Notes: The title is from the Gwen Stefani song of the same name. Shockingly enough, I'm not Stephenie Meyer or Gwen Stefani. I don't own the characters or song, nor am I making any profit from this.
It strikes her sometimes how different they are, her two loves. Edward is all smooth planes and hard beauty, the unchanging work of a master: a modern-day David, perfectly carved out of stone. Jacob is quick and vital and rough-hewn, a wood carving yet to be finished: the embodiment of ancient wildness and wide open spaces, of things that grow and change and even die, but that live on all the same.
Years later, when she is the Venus to Edward's David, she still thinks of Jacob. Immortality hasn't taken away her penchant for masochism, and while she knows that he's happy now, she's not so sure that she is. Her life in this eternal museum—or mausoleum; the similarity between the words never fails to unsettle her—is beginning to slowly suffocate her, the dust of dim millennia settling and solidifying in her lungs. She loves Edward, and she loves the Cullens; she really does. But sometimes...sometimes she just misses being able to take a deep breath.