Note from author: No character mine - all Natalie Babbitt's! I always have wondered why Winnie betrayed Jesse so, and thought it'd be interesting if I could try and justify it. Hence, this one-shot. Please do R&R. Much love - Poojagol!

"Jesse"

– It was cold, unemotional. No 'dear Jesse' or 'beloved Jesse'; just his name. As if she had felt not even the tiniest spark of emotion while writing it, as it were just any another name to her. And perhaps it was. Shuddering, he remembered her tombstone. But catching his breath, he read on – he couldn't think of that just yet.

"It's been many years since you left. Too many years. I've not heard from you at all. I know sometimes you forget, Jesse, you forget that the ordinary people like us have to use watches to tell the time, and calendars to tell the day…we celebrate the coming of a new year, we have to constantly know what month it is…and you; well, you don't. I understand that.

But does it hurt you as much as it hurts me, Jesse, to be apart? Even for a minute?"

"Of course it did," he whispered. His heart was thudding even as he read.

"When you first left, I could hardly stand it. I'd cry every night until Mama and Papa grew worried and tried to send me to a doctor. And then I stopped, thinking you'd surely be back soon.

But spring passed…our garden is always so pretty in spring – I love to lie in the grass and watch the blue sky. There's just something so comforting about blue skies, isn't there? And before I knew it, the warmth of the summer sun was touching me, and those lazy, languid days passed too. And when autumn came, everything was so dead; the trees were losing leaves and the world was a dull blur of red and orange, I couldn't even look at the woods anymore. It just hurt too much. Winter was upon us before I had time to catch my breath; and it was bleak. Just… dull and grey and cold and lonely. And then another year had passed…and another…and another…and then I lost count.

I missed you so much, that every single day could have been an epoch; every single day could have been the one you returned. I always wondered what you were doing; were you exploring the world without me? Had you gone to the Eiffel Tower and found someone else and forgotten me? I really didn't know that much about love, you see. Was love really everlasting, will it ever be?

I couldn't answer these questions, and I'd turn them around in my mind night after night. I couldn't ask anyone; mama would not listen, and Granny…well…you know she…You know. There was no one to talk to, no one who would understand. And I could have scaled the world looking for you, and I wouldn't have been done by now.

Do you know what it feels like, to be pitted against the vastness of the world, Jesse? It's terrifying, and overwhelming. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. All I could do was sit in my room and weep, and hope desperately that I hadn't been forgotten, that I was more to you than just a night by the waterfall. And I still don't know if I was.

Was I?"

He could answer her questions now; sixty years too late and of no use to her, probably. But he opened his mouth and whispered the answer anyways. "How could I ever love anyone else?" It hurt him almost physically, that searing pain through the heart. And somehow, knowing that he had been responsible for her inquisition…knowing that it was all his fault…Swallowing, he read on.

"It's been many years since you left. These past ten years I've waited, and I've wept…oh, so bitterly! I have been but a shadow of myself, and I realised…that I'd never really lived life the way one should live. Your father told me that; he told me to live. And I could go to the spring right now and take a sip of that water, and I would live….forever. But forever seems bleak without you, and I don't think I'll ever see you again. I don't want eternity without you, Jesse. I don't want immortality if it means living a life in which I'll be wondering if I'll ever see you again, if you ever really loved me. I don't want my forever to be filled with tears. I can't live, you see? No one can live like that.

No; I'd rather spend the next twenty years of my life married to a man who'll take good care of me and look after me and see me through some empty – if nothing else – nights, and then pay up my dues to the world and end my time. I do not fear death as much as perhaps I ought to; but I am young yet, and death seems so far away…But you wouldn't understand. Death is always very far away for you, is it not?

I'm getting married tomorrow. I don't know why exactly I began writing this letter…I doubt you'll ever read it. But I'm just a foolish girl who wandered too far into the woods one day, and lost her heart in the bargain. So bear with me. I don't think life'll ever be the same again, without you, but it has to go on. No matter the cost or the pain, I think…it will go on, because the sun will rise and my heart will beat, and I just have to make the best of it. And while all hope of your return is gone, who can say but there remains the tiniest fragment of that dream in my heart?

I will live out my time with my husband; my children, if I have any. My family and my little house, maybe a pet dog. If one day you should come back, and I no longer here, I will make sure that someone reliable, someone who knows our story will give this little piece of paper to you. Maybe it won't mean much; after all, they are only feeble words written by a foolish girl who loved you. But I hope they do. And the bearer of this letter…they will know our story. And in them, I too, will live on…forever, just like you. Not in matter, but in memory. And we shall be together…not in reality…but dreams, and memory.

Forever yours, Winnie.

Jesse fell onto the ground beside her tombstone. He ignored the pitying eyes on him, ignored their sympathetic gaze. Instead, he tried to focus on the words engraved coldly onto the stone. But his eyes were blurry with tears, and he couldn't.

He wept. Because forever was just a dream, a memory, and never quite reality. Immortality had given him the gift of never seeing cold, hard and often merciless death, but it had also achieved equilibrium by sowing thorns in his heart that could never be erased, never escaped. No long sleep for him, no peaceful end. No dreams that would not be shadowed by her memory, and no waking thoughts that did not remind him of her. She would be everywhere, and he would not be able to escape her. He would be driven mad by her for eternity, and that eternity…he would spend without her.

And what life would he live? Jesse Tuck was dead; more dead than Winnie Foster, who lay beneath the cold earth. And he would never lie so still, but always move restlessly, seeking the redemption he would never get. Jesse Tuck was dead.