A/N: This idea was bugging me, so decided to just write it out. I hope it doesn't suck too bad. Oh, and as an advanced warning, it's really short. Sorry. Anyways, please R&R! D
Disclaimer: The Mediator and all its characters belong to Meg Cabot.
Forever Young
(Jesse's POV)
Oftentimes, it is possible to over romanticize the people we care about. It's a silly thing to do, to idealize another. I know this because I myself have done it, and I'm not so proud as to not admit it. It was foolish of me to think that I could ever spend my life with someone so completely opposite of me. Actually, it was foolish of me to ever think that I could ever spend my life with anyone. But when I had first met her, something inside of me changed, and would not allow me to see the rationality.
The problem I failed to see was quite simple, but it was in no way something that could be fixed. It was an obvious boarder between us, and even made physical contact between us limited. But still I refused to see. But really all I had to do was look at myself, at the reflection I didn't have in her mirror, to see it.
To put it bluntly...I was dead. She, Susannah, was a mediator, and still alive. Like I said before, it was an obvious problem. And stupidly, I had ignored it. But now I can't brush it aside any longer. Too much time has gone by.
She's graduated from High School, moved out of the house, and gone off to college. She's now in her sixth year there, and studying medicine in my honor. She's grown so much, but she's still as beautiful as she was on the day that I first saw her.
The years have been good to her, there is no doubt about that. Sadly, I can't say the same about myself. As more days passed me by, I never got any older. I never grew more handsome. I hadn't aged any. I hadn't grown taller. I was twenty-one, exactly the same age I had been when I died almost two hundred years ago. She was now older than me.
She still said she loved me. She still told me that it didn't matter how much younger than her I'd be than her from now on. She said it didn't bother her. But I know that it really did, deep down. Just as it bothered me. But she'd never admit it. I know she loves me, but now I'm beginning to sense that that love is beginning to diminish. She doesn't have that sparkle in her eyes when she sees me anymore, like she used to when she was younger.
The separation has hurt our relationship. We now go on for months without seeing each other, due to the fact that school and work takes up the majority of her time. I'd be uncomfortable around her. I found that I would never know what to say when in her presence. I was never an advanced person (ghost), so I was not very familiar with the modern day technology. Because of this I rarely even comprehended when she'd try to tell me about things that were going on in her life. It made me feel horrible, that I couldn't understand her. I felt as though I was missing out on so much.
And as this continued, the gap between us increased.
We're different. I know that we are and that we always have been. She's interested in celebrities and fashion. I'm interested in Critical Theory since Plato. She'd get excited at the chance of spending the weekend with her best friends at the beach. I'd get excited whenever she'd show me how a modern-day appliance works. We come from different times, no pun intended. I'm old-fashioned, whereas she's hip and futuristic.
There was never hope for our relationship. We were headed straight for a dead-end, and only now do I realize that.
Her mother has taken up a new obsession lately, and that is to nag Susannah about finding a nice man to settle down with. Susannah would always yell at her mother to stay out of her love life and that she was interested in someone already. That would only make her mother pry more. She'd want to know more about the young man her daughter was interested in. And of course Susannah could never tell her. No one would believe her. She would be laughed at, or shunned. It would be my entire fault.
I'd hear her when she'd come up to her room. She wouldn't see me, because I would make myself invisible to even her eyes. She would lay down on her bed and cry. She'd cry for hours, and I wouldn't make a move to console her. Why not?
"Paul was right all those years ago..."
Hearing his name would stop me right away.
"...Jesse is dead."
Hearing those words was like a cold stab of reality piercing through the heart in my chest that had beaten for the last time one hundred and sixty years ago.
"There's no way our relationship could ever work."
And those words would be too much for me to handle for one day. I'd dematerialize, and sometimes not come back for days.
I love Susannah. With all my heart, I love her. I loved her since the day she walked into to room I was murdered in, declaring it as her new bedroom. My love was returned, and we had expressed our feelings as much as we could. Unfortunately, due to my spectral body, the intimacy of our relationship could never go past kissing. But she had said she was okay with that, and at the time I had believed her. And we were happy for a while.
And then she went off to college, and everything changed between us. I don't know if they'll ever be the same again. Actually, I know they won't. Because she is twenty-four, and I am only twenty-one. She will continue to age as the years pass. I will still be twenty-one, no matter how much time goes by. I will be forever twenty-one.
I am forever young.
And unlike most would imagine, that fact is a curse that I must live with for the rest of my afterlife. Susannah will grow old and pass away, as will others I have known in this time period. It has happened in the past, so that is how I know it will happen now. I have watched everyone I know and hold dear die before my very eyes. And watching that is like experiencing my death a thousand times each time.
I am forever young.
And I will remain this way forever.
When Susannah is gone, she will go to heaven. All the other mediators I have met have. They have no reason to stay behind. Not even love can keep them here on Earth. She has no reason to stay behind, because right now I am only holding her back.
When Susannah is gone, I will again be all alone. I will be stuck in this room in the body I was murdered in when I was twenty-one years old. For the rest of eternity, I will be this age. I will never be able to have a lasting love. I will never know what it feels like to have a fulfilling life.
I am forever young...and I will stay this way, even after the end of time.
The End
A/N: Well? I hope it wasn't really bad. Please R&R and tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is welcome!