No copying or reproduction of this work is permitted without express written authorization.©2009 Marie0912. All rights reserved worldwide.

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

Hi, sweet people! This chapter was supposed to be chapter 7, but I decided to make it the prologue, since everything makes more sense that way=)

I hope you like it, I think I cried more than once! Playlist was Celtic Woman`s "Walking in the air" and "Vincent - starry starry night".

Prologue:

February . 2002.

"Your rent is passed due again, miss Hale. Pay up by the end of the night or I`ll have to throw you out," Mr Carson sighed, watching the young, blond beauty through the small slit between the door and the frame. She had the security chain on.

"Please, Mr Carson! He only just died a month ago! I haven`t gotten around to getting a job yet! I have to finish school...!" Rosalie Hale pleaded with tears in her eyes.

She was barely sixteen years old, for Gods sake!

But there was no mercy in Mr Carson`s eyes, and Rosalie knew that.

We all have to make a living, and leniency and mercy gave you neither wealth nor food on the table.

It was nourishment for ones soul, generous actions. But what did a soul need food for? What did the next life matter to him? To her?

What did the next life matter when you were suffering in this one?

Rosalie Hale was too young to be this old... Wise... Too young to be so bitter and familiar with the ways of the world.

But destiny and fate were wrathful and incompassionate, they had no mercy on her and they would not take it back. They would not take her back.
Give her her father back.

She packed her bags that night, having no money to her name, no relatives to turn to, no food, except for a Granola bar. She brought that with her and left her childhood home and childhood behind. Even though she still was one.

She had nowhere to go, no one to seek out for help, no support system.

She was doomed.

She was the pure, beautiful virgin. Innocent and inexperienced.

But one month later she was neither.

She was cynical, sinful, way more experienced than any girl of sixteen should be.

She was in his clutches.

She was lost.

He gave her a roof to sleep under, though only when it suited him to do so. He fed her when he thought it necessary.

He raped her. Over and over again.

He made her dance, he made her strip for strangers.

And when she refused to prostitute herself, he beat her. Hard.

She had nowhere to go.

Rosalie Hale died that day and an empty shell replaced her on this earth.

She stopped eating after a while, barely slept. Her performance on stage was getting worse, she didn't have the energy, the will to go on.

She was no longer scared of death, she longed for this life to be over and done with, longed to be out of his clutches so desperately.

Two years later, she finally had enough.

"Eclipse" closed 5 am every night, and this very night was no exception. She left the club and walked down the street, took a right and then a left.

She walked all the way down to the nearest harbor and found the railing, found the bridge, and she stood there, watching the icy waters.

What was this life she was living? Was it worth continuing? She pondered these questions and many more while looking at the currents.

The answer as a simple one.

No.

It was not worth it any longer.

The suffering, the pain, the loneliness, the loss of dignity and hope and... Everything.

She wanted a way out, and this was it.

Without even thinking about it, she climbed the railing and stood with her feet on the top of the small fence, arms outstretched and welcoming her impending death.

She let go then, of pain, of shame, of this earth, and she bent at the waist, letting the weight of her upper body and gravity doing what it was meant to do.

"NO! Wait! No!"

A male voice was screaming from up above, but Rosalie would not have hesitated to end her pain, even if it was not too late to turn around and face the man behind her.

She was free falling, the wind whipping her soft face. But life did not flash before her eyes like she feared it might be.
All a myth, she figured cynically.

And then her body hit the surface of the water, penetrated it and the current sucked her under, claiming her life and last breath.

Little did she know that the man on the bridge had jumped after her.

She fought the instinct to push upwards and find air, made her feet dangle still beneath her, even though she probably could have paddled her way to the surface.

Opening her eyes, she breathed out the last of air her lungs held, watching her last breath, her life float away from her with some sick, morbid satisfaction and could not help but smile.

And darkness finally wrapped her up in its blanket, unconsciousness claimed her and she let go at the same time as a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist and began swimming her to the surface.

She had no idea he dragged her to shore and re- started her heart, replaced the air she had released with his own breath, and given her back the life she did not want.

It was cruel for force her to stay, but Emmett McCarthy Cullen could not have known that when he pulled her out of the icy water.
Emmett had seen her fall, and his only instinct was to bring her back up. To rescue her.

But as soon her eyes opened and she felt the horrible cold, saw the stars in the sky above her, smelled the sea, he began to doubt his actions.

Because the grief of finding that Rosalie was still alive, broke her.

She cried like she had never done before, she pleaded for him to take her back in to the water and drown her, bash her head in with a rock, something, anything to make it all go away.

"Take it back! Take it back! Please, just take it back!" She screamed in spite of her gritty, soar throat.

She cried and sobbed and choked on her own tears, too weak in both body and in her soul to get to her feet and attempt to do it again.

"I cannot do that, girl. You are too beautiful to leave life behind," Emmett cooed at her, stroking away some wayward strands of hair from her face.

His palm, though recently soaked in Seattle`s icy water, felt blazing and warm against her cheek, almost painfully so.

She gasped at his touch and more tears were shed.

"I need to get you to a hospital," Emmett told her with a sound of finality in his voice.

Rosalie would have objected to that, told him no. Any other man would have gotten the finger.

Well, maybe except him.

But she could only weep, he was all she had ever longed for. All she had ever wanted.

Someone to keep her from drowning in her own misery, someone who cared if she lived or died.

Emmett carried her the whole way to his squad car, placed her reverently in the backseat and walked to the back of the car, retrieving the gym bag with a spare set of clothes he was supposed to change into after he ad gone to the gym this morning.

But he never did make it to the gym, because a beautiful girl was standing on the railing of a bridge, preparing to throw her life away.

He brought the bag with him and walked over to the backseat again, where Rosaly lay shivering and crying and begging for death to find her, still.

He had no idea what horrors or loss or pain consumed her life so completly that she saw no other solution than to end it all.

He had no idea, but as he gazed into her midnight blue eyes, streaming with salty water and frightened and so completely lost, he knew he had to save her some how.

It was not because he owed the world, not because someone had come along and saved him from his own pain all those years ago.

Emmett realized, watching her, that saving this girl was a completely selfish act.

He knew this, because the moment he had felt her silent heart start to beat beneath his hand, the moment he had heard her take a ragged breath and seen her open her petrified eyes, in that moment, he fell in love with her.

"Please let me help you, girl," Emmett whispered to her, his voice the most soothing and comforting sound that Rosalie had ever heard.

She relaxed instantly, her eyes trained on his.
In that moment, when their eyes met, Rosalie began questioning whether or not she really had died. Because Emmett, to her, looked like salvation and heaven, comfort and warmth and every thing she had been missing.

And with their gazes locked on eachothers, Emmett began removing her clothes, article by article, never peeking, never disrespecting her, never even tempted to, because her eyes were a hypnotic and deep ocean, and like Rosalie, only thirty minutes earlier, he was drowning.

But he was drowning in them and not in the icy water beneath the bridge.

When he had dressed her, they still hadn't looked away even once.

She was shivering and cold, but finally in dry clothes. In Emmett`s clothes.

Something deep within him stirred at the sight of her wearing his sweat pants and tee shirt.

Something primal. Something proud.

He came to the conclution that she would never be more sexy in even the most provocative kind of lingerie than she was wearing his clothes.

"I dont think you have to take me to the hospital..." Rosalie whispered after an unmeasurable amount of time.

She could care less about the fact that she was freezing, it didn't matter.

All that mattered was Emmett.

In one damn hour, that man, that stranger that she had yet to learn the name of, had become her whole world.

"No, I do not think so either..." Emmett agreed, looking chest-fallen. "Is there somewhere I can take you, miss?" Home, to my appartment perhaps. Where I have warm blankets, tea, a shower, a bed... More of my clothes to lend you, or give you. I want to take you home with me.

Rosalie`s eyes, which had long since dried when the despair of her survival had been drowned when she realized she had met her soul-mate, began to well up with tears again.

Crushed. She was crushed.

He doesn't want anything to do with you, you stupid, suicidal, selfish, ugly, slutty girl. He probably has a home, a wife, kids, love and a life he doesnt waste jumping off a bridge.

And that was when her heart tore.
Because that was exactly what he almost had done.

He had nearly thrown his life away, trying to rescue her from herself.

"What is it, what`s the matter?" Emmett had seen her start crying again and winced in pain, feeling physically affected by her emotions.

"What`s your name, girl?" He wanted to know, so desperately.

"Rosalie..." She told him, gentle as a whisper because if she said it out loud, it always sounded like a curse word. He had always made her name sound like a curse word.

"Rosalie... I don't think I have ever heard a name that beautiful..." Emmett said, honesty in every syllable.

And with those words, he took away all her shame.

"Take me home..." She begged him.

He swallowed hard. The way Rosalie spoke, with such affection and longing, made him wonder if she had a lover.

Had him wondering if throwing herself off of the bridge was simply a... mistake.

Though he could not imagine how.

"Where do you live?" He asked carefully, willing away the bile that rose in his throat when talking about Rosalie belonging anywhere but in his home, in his bed, in his arms.

She frowned again, cried again, hurt again.

He had hurt her?

How?

"I ... " she tried to tell him then, that she didn`t really have a home. That she lived with him on the days that suited him. But usually... She slept at Eclipse or on the streets. But as she tried to force the words out, they wouldn`t come. What would he think of her?
Whoring for that man, maybe he thought she did it freely, willingly?

But Emmett would never have thought any such thing, because he realized that for a woman this beautiful to throw herself off of a bridge and begging for death, she had to have alot of issues, alot of grief, alot of pain.

All other thoughts were banished now, his only focus was her well-being.

"Do you have anywhere to go?" Emmett asked her.

She stared open-mouthed at him, completely shocked that he had all but read her mind.

Rosalie shook her head gently, keeping her eyes trained on his still, waiting.

He smiled then, dimples in his cheeks, adorable twinkles in his brown eyes, adorable all together gorgeous and so gentle. He was a gentle giant. Her gentle giant?

"Yes you do, stranger. I will give you a bed, warmth, food... If you will let me?"

And though Rosalie could not see the fingers he held crossed behind his back, though she could not hear the silent prayers in his mind, she could hear the sincerity in his voice and see the hope in his eyes.

"Yes," She whispered, trusting him. Trusting someone for the first time in her life. Blindly.

Completely.

"Thank you!" Emmett wrapped her in a tight hug that she returned with the whole of her heart.

"Thank you," she whispered back.

I love you. Emmett thought. Yes, he loved her already. She was made for him.

I love you more. Rosalie challenged, seeing the statement, seeing his thoughts in his eyes and trying to convey the same emotions though her own.

He drove her to his apartment then, carried her bridal style up the stairs and to his shower.

He turned on the water for her, blushing as she began undressing before him. She was completly unfazed by his presence during her state of undress, she was so used to men staring at her naked body.

But Emmett did not know that.

She stepped into the shower, her eyes still gazing at his face, because never had she ever seen something so adorable and innocent and all together beautiful as he was to her then.

He blushed at the sight of her naked. He blushed as if she was something pretty, as if she was a present he had opened before he had permission.

And for that, she loved him even more.

She washed away the salt water as he watched on. Not in a perverted or aroused way, Emmett was simply making sure the water didn`t harm her.

It was silly, stupid even, the need to guard her while in the shower, but the water had been an enemy to both of them this evening.
He was still afraid that it would claim her before he had a chance to.

Seeing the fear in his eyes, though confused what he was scared of, Rosalie beckoned him over to her with a finger.

"Come join me... You are wet and cold too. I cannot have you getting sick on account of me, Emmett," She whispered.

His eyes were huge, his mouth agape, his blush increased and Rosalie fell for him even more.

He hesitated only for a moment, and then he stepped into the shower too, joining her, though still fully clothed.

She laughed at his modesty. She laughed heartily and freely.

And then she began removing the articles sticking to his body, one by one.

His breath was ragged, and his panting louder for each second passing.

His arousal was evident, straining against his trousers.

At the sight, it was finally, oh yes, finally Rosalie`s turn to blush.

She reached out with trembling fingers to touch the zipper of his jeans, but Emmett gripped her shaking hands and steadied them

"Don't... You don`t have to," he whispered and kissed her forehead.

She shook her head with happy tears in her eyes.

Never had she had sex and wanted it. Never had a man stopped her advances because he cared what she was feeling, thinking. What she wanted.

She looked at him while freeing herself from the loose grip of his hands, and lowered them back to where his sex was straining against its confinements.

"I want to," She promised with a whisper.

"I want you," Emmett promised, his voice strong and loud. He was not afraid to say it. Saying to the world that he desired Rosalie was not a sin or a curse in his eyes.

She had never felt so wanted, never felt so whole. She threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly to her, and then their lips found each-other.

Such fire in a kiss, such desperation in an embrace, such a need to get closer the world had never seen.

They crashed against the tiled wall, Emmett bruised his back.

His hands were in her hair, her hands were at his zipper, new-found courage and desire ignited within her.

She wanted him, needed him. Now.

Little did they both know that this consummation of love would be their demise.

Whoa...! So how did we like it? Let me know, you know I crave reviews more than my next Coke... (heh heh ... I totally almost wrote orgasm... yeah.. *blush*)

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