fic: Forever Seventeen [Twilight, PG-13]

[greenconverses]

Title: Forever Seventeen
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None.
Characters/Pairing: Edward Cullen, with a tiny bit of Edward/Bella near the end
Summary: You're never going to die, and you're always going to be stuck in the purgatory that is puberty and high school. You're forever seventeen and everything changes but you.
Notes: This started out as the drabble I promised I'd write for

comanche_rider a few weeks back but then it completely dissolved into character study of Edward before he met Bella. Part of it was inspired by an interview wtih Robert Pattinson where he talked about being a teenager forever; sadly, I can't remember which one it is. Also, I didn't mean for it to end up being completely in second person but it did. Le sigh.

 

 

Forever Seventeen

When you can live forever, you quickly discover that there isn’t much to live for. 

Your family matters, of course, but none of the others seem to mind forever. Jasper likes the calm after the first hundred years of his existence and Alice is always looking to at the ‘could have beens’ of the future instead of the here and now. With their family of six, Carlisle and Esme are happier than could ever been as humans, and Emmett barely spares a thought to his eternal existence. Rosalie shares some of your frustrations with your unlife but she has Emmett, at least, and that makes things easier for her. 

But to you, every day is the same routine. Go to school, don’t interact with the humans, don’t expose the family, don’t kill anyone, come home, interact with your family until they go their separate ways and then go up to your room and stare at the ceiling, wondering what the point of it all is. The sun rises and the cycle starts again, the way it will until the end of time. 

Days are just drops in the bucket of your existence and they pass faster than they ever did when you were a human. Years tend to blend together so well that you don’t even remember applying to college this time around or where Rosalie and Emmett got married the second time or how you ended up with a pre-law degree from Harvard instead of a degree in pre-med from Stanford. 

And you find that you don’t care how it happened, just that it did, because none of it matters. You’re not going to be able to use the law degree to build a career, to make a living for yourself or your family, to use it do something of importance in the world. Because once Carlisle gets that look on his face – the one where the line of his mouth set tight and there’s a sad expression in his eyes – you know that the cycle is set to restart and you’ll be back in high school before the end of the year. 

You’re never going to be able to have a family other than the one Carlisle’s cobbled together, never going to be able to hold a tiny child with your eyes (green, not topaz) in your arms and feel the unconditional love a father has for a child. You might not ever find love either, if Esme’s right that some part of your emotional make-up is missing. You’re never going to lose your hair or get wrinkles on your face. 

You’re never going to die, and you’re always going to be stuck in the purgatory that is puberty and high school. 

You’re forever seventeen and everything changes but you. 

It makes you so fucking angry sometimes that you just can’t stand it. 

So you do stupid things to break the monotony like hunt the most contemptible of humans, crash a dozen cars, or antagonize Jasper into a small killing spree, but your family always forgives you it for because they pity your lonely existence and because you’re forever the baby of the family, no matter if you’re one hundred and one or ten thousand years old. You know you can always come crawling back once you’re through with your melodrama because it’s all just part of the cycle. 

But once the anger has run its course, you’re left with nothing but the loneliness of your shadow of a life.
 
You don’t even try to exist properly any more. You play the piano without passion. The hunt has little thrill for you. You can’t bring yourself to be lighthearted with your siblings and even the smallest of smiles has trouble staying on your lips. The stars are dimmer and the sun, when it appears in your new overcast and rainy residence, offers no warmth. 

You’re there, but you’re not. 

Not until she comes stumbling into your school with her delicious scent, impenetrable mind and selfless nature. You’ve never met anyone like her or with a scent so powerful and, at first, you think she’s a demon sent to put the final nail in your coffin…so to speak. But you couldn’t have been more wrong. 

Bella Swan is your salvation, the one who splashes light and color into your monochrome existence, and finally shows you what kind of life you’re supposed to have. It doesn’t matter to her that you don’t age or that you’re a monster that constantly craves her blood. She’s found the human in you after you buried it and she resurrects it with her gentle smiles and blushing cheeks. 

You’re no longer the same creature you’ve been for the past hundred years. You’re brand new, untested, unsure and frightened as hell, but somehow you find yourself uncaring about it all. 

Because you’re forever seventeen, in love and your life is just beginning.