Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, New Moon, or Eclipse. Well, I own copies of them, but that's about it. :P
A/N: So I was randomly reading Twilight fics because I'm in new-Twilight-material withdrawal (come on, August 2!) when this idea popped into my head. I actually kind of like how it turned out, even though it's not exactly what I saw in my head when I started to write it (then again, it never really is), but let's see what the rest of my fellow Twilight obsessees think, eh?
Much hugs and chocolate chip cookies to anyone who reviews – this is my first Twilight fic and I wanna know how I did! And also the first fic I've written in first-person, come to think of it…
It was a beautiful sunset. The sky was streaked with every color from indigo to bubble gum pink, but it still wasn't as breathtaking as the man standing next to me. It was to him that my eyes were drawn, and I could see the sky reflected in his deep amber eyes.
Even now, it was hard to believe that I had seen so many sunrises and sunsets. I had given up on doing the math by now; it didn't really matter, anyway. For me and for the man I loved, there would be many more like them yet to come. And I knew that none of them would ever be able to hold my gaze when it was so instinctively drawn to him.
When you're a child, thirty is old and a hundred years is forever. When I was a teenager, I didn't even want to turn twenty – not because I necessarily thought twenty was old, but because it was too old for a girl in love with someone who would never even turn eighteen.
I can't say that it really mattered much when I found out that Edward was a vampire. I wasn't scared of him, or repulsed by what he was; I cared for him too deeply for that, and nothing that he could do – nothing that he might be – could change it.
That was probably when I first realized that I loved Edward Cullen. Of course, I hadn't been able to get him out of my head practically since I first met him, but there's a line between being bewildered by someone's strange behavior and risking your life just for one more moment with him. Not that I ever thought much about the danger my life was in, at first.
There's an old saying that ignorance is bliss, but that isn't true, for me. I gladly traded – and would quickly trade again – the safety of a clueless existence for the knowledge that there are other sentient beings in this world, besides mere humans. I accepted and embraced this knowledge, because with it came Edward, and the chance to be with him forever.
But Edward, being Edward, wasn't happy with the idea of me becoming like him and his family. For a long time, this fact frightened and worried me. I imagined that he thought like that because he didn't feel that he could love me forever, because I wasn't good enough for him.
It shouldn't have surprised me that, all along, he was still only concerned with what was best for me.
However, I had already learned that I could not live without Edward Cullen. Neither of us are likely to forget that experience, but in the end, I believe it was worth it. Were it not for those horrible months, he might never have changed his mind, and I might now be a wizened old woman with gray hair and the same broken heart.
Edward and I were married the summer after I graduated from high school. Of course, he was also in my graduating class, but that wasn't such a big deal for him; he had already graduated many times in the nearly eighty years that he had lived as an immortal.
I guess most little girls don't picture their golden anniversaries like this, but yet here I am, looking for all the world not a day over eighteen – and more beautiful than I ever was in my first life, thanks to one of the side effects of vampirism – standing hand in hand with my eternally young (and drop-dead gorgeous) husband. He made me a vampire just the week after our wedding, so I suppose that's another anniversary, or birthday, of sorts, that will be here soon.
I could say that it doesn't feel like it's been fifty years already, were it not for the pain of the transformation itself and the terror and frenzy of that horrible thirst that followed.
The pain, at least, was expected. I had been bitten by a vampire before, had felt the venom burning like fire before Edward had removed it and saved me. I had known exactly what I would have to endure for the three excruciating days it would take for the venom to change me and stop my heart. In that instance, too, it was Edward who made it bearable; his cool hands enveloping mine, his kiss on my forehead, and just the knowledge that, after this was over, we would never have to be apart again.
What I hadn't learned enough to be able to deal with, however, was the thirst. I had been around newborn vampires before, of course. I had witnessed the sheer exertion it had taken just one young girl to keep from attacking me, even when there was an entire coven of vampires between me and her. And, judging by the way her eyes had glowed crimson at the time, Bree hadn't even been all that thirsty.
But it was one thing to see the effect that it had, and another thing entirely to actually experience it. My throat burned, my chest and stomach ached, every fiber in my being screamed for blood – the blood of humans. This (the vampirism, not the thirst, though since that is a part of it, I suppose I had no right to complain) was what I had wanted, what I had asked for and bargained for; but when I was rational enough to think about it, I often felt like I was losing myself, everything that I was and everything that I stood for. And I might have, if it weren't for Edward.
As usual, he stepped in to save me. He kept me sane through the bloodlust and the cravings and the uncontrollable anger that seemed to rise against everyone else on the planet. Everyone but him. I was never quite sure why that was; perhaps because I felt that I owed him that much. Or maybe just because I love him like I do.
That was one thing that didn't change throughout the whole ordeal. I never stopped loving Edward Cullen, and, somehow, he never stopped loving me.
"Bella?" His quiet, beautiful voice broke into my thoughts. Only the face that I looked up into could possibly compare to the beauty of his voice. The perfect, porcelain-pale face of a Greek god, the messy bronze hair with a few strands tickling his forehead and falling toward his eyes – the clear, topaz-colored eyes of the vampire. The eyes that had first confused and yet fascinated me me by their ability to turn deep black, and the eyes that I now had, as well.
I didn't say anything in reply – I couldn't. Even after falling in love with him as a human, and nearly fifty years as a vampire, Edward still had a way of taking my breath away. Figuratively, now, of course, though that had also once been quite literal.
Though I wasn't sure what I was expecting him to say, I wasn't expecting the hesitant question of, "Does it… feel like fifty years to you?"
Since I definitely hadn't seen that question coming (I'm not Alice, after all), I blinked in surprise and thought about it for a moment. There had been times, particularly those when I had been so unbearably thirsty, when it had seemed that time was dragging by so slowly that I didn't know how to handle it. And then there were other times, like now as I stood with Edward on the balcony of the secluded French villa where we had spent our honeymoon fifty years ago, that the ticking of the clock seemed to be racing by, and I wanted more than anything for time to slow, or even cease, so that the moment could be prolonged.
It took a moment for my mind to register the irony of the fact that he was asking the very same thing I had just been thinking about a moment before. And yet, somehow, the more I thought about it as I stared up at the ethereal beauty that was Edward Cullen, the more I was sure that my original answer was very, very far off base.
I could feel a faint smile tugging at the corners of my lips as I shook my head and answered in an equally quiet voice, "No. Actually, I'm beginning to wonder if I could spend forever with you and it wouldn't feel like fifty years."
Edward smiled, too – that crooked half smile that had always been my favorite. "Hm. Well, you haven't nearly gotten yourself killed so far this week…" He paused to brush a strand of hair behind my ear and let his fingers trail gently back down my jawline to grasp my chin. His golden eyes smoldered and his voice was barely over a whisper as he continued, "So perhaps, if we are very lucky and your recent streak of not endangering your own life continues, we may just be able to test that theory…"
Yes, Edward was always there when I needed him – saving my life more times than I care to remember, saving me from growing old and being forced to leave him, saving me from the grief when Charlie and Renee did grow old and finally passed… and saving me from becoming something deplorable because he had saved me. Even when I wasn't all that aware that I needed saving.
And as his lips pressed gently against mine, I found myself glad that there was no longer any real need for me to breathe, because somehow I had managed to forget how to do that again.