip across her face as they did earlier. She was just lying back in snow, looking up at the sky.

I wondered what she was thinking to herself.

My arm was kinda facing toward her, so that meant my mittened hand wasn't all that far from her face. Just an observation: her face was there, my right hand was there. If I just moved it a couple of inches, I could have touched her cheek. Not that I wanted to, mind you, it was just that...

Well, it was just that her bangs kind of covered her eyes ... a little bit? And she didn't seem bothered by it, looking up through her hair to the sky — but ...

But she gets on these kicks, right? She gets all righteous, and she screams at me ... or she goes completely off her rocker, like quiet time yesterday, and like, well: just now. And when she does that she's, like, so sure of herself, but then I somehow say something that really takes the wind out of her sails, like yesterday when she was screaming at me about how she so loved saving my life, that she was having the time of her life and I said she couldn't because she was dead, so there, and ...

And she lost it. Just like now. Just like now, she looked so lost.

And, okay, I get it. She just attacked me, okay? And for, like, no reason at all, but I could tell she was on one of her crusades for whatever idiotic reason she got on these kicks. So, yes, I get that I was just totally violated by her two seconds or two minutes or twenty minutes ago. I get it.

But, it's like, all these grown up people in my life, like Pa, like her, they think they have to be all grown up around me, when they can't even tie their shoes without my help, and with Pa, it was like, I took over taking care the house, or else we would've lived on fried eggs for every meal for the rest of our lives. But with Rosalie...

I mean, she didn't have the fried eggs problem, and she could handle herself, or so she thought, just Pa thought. He could handle himself in a law enforcement situation, but that was about it. Rosalie could handle herself in a ...

Well, it's funny, she could handle herself, because she can't get hurt, at all, right? But you'd have to be really blind not to see that she's just this big ball of hurt, walking around, taking everything personally, spoiling for a fight, just so she could prove that she could match anything thrown at her, when all it was her just running around saying, 'See? See? I'm better than!' All the while knowing in her heart that she's never measure up to anyone that mattered: her parents, herself, Royce, the man who scarred her forever, Edward, the man who was supposed to be part of her new life but rejected her outright ...

Suddenly, I hated Edward for the callous bastard I now saw him as. Couldn't he have at least given her a chance? I mean, she's beautiful, but she's not shallow at all. I mean, Rosalie? A 'dumb blonde'? Not even thinkable. Besides all the blonde girls back in Ekalaka weren't dumb at all! They were smart and sophisticated and grown-up, and had boyfriends, unlike me: the 'dumb brunette.' And Rosalie, beside being this complex person, she's also really, really smart, — I mean, she can't, like, lose an argument, ever! — and when she sets her heart on somebody or something, there's no way she's ever going to give up on her ... I mean, not 'her' but whatever sets her mind on ... you know what I mean?

I mean, why would Edward just, like, go: 'Pffpht! Not my type!'?

I mean, that kinda shows him as shallow in my book, anyway, in case you were wondering.

Jerk! I thought spitefully, as I thought of Edward and what damage he did to this poor girl who was just left on the streets to die after being raped, and then she's turned into this bloodthirsty creature without her consent, and then, instead of showing any sympathy at all Edward acts like a selfish little prig because why? Because his family says, 'Oh, here's a nice girl, maybe you could ...' do what? I don't know. Go to the talkies? Or, they're top drawer, right? So go to the opera or something those high society types did, all dressed up in their tuxedos and evening gowns under chandeliers with people laughing and dancing by champaign fountains...

But he was, like, flat out: 'No.'

Talk about a slap to the face!

And then she ends up here. No champaign. No evening parties. Just plain, old, boring sky she's staring up into. And instead of talking with doctors and bankers and artists and who-all else she like talking with during soirées ... thrown for her! ... she has stupid little me, who has read some stuff — I can hold my own, okay? And I proved that with Mr. Jerkward who was acting all nice to me probably because he could feel all superior to me, unlike with Rosalie, somebody who was at his level, but he couldn't handle that — but me? I don't even have a high school diploma, and it feels like all my smarts just run away from me whenever Rosalie's giving me the stare-down, and I can just see her frustration when she has to explain every little thing to me.

And I see that in her face, that ... she's lost everything.

Just like Pa did, when Ma left, and with Pa, for me, it was practical, I took care of housework stuff and office admin stuff, so he could do his job, and we had, like, this: working partnership. Father, and daughter, working together to make it all work.

But with Rosalie, there's no practicality at all. There's nothing I can do that addresses anything she can't do.

Because she can do anything, just like that.

But the one thing she can't do ... is heal her heart.

God! I'm so stupid! Why didn't I see it before? Her haughtiness and pride're just masks to cover her feeling that she doesn't, well, measure up at all.

So, that's why I have these ... well, tender feelings for her! That's why my heart keeps going out to her!

Because she's heartbroken.

And that's one thing she can't fix with her smarts and her pride.

And instead of going around crying, saying 'woe is me!' and all that stuff, she just walks around, all pissed off, spoiling for a fight.

And probably, everybody up to now has been more than happy to just dismiss her as a pissed off ... well ...

Well, we don't think that word about people around here. We're raised better than people Back East, like, well, Rosalie who says things like 'sexuality' in conversations, and when she's pissed she says no-no words like the 'sh'-word, and the ... 'f'-word.

She probably, when she was back at her high school, would look right at a rival and call her a ... a, well, 'bitch,' right to the girl's face.

We don't talk like that out here. Neighbors help each other here in the New West, where the Indian nations are a real threat still, even with the newly established reserved lands for them, and they're nothing to what God throws our way for weather, drought and flash-storms in Summer, and then how many people die every Winter?

I might not like Kristen or Susie, but I would never, ever, think of them as that 'b'-word.

Just as people Back East would have no problem thinking of Rosalie as a ... you know ... a 'bitch.'

A 'pissy bitch' who needed a good ... 'f'-word to settle her down.

That's what she told me, anyway.

I would never think that, though.

I couldn't. It's just not possible for me to think in that way. I'm not Rosalie, nor her high school friends, whom I'm sure she had lots of, not like me. 'Friendless,' she called me. 'No friends and poor self-image,' she said so factually when she described me, and right to my face, too. That hurt. A lot.

She was right.

She said the truth hurts. And it does.

I think that's the only way she sees the world. That it hurts. Maybe that's why she's so casual hurting me. Because, to her, that's just the way things are. But maybe that's why she's so caring when she's healing me, because she knows how bad it hurts?

Maybe.

I moved my hand a little bit, you know, to brush the hair out of her eyes.

Those eyes flashed over to look at me, and I froze.

Even in her stillness, she's just so terrifying.

She looked down at my mittened hand. She looked back into my eyes for a second. Then she returned to looking back up at the sky.

Her lips pursed, and she exhaled a puff of air that blew the hair out of her face.

After a moment, she asked in a small voice: "Why are you looking at me like that?"

After a pause, I said carefully, "Like what?"

Her eyes returned to me sharply, and she rolled them with an exaggerated 'Oh, please!' look.

"After Royce raped me," she said so quietly, so dispassionately, "I didn't want to look at him like you're looking at me. I wanted many things regarding Royce, and I, eventually, satisfied every single one of those wants when we had our special time together."

She looked over at me, measuring me, measuring how her words were falling on me.

She looked back up at the sky and continued. "When I moved my hand to his face, it wasn't gently to brush the hair from his eyes, as you moved your hand to do."

Her lips turned down in a twisted, ironic grin.

"Those were not two things I wanted to do after Royce raped me."

I looked at her, looking so distant as she looked up into the sky.

"And you did everything you wanted to do to Royce, when ... you know ..." I said.

"Yes," she said.

"... but it wasn't enough."

Again, the hurting smile.

"... and you're still hurting so much from that, aren't you, Rosalie?" I said. "You're not happy, even though you did ... all that."

Rosalie kept looking at the sky, then she looked over at me out of the corner of her eye.

"Are you happy?" she asked.

I shook to my bones. "Rosalie, you just raped me, and you ask me if I'm happy?"

Her eyes flashed over to me, and I saw rage twist her face.

But then she looked back up at the sky, and her face became calm.

"Tactless of me, I know," she said dispassionately.

"You didn't even say you're sorry!" I accused, hurting.

"Will it help you if I say I'm sorry?" she asked, confusion coloring her voice.

"Yes," I answered, my eyes narrowing to slits.

In a flash, Rosalie turned in place, facing me full-on. I flinched hard, but then she grabbed my mittened hand, and I shuttered at her touch.

She held my hand in both of hers, for a moment, letting my heartbeat return to something like 'just-below-panic' levels, and said, looking me right in my eye: "I'm sorry."

She held my hand for another second, then let it go. She turned back toward looking up at the sky, and sighed.

"See?" she said sadly, "Saying 'I'm sorry' doesn't help."

I looked at her. Now I knew what she was doing. Now I knew what she always does: she was beating herself up.

I should've seen it before, if I weren't so busy beating my own self up so well.

"Why do you say that, Rosalie?"

She smirked. "You flinched away from me. You can't stand my touch. You're scared of me."

She smiled to herself. "And I so wanted ... this. For you to fear me for what I am: a monster. For you to hate me. And now you do. Yay. I win."

I wonder if she could cry, would she be crying now?

Actually, I didn't have to wonder that.

"Rosalie, I don't hate you."

She snorted a "Yeah, right!" disparagingly. "And I swore that if anybody did to you what Royce did to me that I would so ..."

Her breathing became belabored. "But I did that. And I..."

WHAM!

I gasped, she started punching her own face into the ground, the ground shaking with the blows, each one a thunderclap as she berated herself.

"can't..."

WHAM!

"destroy..."

WHAM!

Then she shrieked: "MYSELF!"

WHAM!

"Rosalie!" I screamed. "Stop! Stop! Please, stop!"

She stopped. Just like that. She had hammered her own head into the frost-hardened ground, and you know how when you throw a stone into the water during the summer, and the water ripples away from the stone? The ground had rippled away from the epicenter that was Rosalie.

She looked over at me. "Why?"

"Because this is scaring me more, okay? You didn't want to scare me? This is scaring me more, okay? So just please stop it, okay?" I looked at her entreatingly with my eyes begging her to stop.

She looked at me for a moment, then turned away completely, and curled up into a ball.

I heard her whisper a resigned "Okay."

I reached my hand, tentatively, to touch her back ... but I didn't know how she'd react.

"Besides, you were hurting yourself, and I don't like that, Rosalie," I said angrily. "I don't like that at all."

"I can't hurt myself, that's the fucking point," Rosalie spat back petulantly. "If I could hurt myself I would've ... God, I would've ... oh, fuck, what's the point! What's the fucking point?"

It sounded like she was going to go on a tirade, but then she just gave up on everything, even her own self-mortification.

After a while a thoughtful voice asked from the tight ball that was Rosalie, "Besides, what's with you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I hurt you, but you don't want me to hurt for it?" she said, sounding puzzled at the imbalance of justice, I guess.

"No," I said ... then I thought about that. "No, but you're hurting a lot, anyway ... inside, right?"

The ball that was Rosalie tightened further.

My hand inched to her back, and raised up to her shoulder, resting there.

She didn't flinch. She didn't shrug me off.

But, inside, I was vibrating, in turmoil. I was reaching out, and touching her, to comfort her, but I was still scared that she could just whip around and ... and do what? Scenarios flew through my mind, all of her angry, and forceful, throwing me around, grabbing me, throwing me down, mounting me, staring down at me with her cruel, cruel smile as she pushed weak, little me any way she wanted.

She could do that in an instant, and these images flashed through my mind, but I pressed my hand more firmly on her shoulder blade, defying these things to come true, spiting them.

Rosalie may be 'Rosalie Hale.' But, I could fight against what I was afraid of, too, not with her pride or her determination or smarts, but with ...

With me. I could fight against what I was afraid of by being me.

"Rosalie," I said timidly. "Can you face me, please? I have a question."

She didn't turn. "Don't go there," was her response.

"What?" I asked, taken aback.

"'Rosalie, why did you do that?' you were about to ask. Don't. If you ask for justifications from a monster, then you'll get monstrous justifications. I didn't ask why Royce raped me; my vindication needed no justification from him. He did what he did to me. Then I did what I did to him. Getting reasons for ... this ..." — her hand snaked up and waved vaguely at the air — "... won't help you, it'll only hurt you more, because you'll either fight those reasons, or you'll blame yourself for them. Don't listen to a monster and its reasons, lest you become one."

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for that lecture, Rosalie. That wasn't my question."

There was a thoughtful pause.

Disbelief: "That wasn't your question?"

"No, it wasn't," I said quietly.

Rosalie very carefully turned and faced me, her eyebrows creased, her eyes measuring me.

"What is your question?" she asked.

She was looking at me. She was listening to me.

I swallowed. I knew what I had to ask, but now, with Rosalie's very critical eyes on me, I didn't know how to ask it any more. And it was all so clear to me ten seconds ago.

I was afraid, or, more correctly, I just knew that I couldn't ask it Rosalie-smart, that I'd mess it up somehow, now, with her regarding me like that.

I sighed. I can't ask it like her, so I'll just have to ask it like me.

"So, like, in the cabin this morning?" I said. "I was, like, so angry!"

I have to stop saying 'like.'

"And you were ... like..."

Shit. I said 'like' again. I sighed.

"You were, like, holding me? Okay? And then you taught me some signs, and you were so pleased."

I looked to her for confirmation, and her lips quirked into a smile.

"Then ... this happened now."

And I took my mittened hand lying palm up in the snow, and flipped it over.

"And you did that yesterday. You screamed and screamed and screamed at me, but then you bathed me and tucked me into bed."

I flipped my hand back over to palm up.

"And then we had quiet time, and you let me read the Jane Austen book, but then you, like, ... snapped."

I flipped my hand, putting my palm on the snow.

I looked to her. She waited.

"Rosalie ... why?" I asked.

"Trying to classify me, are you, little one?" She asked kindly, but a hint of superiority entered her voice and her eyes.

"I'm trying to understand!" I shot back fiercely.

Rosalie grimaced. "So you can say to yourself, 'This is when she's nice, so I can do this.' and 'This is when she's on the warpath, I think I'll just pretend I'm still asleep until she leaves so I don't get hurt'?"

"No," I said, blushing, offended. "That's not it."

"Then what is 'it'?" she asked levelly.

I took in a gasp of air. We were playing her game. The game where she always wins. The game where she asks the questions that she has all the answers to.

"Rosalie, please," I begged. "It has to make sense. It has to make sense, because if it doesn't make sense then ..."

Shit. I'm crying. And I'm talking like somebody from Back East.

Not good.

"...then it doesn't make sense. It has to make sense, Rosalie."

I know I can't win the intellectual game against her. But maybe if I did what she said, and put my heart on the line, maybe that would work where what didn't work was me trying to answer her questions correctly and always being wrong and being corrected and upbraided by her.

She tilted her head a little to the side thoughtfully.

"Why does it have to make sense?" she asked.

And she asked that, not as a college professor, lecturing Bella-the-frosh, but she asked it as a child, wanting to know why it was important to me.

She was telling me I had to dig deeper.

So I did. I closed my eyes for a second. Then I put it all, right into the palm of her hand.

"It has to make sense, Rosalie," I said, "because if it doesn't make sense, this constant flipping will ..."

I gulped, then I breathed out: "I'll go insane."

There. She had me right now. I put it all, right there, and she could take that, take me, right to an asylum if she wanted to.

I risked everything.

Rosalie scowled, displeased.

The shock of her scowl was ...

"That's a tautology, not an answer," she said, distaste evident in her disappointed tone.

Oh, God, no. I risked everything. So now she could have me carted away, and she was saying that that's not good enough?

I didn't know what to do.

"That's a what?" I asked helplessly.

"It's a tautology for you to say, 'if nothing makes sense, I'll go insane.'" she stated coolly, frowning at me. "When nothing makes sense, you act on that nonsense and are diagnosed with dementia ... insanity. You answered my question of 'why must it make sense,' with 'because it won't make sense if it doesn't.'"

She regarded me. "Do you see the tautology?"

She didn't bother defining the word, but I got the meaning loud and clear. I nodded sadly, defeated, again, no matter what I tried.

"So," she said, "I'm asking 'why must it make sense?' Sweetheart, why must it make sense?"

She looked at me.

It almost looked like she were pleading with me.

I didn't know for what.

And I didn't know how to answer her question anymore.

My spirits didn't even lift, and wonder, when she called me 'sweetheart,' ... I was that dejected.

I looked to her, helplessly.

She smiled sadly. "When you asked for it to make sense, you were holding out for something. You were hoping for something. You don't need things to make sense when you hold out no hope, you just go to school, or go to your job, or 'live your life' vacuously passing the time because there's nothing to do about it as there's no point. I know. But it has to make sense when you do have something, a beacon, a ray of hope. What is that hope for you?"

I looked away from her, and thought about what she said. And wondered why it had to make sense for me.

And then it hit me.

Hard.

And the tears started falling.

"What is it?" she asked quietly.

I smiled through my tears. "You're gonna laugh at me."

She smiled. "And that's why you're crying?"

"Yes!" I cried. And when I said 'I cried,' I actually cried that word right out of my guts.

"Tell me," she said kindly.

I closed my eyes, and let more tears hit my scarf and coat on the snow.

"Okay," I capitulated. "Whatever. Just try not to laugh, okay?"

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

"You know what I hope for, Rosalie?"

God, my chest was so tight it hurt.

"Okay," I said, "I hope that, okay, tomorrow, when I wake up, and you're there, that you hold me when I'm crying, okay? That's what I hope for."

I couldn't see her anymore through my tears, just a blur of white upon white. Rosalie, on snow.

I felt her turn away, and look up to the sky.

"No," she said, "that's ridiculous."

I smiled, so hurt, biting my lips. "I asked you not to laugh at me, Rosalie."

"I'm not laughing," she said seriously.

"You said, ..." I said, "you said: 'that's ridiculous.' 'Ridicule,' Rosalie, is something that you're making fun of ... it's something that you're laughing at."

She turned back to face me. My tears had stopped, so now she was a white blur with two black smudges for her eyes.

Her hand reached out to touch my face. She moved it so slowly, and when it touched my cheek, I didn't flinch this time.

I didn't need to. I had found my reason. My hope.

She looked into my eyes. "I say that it's ridiculous, because there is no hope in me. I am not your hope. I am what shatters and destroys you. You see it now. You will see it later. Do not put your hope in what can only disappoint you ultimately."

"You know, Rosalie," I said, getting angry, "I've heard that line, but now I gotta call it out as ..."

I paused, thinking of what to say.

"'Bullshit,' is the word you're looking for?" Rosalie suggested helpfully, smiling.

"Uh," I responded. I don't think I would've come up with that word. "Anyway, you say you're like that, but okay, flip again, because at first you were like, 'ha-ha, I'm gonna kill ya!' and then you're all like, 'Oh, I have to make sure you get to heaven,' and everything. Where the ..." I paused again, looking for a 'where the...' Nothing came to mind, so I pressed on: "... something ... does that come from, huh?"

Rosalie was actually smiling at me. "You are just too cute for words when you try to pretend that you're a feisty little tiger kitten, aren't you?"

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Yeah, not answering the question, I see. So, okay, Miss I'm-your-destruction-no-hope-whatever, you say that I can't have that hope, well, guess what, I do."

"So there," I added for good measure, glaring at her as I crossed my arms over my chest.

She was silent.

Then she turned and looked up at the sky again.

Wait.

What?

Was she ... losing?

"This cannot be," she said quietly. "You are simply ... this happens with patients and their nurses ... or, in Esme's case, with her doctor. With prisoners and their guards. You don't hold out your hope for me at all, it's simply that ..."

"Uh, no, Rosalie," I said quickly, interrupting her. "You're wrong. You said before it was me, right? Well, now, it's you."

She didn't look over at me.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Okay, doctors and nurses and guards and all that sounds like you're just trying anything now, okay?"

"Please explain," she said.

She always seemed to get so quiet when she was so serious.

"Okay, Rosalie. You're here. That's it."

She frowned.

"So if it were someone else, you would hope in them?" she asked.

"Who?" I challenged.

"Anyone else," she countered.

"Like who?" I demanded.

"Well," she began reasonably, "if, well, if someone were to, say, bring you out here, and ..."

"Okay, okay, I get it!" I groused.

"So, you agree that ..."

"NO!" I shouted.

Rosalie did turn and look at me then.

"What?" she asked, nonplussed.

"Rosalie, okay, I get it, okay?" I fumed. "You're asking a ... what did you call it? Not a rhetorical question but a ...?"

I looked to her for help.

"Metaphysical question," she supplied.

"Yeah, that," I continued on my tear. "You're saying, 'oh, if somebody else brought you here,' but you're not saying who. And you know why? Because NOBODY ELSE would do what you've done, okay? Like, okay, Edward? I don't think so. Would Edward have done any of this?"

I glared at her.

She glared back.

"Right," I said, taking that as a 'no.'

"So," I said, "maybe another vampire, okay? Like go through all that trouble and I'd last exactly how many seconds with one of your friends from Atlanta or somewhere?"

"They aren't my friends," Rosalie said.

"Uh-huh," I said. "So, how about not a vampire, but some deranged psychopath that takes me out here, schools this little girl so he can play God and take me out into the forest and tear off all my clothes and do all those terrible things to me that you were just talking about before and ..."

"...that I did to you..." Rosalie looked at me, reprovingly.

I actually hissed at her. "Excuse me," I snarled, "are you a deranged psychopath?"

Rosalie looked back at the sky. "The evidence would suggest that ..."

"ANSWER THE GODDAMN QUESTION!" I shrieked.

Rosalie kept looking up at the sky.

I wonder if she saw the heavens.

I wonder if she and God were having a private conversation, that I wasn't invited to.

I wonder what they are talking about me?

"No," she said finally. "I am in control of my senses," then added regretfully: "I know what I'm doing."

"And do you think I can't tell the difference?" I demanded. "Do you think I would let a deranged psychopath kidnap me out here to this woods and that I would fall in..." Oopsie. Shoot. "... that I would put my hope in him, because he taught me some signs so he could shoot me in the stomach when the heat came and then he would take me out here and ... you know ... f-f-fu ... do that to me?"

"Do you think I'm that blind?" I demanded.

Rosalie was quiet.

"So, Rosalie, when I say you're my hope? I mean you are my hope! Okay?"

Rosalie kept looking up at the sky.

"Rosalie," I asked sadly, "why are you fighting this so hard?"

That got a reaction. Her lips twitched upward.

"Sweetie, your world is so, so tiny," she said quietly, bringing her fingers together, less than an inch apart. "Your world is a one-room cabin with one other being." Then she raised her hand and brought it to her chest.

"...and your experience in even just that world? and in the world you grew up in?"

She shrugged.

"There is a whole world out there that..."

Here she lifted her hand from her chest and spread it and her other hand, encompassing the universe.

"...that is so much better."

My lips twisted in a smile. "So, you want the best for me?" I asked.

All innocence.

"Yes," she said, glaring at me. Onto me.

Fine.

"Well, then, Rosalie, that's you, again. You win."

I glared back.

She stared back up at the sky and sighed.

"I am the worst for you, don't you see?"

No, I didn't.

"Name one person," I nearly shouted, "that is better for me, Rosalie. One person, I dare you!"

"I can't..." she began.

"See?" Miss I'm-the-best-there-is-Hale's getting a dose of her own medicine.

"I can't," she continued, unabated, "because I can't name one person worse than me."

"Edward Platt." I fired. She was always going on about what an idiot he was and a drag to their family, although I didn't see that until now, seeing how he treated her.

"It's actually 'Edward Cullen,' né Edward Anthony Masen. Good little Jew-boy. Rich family, well-respected in Chicago's society." Rosalie parried so coolly. "Doesn't count: he isn't a human person."

"Royce King," I said. Fire two.

At that, Rosalie hissed.

Now, me hissing? That's one thing. Rosalie hissing?

That takes it to a whole different, 'you just got yourself a death warrant,' level of hiss.

But then she was quiet.

"Well," she said finally, "maybe ... if it were you, ... and not me ... he would've ... been a good husband and ..."

"Okay, Rosalie, seriously, you have to shut up now," my voice was tight and clipped. "You killed this man, because he raped you and left you for dead, and you want him to do the same thing to me now?"

She turned in a flash facing me, and her eyes were burning with rage. "If he, or anyone, so much as looked at you in an ungentl..."

I waved her to silence.

"Rosalie," I said. "It's you."

She looked at me. "No."

"Fine," I said, and the tears started up again.

God damn these waterworks.

"You asked me," I gasped, "what my hope is."

I sobbed.

"You didn't ask me to make sense. You asked me what my hope is. And it's you, okay, Rosalie. You. Not anybody else. Because, okay? You're all I have, okay? You're all I have."

"So," she said reasonably, "if there were anybody else ..."

"Rosalie," the tears just wouldn't goddamn stop, "I can't win an argument with you, okay? You are all I've got, not anybody else. I know this, okay?"

"What about yourself?" she asked.

"Rosalie," I said, "you go out that door..."

I waved in what I hoped to be the direction of the cabin.

She didn't laugh at me.

"... then I wouldn't last two seconds, and you know it."

"You're exaggerating," she said, exasperated. "You've already lasted much longer than that when I go out on my hunts nearly every day."

"But then you come back. So, then, would I last two days?" I demanded.

She shrugged, and said, "Maybe? ..." then added. "Probably."

"Uh-huh. There I am. Whee! I've made it two days. Go me."

I looked at her.

She looked back.

"Why aren't you holding me now, please?" I begged.

"I don't want to hurt you," she answered.

"You don't want to hurt me, and you want the best for me, and, ... and ..."

I lost it.

I was crying and crying, and I don't know if I begged a 'please.'

I don't know.

All I know is, ... I was in her arms, and she was holding me, and she said, "It's okay, baby. It's okay. I've got you. I've got you."

Just like I hoped for.

A/N: To my dear Lexi(guest). Happy birthday. I cannot respond to your review if you leave it anonymously, so please make an ffn account for your reviews, huh? Do you see my birthday gift in the story? Is it a happy birthday gift? Or does it make you mad? sad? wanting more?

"Holy Lamb.
See the world we started is it so low again?
Like the light that's lost upon the stage.
So the more it shines
It goes away.

Surely then.
See the curtain rising to show us once again
All the magic of the Earth and the sky.
See the more we find,
the more we realize.

That every time
See the laws of nature keep telling us like a friend
Spirit of emotion
Dancing through the wind
High above, high above
So sure inspired again.

Like I'm telling you this story now.
Can we see through this mask of uncertainty?
Surely now.

How can it be so hard,
when all there is to know
Don't be afraid of letting go.

It takes a loving heart
To see and show this Love

Hold the light
Hold the light
Out of love will come a long, long glorious way

At the start of every day
A child begins to pray
And all we need to know
is that the future is a friend of yours and mine."

Yes, "Holy Lamb," Big Generator, geophf's transcription