Disclaimer: Sorry I haven't written in so long. This is the final chapter. I don't own tuck everlasting.
50 Years Later
50 years. It had been only 50 years. Winnie couldn't believe it. She and Jesse had had 4 children, Angus, Jennifer, Mae, and Hailey. They were grown up now, Angus being near 40, and the others not far behind. They still grew like normal human beings. Jesse and Winnie had told them about the water, but they never told them where it was, so the children grew up normal. Just then Jesse came in. The two were on a ship, bound for France, but they had just left, so it would be a few days. Winnie had been staring at a photograph of her and Jesse's family. Mae, Miles, Angus, Jesse, Winnie and the children. Suddenly she began to cry.
"Winnie! What's wrong?" Jesse went up to Winnie, perched on the edge of the bed in the small cabin, and gave her a hug. Winnie shook her head. She missed progressing. Moving with her family, growing like they did. Of course she was glad to be with Jesse, but she missed…living. She told Jesse this between sobs. Jesse nodded. "Come on, Win. It's not so bad. You just have to get used to it." Winnie nodded. He was right. They couldn't change it and that was that.
She went to the washroom to wash her face. As she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she gasped. She looked, older. She had noticed before, faintly, that small lines of age seemed to form on her face. But she didn't understand. She was seventeen forever. She wasn't supposed to age! Upon inspection of Jesse's face, she noticed she wasn't the only one 'aging'. Jesse also had the tiniest lines. He looked around twenty. Winnie didn't understand how she didn't see it before. But she shrugged the thought out of her mind.
Two months later, after making a detailed tour of France, Jesse and Winnie checked into a small inn in Paris. The next morning, Winnie suggested that they go to the Eiffel Tower. So, twenty minutes later the two were standing hand in hand at the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was particularly crowded today, and as Winnie leaned a bit farther over the edge, someone accidentally bumped into her, and the momentum sent Winnie sailing over the edge, much to the horror of the people nearby. Jesse watched, wide-eyed, as she fell noiselessly to the ground below. He knew she would be all right; after all, they couldn't die. But what would people say when she got up and walked around, unharmed? He went to the bottom as fast as he could.
A crowd had formed around the spot where Winnie had hit the ground. Jesse impatiently pushed his way through. He knew at once something was horribly wrong. Blood trickled from Winnie's mouth. But, she couldn't! That would mean that she was hurt, and being hurt…meant they were mortal. He dropped to his knees next to her and grabbed her hand. He was getting very worried. Her hand was icy cold. He bit his lip. What happened? An ambulance came soon after, and after the paramedics bent over her still body, they announced something that made Jesse's heart as cold as Winnie's hand… she was dead.
Jesse felt his mind reeling. Winnie…dead. But she had drunk the water. She hadn't aged. What was going on? A moment later, he had passed out.
Jesse had Winnie's body sent back to Treegap, and in a closed-casket service, she was buried in the graveyard, at the very edge of the Foster plot, so that someday Jesse could rest next to her. Mae and Tuck had come to the funeral also. They seemed older, also. Jesse talked to them, and it seemed that the water had stopped working. They were mortal again. The three went to the spring to try to find out why. As they piled away the rocks, they gasped. There was nothing there. It was gone. Dry as dust. They even dug for a while, but to no avail. It seemed once the water dried up, their life was no longer forever. But why had it dried up? They never found out.
Epilogue
Jesse did not marry again. He traveled alone, for nearly a year, before coming back to Treegap to live. He got ill and died, almost three years after Winnie's death. He was buried next to her.
Twenty years after Winnie's death, Angus died, smiling because he was not afraid. Mae followed not two months afterward. They were buried in Treegap, side by side, and Mae next to Jesse. Miles married again, when he was '30', and sure that he was aging again. He grew old with his family, and lived in England, with a wife that reminded him of his first wife, so many years ago. Forty-three years after getting married, he died peacefully. His wife had his body sent to Treegap, and he was buried next to Angus. And so all the Tucks were buried in a line, Winnie, Jesse, Mae, Angus, and Miles, one by one they had died, but death didn't bother them, for they only started living once forever ended.