Musings and Ramblings...

Cinderella Syndrome

2008-05-20T16:50:12Z

Title: Cinderella Syndrome
Author: shannon_writes
Rating: PG-13 to be safe
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing: Rosalie/Edward, Rosalie/Jasper, Rosalie/Bella
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer's, not mine, blah de blah de blah, you know the drill... but oh, if they were mine...!
Author's Notes: A drabble that spiralled out of control! Enjoy!

The first thing she does when she wakes is remember. The touch of his lips on her skin is scrawled all over her with indelible ink.

It's painful and it's shameful and there's only these icy hands can wash it away.

She sits in silence and glares at him whilst he tries to ignore her and concentrate on forcing out the notes that used to come so naturally to him but have slowly drained of any meaning beyond gold and white and gold again.

“Are you being deliberately aggravating?”

She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and surveys him with eyes that are devoid of anything at all.

“Not as much as I could be. Why?”

He scoffs at that, under his breath the tiniest whisper of disbelief, and turns back to the music.

A moment later her shadow falls over him and he can almost smell the distinct strains of arrogance and lust and an abrupt return to reality as she leans over him and lets the curtain of her hair fall across his cheek.

“What?” she whispers, butterflies on the edges of his conscience, “You don't believe me?”

Her tone is teasingly incredulous, and there's barely enough time for him to hear it before her lips press against his and there's no room for anything in her mind but black.

His touch traces memories across her skin, scratching ideas that could be, would be, should be, stories that will never be her own but it's enough for now to pretend.

As their hips crash together she can tell herself that she's more than a broken little child, more than someone's doll to be casually toyed with until she comes apart at the seams and gets tossed away without a second thought.

And he can promise himself that she wants him, she needs him, and she doesn't only need him there to convince herself she can claw back some sort of control over this carousel of twisted comedy that she calls her life.

If they're both honest they know they're only here so that she can prove to herself that she's not some insignificant little piece of fragility, there to simply be used for entertainment.

The irony of the way she's using <i>him</i> is lost on her, but it doesn't matter.

Because right now she's got until midnight to stay Cinderella.

The day the two newcomers erupt into their lives is the day Edward Cullen realises something is wrong with her.

He watches her emotions go from fear to unadulterated lust with just the one stop in the middle that's so quick he can't quite identify it, but from where he's stood it feels like a challenge or some sort of twisted power-kick.

There's nothing behind her eyes, nothing but darkness that writhes like shadows from some personal hell, but still she leans further and further into his gaze, and knows he can feel every word she's not saying. He might not be able to read minds, but there's something infinitely more dangerous about him.

There's something in the way he finds this so hard that melts her. There's something in the way he's not only her twin in looks but in personality that lets her mind fall open at his touch. He's gone from brother to best friend within the space of a few months, and finally she feels like someone understands.

She hates it and he hates it too, and there's nothing either of them can do but sit in the almost tangible tension of their palpable silence and remember. They're crossing lines that were never drawn in the first place, and all in the name of solidarity her desperate cravings for power and control are merging into a crazed desire to hear him whispering her name.

It's only the day he finally breaks, in as much a way as he ever will for her, that she finds he's not enough. As her fingers dance over his chest in patterns that might have been patterns if she was concentrating enough to recognise what she was drawing, still the knowledge that she's stronger than so many is not enough to sate her undying lust for what is not hers and cannot be hers.

Her other brother confronts her afterwards, his promises that aren't quite promises already broken and forgotten, the girl she was and the woman she isn't.

He grabs hold of her by the shoulders, shaking her until she crumples in his arms and he can trace familiar lines down her face with his fingertips and pull her to him until he's close enough to whisper in her ear.

“What is it you want? Can you not ever possibly be satisfied?” His voice is harsher than she expects, his touch deceived her and she rails against it, her face twisting in disgust at his deliberate manipulation of her ever so delicate mind.

“Don't,” she hisses at him, pure hatred in her eyes, “touch me.”

But as hard as she struggles he won't let go.

“You're such a self-centred little bitch,” he spits back, “You really don't care about how this affects anyone but you, do you?”

It's not often she makes him angry but he knows that she's addicted to doing this for her own twisted confidence. And he hates it because he knows that it works for her.

It's the problem of being daddy's little princess, he knows. When you're used to getting what you want you'll never change. It's me, me, me all the way from the moment you're born until the moment you die.

Trouble is, death never stopped Rosalie Hale, and now he's not sure if anything can.

It's self-destruction at it's worst because now she's bringing everyone else down with her.

She's trying so hard to shed the layers of vulnerability that cocoon her, that she's steadily appearing more and more fragile.

But the irony of this is lost on her, since as she swings herself away from the window and locks the bedroom door, tiptoeing up to lay the gentlest of gentle kisses on her husband's lips she's still got three hours 'till midnight.

It's only as her fingers touch warm flesh that she understands what it was she wanted. It's only as she can hear the frenzied beating of one wild heart that she realises what control really is.

And it's better than she ever expected.

She needs everything and wants nothing. Or maybe it's the other way round. Either way it's only the semblance of power that keeps her from falling apart, only the way she can break them that stops her from breaking herself.

They talk sometimes, the three of them, their brother and other sister excluded to save them the pain. They've slowly come to the conclusion that it's a remnant of fairytale life with a very non-fairytale ending. They've finally realised what they should have known all along.

They wonder now if she truly knows how this fairytale is supposed to end. It's not a happy little Disney story, that isn't even a Disney story yet. Really, it's a harsher, colder reality. Because there's nothing after midnight.

And yet she still keeps taking, taking, taking, until they've nothing left to give and she can drop them for the next victim of her tragic self-destruction. For in the minutes before it ends she can have it all, the dress, the shoes, the carriage, all she ever wanted, and she's dolled up like the perfect princess dragged up from the ashes of her ruined dreams.

But with each wry smile at each new rung on the ladder to perfection, she's getting more and more out of control, and she's falling deeper and deeper into her own Cinderella Syndrome.

Empathy Is Just Another Way Of Syaing You'd Kill Not To Feel This

2008-05-14T17:02:25Z

, edTitle: Empathy Is Just Another Way Of Saying You'd Kill Not To Feel This
Author: shannon_writes
Genre: Angst/Romance... maybe
Fandom: Twilight
Disclaimer: All these pretty little people and their ugly little lives belong to the great Stephenie Meyer. Oh how I wish I owned them, but I promise you I don't. Awww =(
Summary: She knows more than anyone the way he's lied
A/N: I know it sort of switches half-way through fro more introspective stuff to more plot-driven stuff, and I'm not sure if I like it, but anyway, the Edward/Rosalie must be written, even when there's so little love in it that it oughtn't be Edward/Rosalie at all...

There are so many things she wants to say, needs to say, and can't say, because it would hurt more than just the two of them. She knows he's not perfect, she knows more than anyone how much he's lied, but still she isn't sure whether it would be better to say so now and let them hurt , or let them find out the hard way, and keep the pain for a while longer. She pretends so hard that leaving them to find out on their own is best for them. Best for everyone. By everyone, she means herself. By leaving it unsaid, she doesn't have to admit to things she never thought she'd dig up again.

This is what she hates about him. He brings out everything in her that's wrong, everything that she tries to keep away. He's the only one that makes her lie and cheat and hate. And, in a way, it's funny, because he hasn't realised that she's only a self-centred bitch when it comes to him, he makes her the very thing he despises about her. And sometimes it makes her laugh. But that's only so she doesn't cry.

She is used to being the honest one, the one who says it the way it is, and it's always been a good thing, until he twists it and makes it wrong. Substitutes her honesty for his own sugared sincerity, if sincerity is synonymous with lies, and makes her into the bad guy of the piece. Suddenly being right is oh so very wrong. And maybe, she thinks, it's because he's too weak to deal with her truth, because he feels the same way about her. Maybe she brings out the bad in him. Maybe they're just bad for each other.

Funny how the things that are bad for you are addictive.

At least for a while, until something drags you kicking and screaming back into normality and you slowly forget what made you feel that way, and steadily convulse with greater and greater disgust for the thing that got you there in the first place.

Funny how they like to think themselves original, when really they're so cliché it's almost sickening.

She doesn't say anything. She never will. She never has done before, why start now. She'll wait and she'll watch, and she'll stay behind to pick up the pieces. Not literally, she knows her face will e the last thing Bella wants to see if the whole truth, even part of the truth comes out. She was an intelligent girl. Give her a piece of the puzzle and she'd slowly find the rest. She intends to be far, far away if that happens.

But she'll end up being the one who has to piece everyone back together, if only because she's hardened to the shock and the pain, she's known it before, she knows what's coming. And she knows the way it will hurt. She wonders if she hates Tanya. Or whether she hates herself. Or whether she just wants to kill him for killing both of them such a long time ago.

She wonders what he says to her, to Bella. She never had the courage to ask Tanya. For all the honesty in her, she wasn't ready for that. Not at the time. But seventy years is a long time to harden your heart to the world, and the thought gnaws at her mind again, relentless and not half as painful as she would have thought. It just makes her hate him more.

'...one and only...'

'...never again...'

'...never before...'

'...keep you safe...'

'...never ever leave...'

'...if anyone hurts you...'

They are hardly original, they don't mean as much as the others, the ones that, at the time, felt like they'd been made up on the spot because anything said before, ever, by anyone, could not encapsulate them, who they were, what they were together. But even they are not worst. It is the ones so cliché and yet so blindingly powerful that it make her almost forget why she ever tried to leave it behind that hurt her most. The soft reassurances written centuries before that he whispered in her ear when she cried – cried? perhaps not. But perhaps it was not so different after all. Had she ever even cried to begin with? - and mourned the girl she was and the woman she never would be.

Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there

The thing that stops her crying again is the memory that she believed him.

She runs away, the coward the says she isn't but knows she is. This too, is 'better this way.' Better for who? Better for her. Again. But it's true, because away from him she is right again, and all the bits of her personality that he plucks from their dark corners and brings out into the sunlight – sunlight? - that she never wanted them to see, can be pushed away and locked up again. And here there is Tanya.

Tanya knows why she's here. Knows that it has got too much to bear, and that if she stays a minute longer she shall say something, warn the little girl that reminds her so much of the way she was. The beautiful, intelligent, brilliant little girl who is, like the other one, so easily overcome by honeyed words and sliding touches.

So she runs away, leaves it all unsaid, and tells herself it's for their own good. She doesn't want to be the one that does to Bella what Tanya did to her, albeit inadvertently. She doesn't hate Tanya, so she has no reason to believe Bella would hate her. But she knows she would. She might hate her for not telling, but there's always hope with that tactic. She can deny all knowledge or explain about Tanya and the way she fell apart. If she says it, they will accuse her of doing it out of jealousy and spite and hatred, all the reasons that didn't come into it. They think they know her, but they never have. They never tried. She blames him for that as well.

She wonders if she should write it down, a diary of sorts. People leave there diaries open accidentally all the time, don't they? It would be the easiest way, she thinks, the quickest, every detail laid out before her face.

But would she read it? Perhaps not. Would she have done if it was seventy years ago and Tanya did the same thing, if Tanya had known he way she knew now? Perhaps. If she saw both her name and Edward's on the paper would natural curiosity overwhelm her, or would she pass it off as her spiteful hatred put into words and ignore it. She knew she came across that way sometimes. Him again. Somewhere down the line the bad guy had become the hero and knocked her out of place. By the time she understood what had happened there was only one spot left.

She knows twice is unforgivable. Once could have been a mistake, if she believed in mistakes of that sort, but twice is wrong on the verge of sadistic.

My only love sprung from my only hate; too early unknown and known too late

She has no idea where the thought came from, a leftover remnant from a leftover time. And yet, still so very relevant. She scrawls it across the top of a page, neglecting an explanation of the words, screws it up, flattens it out again and leaves it, carefully placed, in the top of waste-paper basket. What good it will do here, she doesn't know, but it makes her feel a little better, and a little worse.

She gets the phone-call later. Alice. A vaguely unwelcome voice. A chilling reminder of the family she left behind. And there's a chill in her sister's voice that makes her stop.

“Alice? Are you alright?”

“Me? Fine. Bella? Not so much.”

She didn't expect it so quickly. And suddenly she's guilty because with the rush of compassion and empathy there's an undertow of relief. It's over, and it wasn't even her fault.

“She overheard Edward arguing with Kate,” Alice continues, as though she knows that Rosalie knows what they're talking about. A shiver runs through her, a strange idea though it is to her – she is never cold, she is never so afraid.

“Katrina? What...?” And just when she thought it wasn't her fault...

“Give her some credit Rosalie, she's lived with Tanya almost a millenium. People must get easy to read after that long. Special abilities notwithstanding.”

She reels with it, knowing that she was wrong. The butterfly effect, working in the strangest of ways. She's scared, and she's angry. Quite who with, she doesn't know yet. Apart from the way she's angry with herself.

“I thought she... she didn't do that unless...”

“Doesn't, but can. And well, morals are easily waived, eh Rosalie?”

They blame her. And so they should, she thinks. She blames herself. She blames Kate. She blames life in general. And she blames him more than anyone. Almost. She slams the phone down before she can hear any more.

Tanya finds her there, sat on the floor, head in her hands, sobbing when there aren't any tears. She stays there while Tanya drops to sit beside her, curling one arm round her waist and using the other to stroke her hair, all the time telling her it's gonna be okay.

It's always her that seems to break, even when she thinks so much that she won't. She thought she'd be picking up the pieces because the second time, second-hand, could never hurt so much, and it didn't, but still it does.

She wonders if it's really only the second time at all.

Edward Drabbles

2008-05-14T15:37:17Z

Title: Doucement Un Echo
Author: shannon_writes
Pairing: Edward/Rosalie, Edward/Kate, Edward/Bella, another one came out Edward/Rosalie (blame the plot bunnies!) and Edward/Alice
Rating: U
Summary: A few, unconnected drabbles that all turned out Edward/someone centric (but only if you squint)

Rosalie

She used to play the piano. She doesn't think he knows, she doesn't think she want him to know. She tries her best to ignore the crippling allure of the ivory keys as his fingers skit over them, stalks from the room once he gets too loud, pretending it's because she can't concentrate. Well, she can't, and it is on account of the music, only not quite the way they think. Sometimes when he's gone, she creeps in and softly teases melody of the keys, each movement almost furtive, as though, even states away, he knows the way she's stealing.

Kate

Is she too obvious? she wonders. Is she too far removed from the way she was before to be anything but blatantly obvious? She hopes not. And as she watches the girl's face she doesn't think she is, but she doesn't stop worrying. The blonde's eyes are fixed on Tanya. How typical. Tanya is like that all the time, she wonders if the girl has clocked that yet. Obviously not. The contempt in her eyes says it all. It is Kate who has changed, beyond all recognition, and if they weren't so wrapped up in themselves they might see it.

Bella

She lies curled up on her side, blissfully unconscious, unaware of the arguments raging round her. The Cullen/Hale divide, literally. She knows nothing of them, but they know her.

'No,' states one of them, the pretty one, blonde and breathtaking and utterly determined.

The twin stands with her, but wavering, the two facing off against their respective loves, neither of whom are quite sure what they ought to be saying.

It is a shame that the only two who have opinions are the ones who hate each other most anyway.

'Yes,'” he says, and it's over. He always wins.

Rosalie

It's a maze, this place. And she's lost. And she can't remember the trick, realises that's because there is no trick. Nothing works. Magic. Unnatural. Inhuman. What did she expect? It is laughable almost, the way she keeps on running, hand to the left, following invisible pathways that might be there if only she wishes hard enough. Hand to the left, hand to the left. Or is it the right? Is she slowly losing her mind, like she's losing her way? She doesn't know. She's lost in this maze of hearts and minds. Trouble is, she doesn't know it yet.

Alice

They dance round, careful feet in ballet slippers, skipping on the ice. They know it all, and it cuts them to the quick. They think they know it all, and sometimes that hurts more. They know nothing, and even that's better than everything. Because when they know everything, they have no excuse - every consequence is spread before their eyes.

She was born to be a dancer, he realises. And he? Well, he was not. Every step she takes, he is just behind. He's steadily falling farther away from her and he wonders if she'll stop twirling long enough to notice.

Lily

2008-05-14T10:46:56Z

Title: Lily
Author: shannon_writes
Pairing: another one came out Edward/Rosalie (blame the plot bunnies!)
Rating: U
Summary: He wonders if lilies are perennial. Wonders if it's over before it began.

It is winter. He expects it not to matter, but still he's not surprised to find her closed and afraid. Lily in name and in nature. Not Rose, never Rose. He cannot think of her like that, he's seen too many scars left behind by thorns to ever allow himself that thought. She is closer to a lily anyway. She is death and love and endless life, and the first touches of frost make her curl up inside herself and die. He wonders if she'll be back in the spring. In all these years, he's never really thought about flowers. He wonders if lilies are perennial. It occurs to him he doesn't know. He wonders if it's over before it began, if she's ever going to smile again. Through that first interminable winter, he tiptoes and whispers, watches and waits. Waits and waits and waits. And on the day the thaw breaks at last he leaves. He leaves her alone all day, and only checks back in the dead of night, to find her lying on her bed, eyes glazed over, the closest thing to sleep she has yet discovered, a tiny smile on her face. The dawn seeks her out while she lies there still, and as the gold spreads across her face and sets her hair alight, he knows it's not over. Believes it never will be. Then he comes back to find it's changed, and there's a huge bunch of violets on her windowsill. He can't look at her, or them, or anything. If he brought her violets she'd cry.

memories and sidelong glances, so cliche it hurts

2008-03-07T18:26:45Z

Title: memories and sidelong glances, so cliche it hurts
Author: me!
Pairings: edward/rosalie, emmett/rosalie, edward/bella
Rating: pg-13, to be on the safe side
Summary: years later, they battle for their twisted hate, just like they used to battle for their mockery of love

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4117025/1/Memories_and_Sidelong_Glances_So_Cliche_it_Hurts

LJ is acting up so here's the ff.net link
and yes, i don't know whay but i've started writing with no capitals today, i'll probably be normal by tomorrow though!

Fresh Start

2008-02-24T14:21:26Z

Right-o, from now on I am going to start writing properly, obviously lots of fanfic, but I am actually going to do some writing instead of procrastinating. So you'll see me a lot more active in fandom from now on!
All previous posts will be flocked, simply because they were mainly ramblings of my delirious mind. There will will be fic, fanmixes, ficmixes and (hopefully!) graphics, pertaining to all my fandoms posted here, and I'm going to attempt to keep this as my serious writing journal.
Enjoy!

Shannon x