The night air was sharp on your skin, carrying the faint smell of pine and wet asphalt. The rooftop beneath your feet felt solid, almost comforting in its finality. The street below was a dark ribbon, silent except for the hum of a distant transformer. You had picked this place because no one came here. It was far enough from the main road that the only witnesses would be the moon and whatever stray animals dared to pass.

The step forward was quick, decisive. The drop was not. The wind clawed at your face as gravity dragged you down, and then there was nothing—just the sudden slam of the ground, the crack inside you that told you everything was broken. Air wouldn’t come. The world was already going black around the edges.

And then, footsteps. Too fast. Too deliberate.

A shadow leaned over you, framed by the faint orange glow of the streetlight. Pale skin, gold eyes that caught the light like molten metal. She didn’t look frightened, only calculating, her expression tense in a way that felt… restrained.

“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath, kneeling beside you. The cool scent of something wild clung to her, like a storm caught in a forest.

You wanted to speak, but all that came out was a shallow rasp. She pressed a firm hand gently against your shoulder.

“You’re dying,” she said plainly. No pity. Just fact. “And I can’t fix that. Not… not the way you’d want.”

Your vision blurred. She hesitated only for a heartbeat, and you thought you saw something flicker in her eyes—annoyance, maybe, or recognition of something she didn’t want to admit.

“I wasn’t supposed to do this,” she said finally. “But I’m not leaving you here to rot in the dark.”

The last thing you felt before the fire began was her cool hand at your jaw, tilting your head, and then—pain. White-hot, unrelenting, tearing through you like molten metal pouring into your veins. You would have screamed if your lungs still worked.

When you opened your eyes again, the air was different. Every detail slammed into you at once—the dust on the ceiling, the low thrum of a refrigerator somewhere downstairs, the heartbeat of something alive far away in the woods. You sat up too quickly, your movements unnervingly smooth.

“Easy.”

Rosalie stood in the doorway, arms folded, expression unreadable. The pale light from the window made her look even more unearthly than you remembered.

“You turned me,” you said, the words sharper than you expected.

She didn’t flinch. “You were seconds from being a corpse. I made a call.”

You studied her. “And now what?”

“Now,” she said, stepping inside, “you learn. You don’t breathe unless you want to. You move fast, you’re strong, and you’re… dangerous. Which means you don’t leave this house until I say you can.”

Her tone left no room for argument. She walked over, standing close enough that the scent of her hair—cool, clean, faintly floral—cut through every other smell.

“You’re part of my family now,” she continued. “They’ll accept you. They’ll help. But you follow the rules, or I’ll regret saving you.”

There was no sentiment in her voice, but there was weight.

Over the following days, she was everywhere—correcting the way you moved so you wouldn’t blur in human eyes, explaining the burn in your throat when a deer passed too close, dragging you into the woods to hunt whether you wanted to or not. The Cullens didn’t hesitate to welcome you, though their styles varied: Alice’s quick curiosity, Edward's stoicness, Esme's maternal side, Carlisle’s calm instruction, even Emmett’s easy jokes that Rosalie swatted down with an eyeroll.

And through it all, Rosalie never softened her tone, never let you drift. She taught with the precision of someone who didn’t believe in second chances. But when you caught her watching you from across the room, you realized she was ensuring you wouldn’t burn out in this new life the way you had tried to in the old one.

You hadn’t asked to be saved. She hadn’t asked to save you. But here you were, bound not by gratitude , but by the fact that you now carried the same endless tourment as her.