Twilight Canon Fodder Challenge

Title: Close Your Eyes, Close Your Eyes and Relax

Contest Category (Rookie/Vet): Vet

Characters/Pairing: Rosalie/Emmett

Rating: M, to be safe

Canon Type (Book/Movie): Book

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. God owns the Bible.

Warning: This story deals implicitly with certain aspects of Rosalie's past, including her rape and subsequent vengeance. If you believe this will make you uncomfortable in any way, I urge you not to read.

Summary: Does Emmett's change have the ability to change Rosalie?

To see other entries in the Canon Fodder Challenge, please visit the C2 page:

http://www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/community/Canon_Fodder_Challenge/79719/

"I did murder five humans," she told me in a complacent tone. "If you can really call them human…I saved Royce for last. I hoped that he would hear of his friends' deaths and understand, know what was coming for him. I hoped the fear would make the end worse for him. I think it worked. He was hiding behind a door as thick as a bank vault's, guarded by armed men, when I caught up with him. Oops – seven murders," she corrected herself. "I forgot about his guards. They only took a second."

Eclipse, page 163

He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women he had healed and from whom he had cast out evil spirits. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from who he had cast out seven demons.

Luke, 7:8

Rosalie burst through the door, depositing the man that she had found in the woods on the floor of Esme's immaculately clean foyer. She ducked out of the house again, letting out the stale air that she had held in her lungs for the hour of hard running it had taken to get him back to the house. Still unused to holding her breath for so long, she took a few shaky breaths, the smell of spilt blood invading her nose, viscerally reminding her of vengeance and rage and past transgressions.

She shook off that feeling, not wanting to dwell on the past when she had dumped the future in a bloody heap of a human being on the floor of a house full of vampires, vegetarian or otherwise.

"Carlisle!"

The yell was unnecessary. The other members of the household were standing, mouths hanging open at the sight before them.

"I…I'm going to…go," Esme sputtered out, her eyes fixated on the pool of blood spreading on the rug, her upper body leaning forward unconsciously. Rosalie growled, taking one step over the man, straddling him in a crouch, prepared to fight her friend and confidante for his safety.

Edward grabbed Esme's shoulder, spinning her around and giving her a firm push in the opposite direction. "Right. Yes. Oh, dear," she muttered to herself, running to the backyard as fast as her feet could take her.

"Change him," Rosalie shrieked, still standing over her charge, listening to the slowing heartbeat. She saw the doubt pass in Carlisle's eyes and the rage built in her, crashing like a wave and pouring out of her mouth. "You changed me without my permission for him," she said, jabbing a finger at Edward and imbuing the word him with so much malice that Edward flinched slightly, "and you will do the same for me with him." She gestured impatiently to the man below her, crouching when she heard him sputter, coughing up blood.

She whipped off her shirt, leaving her in only a thin chemise, and used it to wipe the blood from his mouth. Cradling the side of his head in her hand, she wound her finger through one of his curls, smiling a little as it curled around her finger, a memory of her friend Vera's baby Henry playing in her mind. She had been laughing with him, bouncing him on her knee while he gurgled happily, his curls bouncing and shining in the light of the fire. It was one of the few happy memories that Rosalie had of her human life. The smile, though, was wiped off her face when more blood poured out of the corner of his mouth. She dabbed at it again, moving the hand down in his hair to his heart, pressing down, feeling it thud languidly against her hand.

She sat back on her heels, turning her face a fraction to speak to Carlisle, focusing her gaze on the baseboard at the edge of the steps that led to the second floor. She wasn't going to beg or plead. She had done enough begging and pleading with men in her life and she knew now that it was useless anyway. "You change him or I will. I don't know if I'll be able to, but I will try." She lifted her head, meeting his golden eyes with her own and holding his gaze. "Do you want that death on your hands?"

Carlisle turned his head, meeting Edward's eyes and Rosalie hated the intrusion on their conversation. Why should Edward get a say in this?

Edward, to his credit, held his hands up, determined not to get involved, it seemed. "She will do it. She's completely serious about that."

Carlisle closed his eyes briefly, before opening them, a determined glint there. Rosalie began to smile at her victory before he even began speaking. "Okay, bring him upstairs."

"Of course," she said pompously, scooping him up and taking the stairs two at a time, going straight to her room and placing him gently on her large bed.

Carlisle was right behind her and he closed the door as Rosalie shifted him into the middle of the bed. "You do realize the implications of this." His voice was cold, impersonal. Rosalie recognized it as the voice he used for his patients. Carlisle straightened the man on the bed, pulling his legs down and adjusting his arms into a more comfortable position.

Rosalie scowled, but without much vigor. "I live the implications. Every day."

"And you're willing to take away his choice to suit your own needs?"

"Yes, he would have died anyway," she said, the righteous conviction clear to her own ears.

Carlisle paused in his ministrations and glanced up at her, his eyes reflecting the long three hundred years of his existence. "You would have, too," he said simply, his doctor façade slipping for a moment. It wasn't an accusation or an excuse or a plea for forgiveness. It was the truth, as only Carlisle could speak it. Rosalie swallowed heavily and nodded her head once. She didn't forgive him, but the nod was an acknowledgement and she could see from his eyes that he appreciated it.

"I'm going to do it now. Hold down his legs for me, please."

Rosalie laid across his legs, noting how dirty they were, smeared with mud and blood. It didn't stop her from putting both arms around his legs, streaking her white chemise with the muck that covered him.

Carlisle leaned forward, placing a gentle hand on his chin and turning his head. The man moaned softly, his eyes opening, but unfocused. She could see the hazel color again and she was able to focus on them this time. He had stared at her the entire time she had held him in her arms, but she had been too panicked to look down for more than a few seconds at a time. Rosalie closed her eyes, making sure that the crystal clear memory of his human eyes would remain in her mind forever, wanting to memorize them, so if he were ever to ask, she would be able to describe them to him as well as if he was looking in a mirror.

She could hear Carlisle shift toward him, along with the sickening sound of tearing skin and of blood flowing into his mouth. The legs jerked underneath her, startling her for just a moment, but she tightened her grip on them, laying her forehead on his lower thigh, planting a soft kiss on his knee and murmuring, "Forgive me. One day, forgive me for this."

She repeated this mantra in her head, squeezing her eyes shut tight, oblivious to anything but the feel of his warm, soft skin under her lips. She flinched violently when Carlisle touched her shoulder. He had a clean white handkerchief up to his mouth, delicately dabbing at the blood still around his mouth. Civilized Dr. Cullen would never lick his lips after drinking from a human.

"I'll leave you alone now."

"You're leaving? What if something goes wrong?" Rosalie felt the panic grow in her and was amazed at how quickly it turned into anger. "You're just going to abandon him?"

"Rosalie, I am not abandoning him. I'm leaving him with you, his mate. Capable hands, if I do say so myself." Carlisle took his leave then, and Rosalie slowly sat up, contemplating his words.

He had put a name to it. Mate. What Carlisle and Esme were to each other. What she was supposed to be to Edward. Without the concept, she would not have been bitten by Carlisle. The word had always left a sour taste in her mouth. It was an unwelcome yoke around her neck, dragging her down with all that it implied. She heard what Carlisle and Esme did at night, knew what Carlisle had expected her to do with Edward after her change. She mashed her teeth together, cutting off that line of thought before the simmering anger boiled over.

She crawled up the bed, watching the large man seize and cough, the fast thud of his heart indicating that the venom was spreading. He opened his mouth, letting out a soft cry that touched Rosalie's dead heart, making it ache in a way she didn't think possible in this hardened form.

The soft cry, though, turned into a strangled scream, which turned into a throaty yell. He thrashed and kicked and wailed at the top of his lungs, always with his eyes screwed tightly shut. Rosalie stroked his hair back, talking to him quietly, trying her best to sooth him. She told him everything she could think of about herself, all the superficial details she could remember from her life, skimming over the end and her time as a vampire. She promised it would be over soon, but the seconds ticked by slowly.

By some point in the middle of the second day, the smell of fresh human blood had dissipated completely, but the dried blood still scratched at her throat. She called for Esme, her friend arriving in an instant.

"How is he, dear?" Esme asked, looking worriedly at the prone form on the bed.

"As good as can be expected, I suppose. Under the circumstances."

"Yes, of course. How are you doing?"

Rosalie shrugged, not wanting to talk about herself. "I was wondering if you could fetch some hot water and a few washcloths. I'd like to clean him up."

"It would be my pleasure." Esme rushed out, straight to the kitchen, starting a pot of water to boil.

Rosalie examined him as best she could while he thrashed about on the bed. The blood was concentrated on his upper body, dried on his shirt that hung in tatters. She ripped it off of him, seeing no need for it anymore. Her eyes went wide at the sight of his broad chest, something foreign stirring in her that she pushed aside, averting her eyes to his childlike curls, but those only reminded him of the curls on his chest. All connection between this man and Vera's baby boy had been severed in the change and Rosalie was in the midst of sorting out these feelings when Esme bustled into the room with a basin full of hot water. Rosalie's head snapped up, embarrassed to have been caught staring. Esme looked between the man's bare chest and Rosalie's face and gave her a knowing smile, but didn't say anything, which she appreciated very much.

"I'll just leave this here." Esme left, giving her a little wink on the way out. She appreciated that a little bit less.

Rosalie blew the hair out of her face, picking up a clean washcloth and dipping it in the water. She began with his arms and chest, wiping away the flecks of bloods and dirt, touching the lines where the venom had healed his wounds, marveling at them even as they faded further before her eyes. He stilled under her touch, seeming to like being cleaned. She hummed softly while she was doing it, happy to be useful to him and glad that she seemed to be soothing him to some extent. The crease between his eyebrows and the grim line of his mouth indicated that he was still in pain, but there was really nothing she could do about that.

Discarding the soiled rag, Rosalie plucked another off the top of the pile, rushing when he started to whimper.

"It's okay. Shhh." His fretful whimpers made her eyes sting with tears that wouldn't fall and she moved back to him, deciding to start from the bottom this time. She put the warm cloth on his foot and he stilled immediately.

She wiped it slowly, her shoulders shaking slightly and she tried to hold back the sobs ballooning in her chest. She let out one broken sob, dripping the water on his skin and wiping it away. Another sob left her and another and another as the water continued to drip, washing away the dirt on his feet, her mind in turmoil over whether this had really been the right decision. In that moment, it didn't feel like it. Cursing another human being to this half-life she lived had seemed outside of the realm of rational possibilities when she had left the house yesterday morning to wander in the woods. But here he was, lying on her bed, being changed. She kissed the hardening skin of his feet gently.

She jumped a little when Edward knocked on the open door and she pulled away from his feet. She knew she had been caught and she looked at him, weary about what he might say and she was proven right.

"How very Mary Magdalene of you." The words combined with the smirk set her off.

"Are you implying something about me, Edward?" The overwhelming emotions of the last two days and her feelings of worthlessness coalesced into an unattractive verbal tirade. "Are you trying to say that I'm some kind of harlot and that he's going to forgive my sins? Is that what you think of me? How dare you, you stupid son-of-a-bitch."

"Rosalie," Edward began in his mostly patronizingly calm voice, a poor imitation of Carlisle's soothing ways. "I was certainly not intending to call you any such thing. I was only drawing a parallel between Mary Magdalene washing Christ's feet and you doing the same to…whoever this is."

"Whoever this is? Like he's a stranger on the street? This is my mate, Edward."

"There really is no pleasing you, you know? First I compare him to Jesus and you get mad and then I comment on the fact that we don't even know his name and you get angry again." Edward stalked out of the room to his own bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

He was such a petulant child at times. Always had to be right about everything. Rosalie hated how Edward seemed to believe that because he had access to her mind that he knew her. He didn't know anything about her, only giving weight to those thoughts that confirmed his opinion of her as shallow and vain. From the very first moment, he had taken one look at her and decided she wasn't worth his time, judging her on her looks, something he then dared to criticize about her. She seethed for a few minutes more, stewing in her anger, loving and hating the power it gave her, the raw energy that would pound through her in moments such as this.

She shook it off though. There was no place for it in this room. She had a job to do. The man's feet were only half-clean, so she returned to her work, wiping her anger away with each gentle stroke of the cloth against his skin. Her mind drifted to the content of what Edward had said, comparing her to Mary Magdalene and she bristled slightly at the implication. It chewed at her, the old worries and anxiety coming back to her. She shouldn't have been out walking alone like that so late at night. She should have said 'no' more, louder, with more vehemence. She should have fought them. She had been a strong human, hadn't she? She could have at least made them pay for what they did.

She smiled grimly. Oh, but she made them pay. She had taken the lives of the men who had harmed her to get her vengeance but hadn't taken a single drop of their blood, despite her intense thirst as a new vampire. Their frightened hearts, beating a rapid tattoo in their chests, had been almost impossible to resist and the memory of it was tempting to her, even now. But she had resisted, by sheer force of will; she had only killed them. Royce had been the best, the most frightened, not that she would ever deign to feed on his useless blood. He wasn't even good enough to provide her sustenance. Let the worms have him now.

The man kicked his foot out and Rosalie looked down, confused about what was going on. She could see the angry red mark she had rubbed into the top of his foot, leaving the skin raw and peeling. She gaped at it, devastated that she had caused him harm in such a way. The skin folded back in on itself in a minute or so, the venom in his system already healing it again, making it smooth and supple once more. But the memory of it was sealed in her mind. Dwelling on the past had harmed her mate in the present. She felt something akin to nausea welling up inside of her.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I won't do it again, she thought, promising herself more than anyone to be better to him. Be better for him. Her revenge was over and it had to remain in the past if she wanted to have any kind of future with him. That is...if he ever forgave her for condemning him to this life.

What was done was done, though. She would let him go if that was his choice, following behind him, making sure he kept out of trouble, but letting him live his life how he wanted. She would follow him to the very ends of the earth.

For the rest of the time during his change, she sang softly to him, crooning lullabies and humming the classics. He would kick and scream, but she held him down lightly, shushing him when he got too loud.

Carlisle came in more frequently, listening closely to his heart, saying "not yet" each time she looked at him expectantly, before leaving again.

Rosalie could feel the last of his warmth leaving him, his heart beating faster and faster against her hand, the thrashing becoming more violent. Late in the third day, he threw his arms around her, squeezing her with his new strength. It was the first time a man's arms had been around her since that last frightful night of her human life. She gasped, frightened for a moment, shutting her eyes to the memories that she anticipated would rush to her mind whether she wanted them or not. She had been through this so many times that she knew the exact pattern the memories would take: the hands pawing at her, the sound of seams being split, the fabric digging into her skin, the unanswered screams tearing through her throat. But the memories, and more importantly, the feelings that the memories typically generated in her never came.

She opened her eyes, amazed that all she felt were arms around her. There was no panic or fear, despite her initial reaction. It was...innocent, almost. Was she still thinking of Henry, Vera's chubby little baby? Was she seeing the innocent little boy, instead of the fully grown and very strong man? She peeked down at the chest that she had exposed earlier, the same flip in her stomach indicating that what she was feeling was considerably less than innocent. What was it about this man? Was it the mystical mating process? Curing her of all that ailed her, wiping away the memories of the past? Forgiving her sins?

She shook her head, annoyed that Edward's flippant words had invaded her mind. Carlisle came in, taking long strides around the bed and just as she was about to ask what was going on, she heard it. The subtle difference in his heartbeat. It was too fast now and his arms gripped tighter and tighter until she could feel his heart beating against her own chest, sharing the last of his heart beats between them.

It stopped for a moment.

Then thudded again.

Then stopped.

And then thudded once more, before stilling completely.

She looked at Carlisle, worried that something was wrong, but he nodded solemnly, easing her mind a bit. The man's hand flattened on her back, pushing Rosalie even closer to him, making her breath hitch. She wasn't entirely comfortable with this and moved slightly away from him. He pressed harder for a moment before easing off of her and she let out a sigh of relief, wriggling her shoulders a little, relieving some of the tension.

She lifted her eyes slowly, not wanting to startle him. Her eyes skimmed his chest, up his throat, where she could just discern Carlisle's bite marks, onto his face, and then into his bright red eyes. She had tried to prepare herself for this moment, but the sight was a little too much for her and she blinked unnecessarily, closing her eyes and seeing the hazel of his human eyes. It was the past though and she needed to concentrate on the present. She opened her eyes and was taken aback by the soft smile on his face.

"Are you an angel?" The wonder in his deep voice surprised her, and she was confused for a moment. She realized, after a long moment, that he must be referring to her looks and she shook her head, smiling a little. Just as she was going to open her mouth to answer, he looked to Carlisle. "And is he God?"

She closed her mouth, not quite sure what to say to such strange questions. She glanced at Carlisle and he shrugged a little, clearly also at a loss.

"Yes, and you're Jesus," she teased lightly, unsure if her joke would be welcome, but unable to think up any other response in this moment that seemed both too epic and too intimate at the same time.

His smile grew for a moment, stretching his face and bringing out the dimples she had seen only a glimpse of during his fight with the bear. It fell though, his eyebrows coming together and his eyes darting back and forth beneath them. Just as she was about to ask what was wrong, afraid that she had upset him with her joke, his face cleared.

"I think I prefer Emmett, actually."

Oh. Emmett. It fit him.

"Hello, Emmett. My name's Rosalie, but…you can call me Rose." Her eyes fluttered as he brought his hand up to her cheek and she let out a breath as he stroked a line from the corner of her eye to the corner of her lip. "If you want, of course," she whispered nervously.

Somewhere in her mind, it registered that Carlisle had left quietly, for which she was grateful, but she couldn't concentrate on it. The scene playing out on the bed was too momentous for her to have the capacity to think beyond it.

She felt simultaneously like she was being broken down and built up again, sinning and being saved, remembering her past and forgetting it had ever happened, falling in love with the stranger here with her who felt like her oldest friend. It made her head spin or maybe that was the pressure of his fingers still on the corner of her mouth.

"I want to very much," he said, in a voice that made it sound like he was referring to much more than just her name.

She ducked her head, feeling shy and unsure of what else to say in this moment. She kissed the skin of his chest, closing her eyes and smiling her first real smile in years, feeling free of her demons for once.

Love is patient, love is kind, love does not insist on its own way. Love bears all things, believes all things, Hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

Corinthians 13:4-8