A/N- It feels like ages since I've written anything, but when someone asked if I'd try writing another story from Rosalie's POV about when Alice and Jasper joined the family I thought I'd give it a try. I'd written about in from Alice's viewpoint in In Waking and Dream, so I'm taking those chapters as the basis for this. It's not going to be too long really, I'm just going to play with Rosalie and Emmett, and take a look at the relationships between all the Cullens as they learn to be a family.

As always, comments and questions and suggestions are more than welcome! All the characters are taken from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight universe, they are not mine, I'm just borrowing them with much gratitude!

Chapter 1- Approaching Change.

"I wish you weren't going," I murmured, pressing my face into the curve of Emmett's neck and shoulder and breathing in the smell of his skin.

"It's only two nights," Emmett said comfortingly, combing his fingers through my hair and running them down along my back. "I'll be back on Sunday."

I sat up and pouted at him, my long hair falling in messy waves across my face. "But I'll miss you."

Emmett ran his hands through his curly hair and groaned, "Aww, don't do this to me baby! You know I promised Edward that he and I would go on a hunting trip before you make us all start school next week."

I made a face at him, and then shrieked as he lunged and grabbed me, rolling us across the bed in a laughing tangle of bare limbs and long hair. We ended up with me squirming beneath him as he used his much greater size and weight to press me down into the bed as he nuzzled at my neck.

"You know you can come with us if you want," Emmett said as he nibbled at my earlobe. "There's gonna be bears…it'll be great."

I pushed him off me and shook my head. "I know, but I don't want to. I'm just teasing you, really…I know how much you've been looking forward to going." I didn't really enjoy the multi day hunting trips that the two boys liked, and I knew Edward wouldn't want me going. "You and Edward will have more fun without me. I want to go over my clothes and get things ready for school on Monday."

"Okay." Emmett stretched and then rolled back towards me, wrapping his arms around me and rubbing his face in my hair with a happy growl. "I know it'll be good hunting with Edward, but damn it baby doll, you don't make it easy for a man to leave you!"

I giggled, and squirmed free. "It's all just part of my charm." I kissed him, hard and briefly, and then slid off the bed before he could get carried away again. "Now, get away with you! I can hear Edward banging away at the piano in the living room in a way that indicates he is definitely not happy that you're making him wait…you were supposed to leave hours ago."

"He knows I get distracted," Emmett said, unbothered. "I've got to say a proper goodbye to my girl…" He flashed his dimples at me and then caught the pair of old grey trousers I threw at him. They'd already been patched on the knees and would be no loss if they were ruined during the hunting trip, as Emmett's clothes almost inevitably were.

I slipped on my dress and began brushing my hair as Emmett yanked on the trousers and laced his boots. He added a button down shirt that bore faint traces of bloodstains, and then unhooked his Cullen crest cuff from his wrist and tossed it carelessly onto the dresser. For a moment he looked at me with a half-smile, and then took the brush from my hand and ran it gently through my hair.

"There's one good thing about me going away for a little while anyway," he said cheerfully.

"And what's that?" I turned to face him, curving my arms up around his neck and moulding myself against him.

"I get to come back," Emmett said, his voice low, as he bent his head to mine and kissed me deeply. "I get to come back…and know that you're going to be waiting to welcome me home." Once again he kissed me, and for a moment the whole world shrank down to nothing but the taste and smell and feel of my beloved man in my arms.

I drew in a shaky breath. Am I always going to want you like this? Am I always going to feel like you're taking a little part of me away every time you leave? "I'll be waiting Emmett…but you'd better not come back smelling like an animal if you want that kind of welcome home!"

Emmett laughed, and kissed me again. "Promise I won't baby doll! Okay, Edward, I'm coming!" he bellowed, in response to a particularly stormy crash of chords from the piano. He grinned at me, his eyes bright. "Now Rosa girl, behave yourself while I'm gone."

"As if I ever do anything else," I scoffed, taking his hand and pulling him out to the living room.

Edward immediately stopped playing and rose from the piano bench with a long suffering sigh. "So you do still want to go hunting?" he grumbled to Emmett. "I was beginning to wonder…"

"You two are heading out then?" Esme asked, interjecting quickly before I could say anything.

"If Emmett has quite finished saying goodbye to Rosalie we will!" Edward said in exasperation, shaking his head at me with a grin. "It's only two nights Rosalie, and I'll bring him back to you in one piece."

I stuck my tongue out at him, while Emmett grabbed him and rumpled his hair. "Leave my girl alone," he said amiably, adding in a teasing tone. "I don't like being away from her either. You'll understand one day, my son!"

Edward snorted and pushed Emmett's hands away. "Get lost!"

Emmett laughed, and the two of them moved towards the door, speeding up to a run as they leaped off the porch and vanished into the trees.

I looked after them for a moment, feeling the tiny thread of tension settle in and knowing that I wouldn't be able to completely relax until Emmett was home again. He was a vampire and practically indestructible, I knew that there was very little rational reason to worry about him, but the tiny hollow place left inside me from his absence was based on love, and that was not and never would be rational.

"Rosalie darling, would you be able to help me pin up the hem on a new dress I bought?" Esme asked brightly.

"Sure." I knew Esme was quite capable of pinning up her hems alone, and had only asked me for my help in order to distract me, but for once I didn't mind. Despite the things I had planned on doing in his absence, the hours until Emmett returned seemed to stretch out before me for too long.

I followed Esme into her sewing room where she slipped on the new navy print shirtwaist style dress, and then stood on the chair so I could pin the hem.

"It's just the two of us then," Esme said companionably. "Edward and Emmett plan to be gone until Sunday, is that right?"

I nodded, my mouth full of pins.

"Carlisle is working overnight at the hospital," Esme went on. "He'll be home by noon tomorrow though, and he has the rest of the weekend off." I pinned the last inch of the hem, and Esme hopped lightly down from the chair and went and looked at herself in the mirror. "Thank you Rosalie that will be a much better length." She frowned at her reflection. "You don't think the print is too young?" she asked doubtfully.

I laughed. "Esme, you're not old! I mean…you don't look old…" My words drifted off and I shrugged helplessly. Age was not a simple concept for those in our family. The age Esme appeared to be, the age she actually was if you went by birthdate, the age she claimed to be…none of these were the same.

Esme giggled lightly. "It's more about looking appropriate as Carlisle's wife at the hospital. I've been invited to a lunch by the other doctors' wives and I had thought to wear this, but I don't want to look too young. Not when I'm supposed to have three rather big children going to high school."

"We're all adopted, remember?" I muttered peevishly. I had argued strenuously against the idea of Edward, Emmett and I being enrolled in school as adopted siblings but I had lost that battle. I knew some kind of ruse was necessary and the most straightforward story would raise the least interest, but pretending Emmett was my brother was disgusting.

"I'm sorry about that Rosalie," Esme said sincerely. "I know I wouldn't like denying my relationship with Carlisle in public, and I'm sorry that you and Emmett have to do that. I realise how awkward and uncomfortable it must be. But for the three of you to attend school it's simply the most believable story for our family."

I sighed. "I know, and I'm sorry I keep complaining. But it's a difficult cover story to keep up, sometimes." I grimaced as I recalled, with a squirming feeling of humiliation, the awfulness of being caught kissing 'my brother' Emmett at school, and the rapidly arranged family move that had followed. "I'll try with it though. And I think that dress is lovely…who cares what any of those old wives think anyway?"

"You're right," Esme said. "I shouldn't worry, but you know how important it is that we fit in and don't draw attention to ourselves if we can help it." She hung the dress back on the hanger and put on her other skirt and shirt. "I'll hem this now. I've done the alterations to your new school clothes too, so you can take them back to your room with you now."

"Thank you." I collected the skirts that Esme had taken in for me and carried them back to my room to put them away. I hung them in my closet, taking a moment to look with pleasure at all the pretty new things I had for school. Dresses and skirts and sweaters…it would be lovely to get dressed for school each day knowing that someone other than my family would see.

Despite how much I disliked pretending to be Emmett's sister, I was looking forward to starting at the new school on Monday. I enjoyed studying, and although parts of the high school curriculum were beginning to get very repetitive my education since Carlisle changed me had been patchy and disrupted and it was still interesting enough. I had also investigated the nearest college and decided I would work towards being admitted to their mathematics program

More than that though, it was the involvement with the human world that I craved. Even though we were forced to live our lives in the peripheral shadows of the human world, I loved being able to pretend that I was something other than what I was. I was obsessed with the life that could never be mine.

I was also acutely aware that even though time never touched me the world was always changing. I had grown up in the 1920s, in a society moving away from the shadow of the Great War. As my friends and I had danced and flirted and laughed, no one had dreamed back then about the bleakness of the Depression, and the horrors of another World War that we were hurtling towards. But they had come and then passed, and with the truth of Auschwitz and the other death camps, with the reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki now burned deep into the human consciousness, it was a very different world to the one I had known in my own human days. Unlike my peers, who were now all in their thirties, I was caught at forever eighteen and desperate to find a place for myself with this new generation.

With a sigh I shut the closet and wandered out to the living room, where I settled myself at the piano and pulled out my music books. At least with Edward away I could work on mastering his latest composition. I loved Edward's music but loathed playing it in front of him, knowing how my mistakes grated on him, so I always snatched any opportunity to play when he was away.

It was a pleasant weekend, even without Emmett. Esme and I sat companionably together while I played the piano and she worked on her scrapbook, we played several games, and then we went through the latest bookseller's catalogue and selected The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as the book for our next family book club. Esme was a little doubtful that Edward would appreciate another 'children's' book (he still bore a grudge about the Enid Blyton, even though I had said I was sorry!) but I thought the theological implications would interest Carlisle and could lead to some good discussion. I also pointed out to Esme that there was a science fiction novel, I,Robot, due to be published the following month and Edward would no doubt choose that even though she didn't really like sci-fi, so she may as well choose something she wanted this time. Esme agreed and went for the chequebook, while I flicked through the catalogue and marked other books due out in the following months that I wanted to look at. I always had opinions on what book we should choose but I never really lost out whatever the final choice was- I read anything.

Carlisle came home from the hospital with a bundle of newspapers and magazines which I devoured, before I waved goodbye early on Sunday morning and went out hunting. I thought it would be polite to give Esme and Carlisle some time alone, and I didn't want to be thirsty when I started school so I took my time and completely sated myself before I returned to the house.

Taking my book I settled into an armchair in the living room. Carlisle and Esme were on the porch, talking quietly, but I paid no real attention until I caught the distant sound of footsteps. I was on my feet before the cadence of the steps really registered, and then I was swept with a wave of unease that made all my senses flare into hyper alertness.

That's not Emmett and Edward.

The scent…it's vampire. Strangers.