"Alice is bringing you new clothes," Edward told Kiara as Bella held the younger girl's head back with her non-broken hand. They'd pulled up to the Cullen's household only for Kiara to throw herself out of Edward's Volvo as soon as the child lock was taken off the doors. She'd proceeded to throw up everything in her stomach, and also what Edward noted looked like black blood.
It turned his stomach a little - almost like the blood was rotten. Emmett, who had stepped outside to greet them, had also covered his mouth and nose a little before heading inside to get Alice to bring down some fresh clothes for Kiara once she stopped being sick.
"Holy shit, are you okay?" Bella asked as Kiara groaned, wiping her mouth once the substances had finally left her stomach. Kiara nodded, still crouched on the side of the driveway before she lifted herself up slowly.
"I'm fine," Kiara said, the lie obvious to them all. "Stomach bug."
"She's not fine," Alice said, having sped downstairs and on to the driveway with the requested clothes in her hands. "She's rejecting the imprint bond and it's killing her."
"Alice!" Edward snapped, noticing how it only caused Kiara's mind to continue to wallow in self-pity. "Just give her the clothes please."
Alice huffed, the usually happy vampire obviously harbouring bitterness at Kiara's choice to reject the imprint rather than accept her fate. She handed the clothes over to Kiara, turning her nose up for a second as she caught a whiff of the rotten blood that Emmett and Edward had both been disgusted by.
"You can shower upstairs," Alice said, her voice still low and annoyed, while motioning for Kiara to follow her. She turned back to look at Bella, a wide smile appearing on her face as she looked at the girl. "Hey, Bella! Good to see you!"
_____
"It's just a sprain, should heal fairly quickly," Carlisle smiled at Bella as he finished wrapping her hand up. Edward relaxed a little upon hearing that it wasn't broken, but it didn't mean that he was any less angry at Jacob for kissing her without her consent. He looked up as he heard three separate clusters of thoughts entering the room, Emmett and Jasper coming in from outside while Kiara entered from the staircase.
The werewolf looked at the boys before pulling the oversized hoodie sleeves down a little, knowing that she must look ridiculous in the large garment. Alice had told her that she wasn't sure if she was going to shift and ruin any clothes, and since she didn't have any spare hoodies in her size, then she was more than welcome to borrow one of Emmett's. It was times like this that Kiara wished that the other Cullen's would just wear normal sweaters or hoodies, but it seemed like they were all too fashionable for that - with the exception of the largest vampire in the house.
"Trying to walk and chew gum at the same time again, Bella?" Emmett joked as he sat on the counter, a grin on his face as he noticed the girl didn't seem to be in any pain. Jasper smiled at the banter too, having gotten more used to having the human around the house.
"I punched a werewolf in the face," Bella replied, giving him the same banter backwards. Emmett chuckled, his eyes drifting over to Kiara for second before looking back to Bella.
"Bad ass... You're gonna be one tough little newborn."
"Tough enough to take you on."
Kiara suddenly felt very out of place. Yeah, she knew that the pack had mentioned Bella becoming a vampire once or twice but she thought it was all hypothetical. She knew her brother was ripped up about it, but she hadn't realised that it was actually something that Bella had planned out and decided was happening. It almost made her stomach turn again.
"Are you wearing my husband's clothes?" Beverly asked as she entered the room. The blonde vampire was smiling at Kiara - something that surprised the shifter since she knew how protective she was over Rosalie and it wasn't like Kiara and Rosalie were on the best of terms.
"Yeah, I think so," Kiara muttered, her voice startling a few of the vampires in the room. They knew she was sick thanks to Jasper and Edward, but they hadn't expected her to sound so drained. "The cargos are Esme's though, I think."
"Excuse me," Jasper muttered, turning and leaving the room. Edward furrowed his eyebrows as he caught on to the man's thoughts, sensing the exact reason as to why he was leaving. He had been through a lot of pain in his life, but feeling the pain that Kiara was in was too much for him to be around at that moment.
Edward looked across to Kiara once more, taking in the bruises that were covering her hand that had punched her brother. He hadn't even thought that she might also need Carlisle to have a look at her hand since he had just expected that her wolf healing would sort her out. It seemed that rejecting the imprint was taking away from some of her normal abilities too.
Carlisle seemed to notice the same thing.
"Kiara, can I look at your hand?"
"Damn, Kie," Emmett replied, his arm now wrapped snuggly around Beverly. "What did YOU do?"
"Punched a werewolf," Kiara replied, mirroring Bella's earlier response. Everyone smiled a little, now realising that Kiara had stood up for Bella in some form considering she must have punched one of her pack mates. Edward's slightly smug face told them exactly which one it was. "Stung like a bitch."
Kiara moved closer to Carlisle, trading places with Bella. He rolled her sleeve up and hummed in dissatisfaction slightly, the girl mirroring his unamused expression as he continued to look at her hand and wrist in silence. Small talk continued around the rest of the group, and Kiara had became well aware of a set of footsteps approaching them.
Her heart rate picked up slightly - something that didn't go undetected by the vampires in the room, including Carlisle who had finally let go of her arm.
"It's not broken either, but I am a little concerned about your wrist - was this the one you broke previously?" He asked, the elephant in the room appearing as he mentioned the attack that had occurred when they had left for the first time. "Your wrist bone has healed but its not set correctly."
"Yeah, um, it hadn't fully finished healing when I phased," Kiara muttered, hating that everyone's eyes were now on her. "So I guess it just went where it wanted to go."
"I'd like to reset that, if you'd let me," Carlisle said before casting another look at the bruises on her knuckles. "But maybe once your healing is... better."
"It won't get better if she's dead."
The room seemed to freeze around Kiara. She knew that the girl had quietly entered the room but she hadn't expected her to speak up - or the hostility that was in her voice. Kiara turned her head so fast that Carlisle was surprised the girl hadn't given herself whiplash.
Her eyes immediately latched on to the blonde vampire, the pain in her chest muffling itself for a second at their proximity. She almost forgot about everything in that moment. She almost left all thoughts of her family, the treaty, her pack and her promise to reject the imprint behind as she stared at Rosalie who was doing everything to avoid her gaze now that she had said her two cents.
"Rose," Beverly warned, but Rosalie took no notice. She crossed the room and exited out to the deck outside, trying to avoid showing any emotions in front of the girl that had turned her world upside down. Kiara watched her go, her eyes not leaving Rosalie's back for a minute as the rest of the family watching Kiara.
There was tension in the room as Emmett went back to discussing the situation in Seattle with the other guys, but Kiara didn't even notice a single word of it (something that was proven to be rather unhelpful in the grand scheme of things). Her eyes were trained on where she could see Rosalie leaning against the railings of the balcony that overlooked the surroundings of the house, the cold air outside not bothering her in the slightest.
"Go," Carlisle told Kiara, placing a hand on her shoulder in a fatherly manner. Kiara looked up at him, seeing the same look in his eyes that he had given her at the treaty line when they had their heart to heart after the bonfire. She studied his face for a second, before casting a glance over to Beverly who was watching the interaction carefully.
Beverly gave her a court nod, almost as if she was giving Kiara approval to go and try to approach her sister. There was the illusion of privacy if she walked outside to see Rosalie, and while Kiara knew that Bella wouldn't be listening in, she had a gut feeling that everyone else in the house would be.
Bella smiled reassuringly at Kiara as the girl slowly moved past her and towards the decking, tugging anxiously at the end of the borrowed hoodie sleeves as she shut the door behind her. Rosalie didn't need to look up to know who had followed her out, she knew instantly by the scent that drifted across to her.
There was a deafening silence between them.
"Rosalie," Kiara muttered, the blonde girl tensing up being the first acknowledgement that she had given the shifter.
"Don't make this harder than it has to be, Kiara," Rosalie replied, still not turning around as her voice wavered ever so slightly. She knew that Kiara was killing herself - that was blatantly obvious for anyone to see. She had seen her throwing up outside, she had seen everything everyone else had noticed. How her eyes were almost lifeless, her cheeks were hollowing in and the bags under her eyes made her look like she was fighting a losing battle - which Rosalie was sure she was. "You need to hate me, remember?"
Kiara moved so that she was standing a little along from Rosalie, her arms now draped along the wooden balcony frame as she overlooked the forest grounds. A lone howl in the distance reminded her of where she was, and who she was. If it hadn't been for that, she'd maybe have almost said that it felt like how things had felt before they left - before there had ever been a Rosalie and Kiara. Before they had become them.
"I don't hate you, Rosalie," Kiara said, her voice sounding weaker than she intended. She coughed a little as she tried to make her words come out stronger. "I can't hate you."
"You sure don't act like that," Rosalie replied, her voice still curt and her head still refusing to turn in the direction of Kiara. "You're literally killing yourself to avoid being near me."
"This is my choice! It's not about you -"
"It has everything to do with your CHOICE!" Rosalie barked back, her tone almost causing Kiara to recoil at how venomous it sounded. She'd heard the girl use it once or twice for an occasional snark back at Bella or Edward, but she'd never expected to be on the receiving side of it without any warning. "You're choosing to throw your life away."
"You don't get it," Kiara barked back, finally catching eyes with Rosalie who looked back at her with just as much anger. "I didn't ask for this! I didn't ask for any of this!"
"And you think I did?" Rosalie snarked back, her past ringing in her head as Kiara snarled about becoming a shifter. "You think I wanted THIS? To be a monster for the rest of my immortal being? Unable to love, unable to have a NORMAL LIFE?"
Kiara stayed silent. She was aware that the rest of the family had moved on now, having left the room that joined on to the deck. Privacy, she assumed.
"I didn't ask for this either," Rosalie replied, her voice still thick with that venom. "But killing yourself isn't going to solve anything. You're getting a second chance to live - to feel the air in your lungs and the blood in your veins and the warmth of the sun and the coldness of the winter. You get to be human... you get all those things I can't have and you're throwing it away because of pride."
"Pride?" Kiara laughed with no humour. "You think this is because of pride?"
It was Rosalie's turn to stay silent.
"I'm doing this for my family. For my pack," Kiara replied, although it was clear that she wasn't so sure anymore. Sam had made it clear that she was welcome in the pack even if she didn't reject the imprint. Sure, Billy wasn't speaking to her but Sue Clearwater was - and Sue had always been just as much as part of her family as anyone else. "And I don't get all that, Rosalie. You're wrong."
"Get what?"
"Now that I've shifted, my life is on pause. For as long as I shift, I won't age. Phasing... it changed me mentally, sure, but it also changed some stuff about me physically that I don't know if I'll ever get back," Kiara replied, Rosalie understanding instantly what Kiara was talking about. "Leah... Leah thinks that this is it for us, for me and her, and I think she's right."
There was a lengthy silence between them as Kiara turned away to look across at the trees in the distance. She was sure that if she squinted a little, she could almost make out where the trees would break into the clearing around Sam and Emily's house. Almost.
"Royce King was the most eligible bachelor in town. I barely knew him. But I was young. I was in love with the idea of love," Rosalie spoke, so soft that Kiara would have missed it had she not been standing beside her. "On the last night of my life, I left a friend's house late. I wasn't far from home. Royce, and his... friends, had been out for a few drinks when I ran into them."
Kiara didn't like where this was going, and she knew exactly what Rosalie was going to say before she said it. She continued with her story, not looking over at Kiara or making any movement at all. Her eyes were slightly glossy as she recalled the events of her last night as a human.
"Beverly... she happened to be heading home too and stepped in when she realised what was going on. They... They left us in the street, thinking we were dead. Believe me, I wanted to be. Carlisle found us, he smelled all the blood... Thought he was helping me."
Kiara was tense as she noticed Rosalie clench her hands against the barrier.
"I begged him to save Beverly, of course," Rosalie replied, her voice tight. "I just didn't want him to save me."
"Rosalie..."
"I got my revenge, of course. Never tasted a single drop of human blood in the process - or ever, for the record."
Kiara didn't ask what her revenge was. She could imagine - and that was a story for a different time. The fact that Beverly and Rosalie were standing here today was just proof that Carlisle wanted the best for others, even if they didn't want it for themselves. His and Kiara's conversation continued to ring in her head.
"Now, we'll always be this. Frozen, never moving forward. That's what I miss the most, the possibilities," Rosalie replied, her voice softer now. "Sitting on a front porch somewhere, the love of my life gray haired by my side, surrounded by our grandchildren, their laughter..."
She stopped herself before finally looking back to Kiara.
"You don't need to pity me."
"I don't," Kiara replied. Rosalie knew she was telling the truth. "I don't pity you. I think you're the strongest person I know."
Silence again.
"You're making this harder for yourself," Rosalie reminded Kiara, her voice much more gentler this time than before. They both understood each other on a different level now. They'd had so much taken from them, and while Rosalie's was significantly more permanent than Kiara's, they weren't in the business of comparing traumas to others. "If you want to reject this... we can't keep seeing each other."
Rosalie took her silence as the answer that she needed.
"Goodnight, Kiara," Rosalie said, her voice colder than it had been seconds before. She'd sucked up her feelings and had turned her ice queen persona back on, almost annoyed at herself for ever letting herself fall for the mortal girl standing on the decked balcony with her.
She took a second before turning around, realising that she would have to pass by Kiara to get back inside and to the conversation that her siblings were having about the disappearances in Seattle. She was thankful that they'd all seemed to ignore her and Kiara's conversation even though she knew they were able to hear it if they really wanted to - but they respected her privacy enough to not.
Kiara felt her chest clench a little as she realised that Rosalie was done. There wasn't going to be any back and forth once the vampire left the balcony, there wasn't going to be anymore "will they, won't they" situations. The next time Rosalie would see Kiara was either if she'd managed to successfully break the imprint bond, or if she was allowed to attend her funeral.
The thought hadn't really crossed her mind until that moment. Everyone had been telling her that attempting to break the imprint bond was killing her, but she hadn't accepted that herself. It wasn't until she realised that she might never see Rosalie again at all, that it suddenly started to feel too real for her.
"You don't have to feel sorry for leaving and growing up."
Carlisle's words rung in her ears.
He was right - everyone would leave and grow up eventually. Heck, Rachel and Rebecca had left their father and the twins and they certainly hadn't felt sorry for not looking back. La Push was nothing but a memory - and an occasional weekend vacation spot - to the older Black children, and while Kiara knew that the whole shapeshifter situation made it harder for her to compare herself to them, it was like a lightbulb had gone off in her head.
Rosalie brushed past her, her icy cold skin soothing the constant burning of Kiara's, even with the hoodie sleeves between them. The girl reacted instantly, almost as if another being had taken control of her body. She lightly wrapped her hand around Rosalie's own, spinning the vampire around with strength that Kiara had forgotten her transformation had gifted her with.
They were face to face, and even the stone-cold vampire was unable to hide her surprise at Kiara's reaction. There had been no signs that anything else was going to happen in that moment other than Rosalie walking away from their relationship forever. Kiara had watched her walk by her, without a glimpse of doubt in her eyes.
Rosalie looked down at Kiara's hand on her own, before looking back up and seeing the change in the shifter's eyes. She didn't know what it was, but there was something there that the blonde vampire hadn't seen since they left Forks behind after Bella's birthday. A familiar warmth in her eyes that caused the cold vampire to feel like she was basking in sunlight despite the Washington moon shining down on them.
They were standing millimetres apart thanks to Kiara's move. Rosalie's eyes were focused on Kiara's, and their close proximity confirmed to her that Kiara had not grown since transforming - something that she had wondered since she knew all the others experienced growth spurts. Kiara was breathing a little heavier, her heart beating so loudly that they were both sure the other vampires in the house would be altered to it. Her eyes flickered to Rosalie's lips, her skin feeling like it was on fire from her touch.
"Rose..."
Her nickname was all Kiara needed to say. Rosalie noticed Kiara's eyes flicker back to her lips before she leaned in slightly. Kiara stalled, almost as if she was waiting for Rosalie to decide their fate. If she walked away now, it was over and Kiara would continue to break the bond. If she didn't, well, Rosalie didn't know what would happen next but she sure as hell was willing to find out.
Their lips crashing together, nowhere near as graceful as it had been in the past. This was a kiss of desperation, of withdrawal. It was like they'd been starving themselves of something they needed to survive and had finally given their body what it needed to keep going. Rosalie felt like she was floating, in a bubble just wide enough for her and the shifter.
Kiara had kissed Rosalie before. But she had been human then. She didn't have heightened emotions, and she certainly hadn't had an imprint bond that had been starved for weeks. The second Rosalie's lips touched her own, all thoughts of breaking the imprint bond seemed like delusion. Rosalie wasn't just a vampire that she was supposed to hate.
Rosalie was the one thing that tethered her to Forks. No longer was her love for her family and the pack the one thing that was keeping her in the state, but rather it was her admiration for the blonde that currently had her arms wrapped around her. Any thoughts of her father not loving her had vanished from her mind, the concept seeming irrelevant for the moment. Her brother, the elders, the pack... they didn't matter when she was standing in the arms of Rosalie. Her Rose.
Kiara Black wasn't sure what came next, but it was in that moment she knew that Paul had been right after all. She had to stop killing herself, and view this imprint for what it really was. It wasn't a curse, it wasn't some cruel trick being played on her by the universe. It wasn't a tool for the wolves to use against the Cullens or vice versa.
It was pure. It was golden. They were golden.
"Are you sure?" Rosalie asked, pulling away for a moment as her gold eyes looked back into Kiara's soft brown ones.
"Never have I ever been more sure of anything in my life."