disclaimer: nothing belongs to me.

dedication: summer (novaked), happy birthday! i love you lots!

The first rule of immortality is that everybody dies.

x

You open your eyes in the middle of the night and find yourself alone. The world around you is dark and heavy, a universe upon your shoulders, a planet spinning out of control. Everywhere you look, all you see is the blood and the bones of a future left unwritten. They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes, but here you are, half a century after your death, and the only thing you can see is ghosts. Eternity was never meant for the dreamers because eternity is a punishment for the damned, and maybe you should have thought about that before you turned yourself into a nightmare.

x

(You should have thought about a lot of things before you let the years pass you by.)

x

He stops visiting after about forty years, give or take a few, and the last time you see him, he's packing up his bags in his old bedroom where everything smells like a past that's been stolen from you. Trying to say goodbye never gets easier, but watching him leave is the hardest thing you've ever done. All the usual routes are closed to you now – "What about protecting the town? What about your family? What about me?" – because he hasn't looked at you that way for a very long time.

x

"I'm sorry, Bella," and he leaves the words drifting in the air. As if an apology could fix anything.

x

The second rule of immortality is that dignity is not meant for eternity.

x

It takes you two days to make the decision that you always knew you would. You've spent far too long sitting on your throne of blood like a prize, like a princess waiting to be married off to the richest prince who offers, and it's time to be a queen. Trade the tiara for a crown and go running through the country, from California's beaches to New York's skyscrapers, and don't pause for even an instant to catch your breath. This is no time for hesitation, no time for second-guessing.

x

(You made your bed. Time to lie in it.)

x

Accusations are the only thing you know how to do these days. You abandoned Renesmee, you abandoned me, but it was you who let him go. Over and over, you have let him go. Here he stands on the shore of a beach on the coast of Maine, not looking at you, maybe listening, but you can't even be sure. All you can hear is his heartbeat, pounding the rhythm of a tragedy, and for the first time in fifty years, nothing is going the way you planned. You want to scream at the gods, but there are none. There is only you, and the monsters.

x

"I stopped phasing, and everything changed," he tells you, an explanation of sorts. "I don't belong there anymore, Bella."

x

The third rule of immortality is that everyone gives up eventually.

x

Against the dreams you had wished upon as a child, against your better judgment and the ring on your finger, you stay with him for the rest of his life. With your jewelry, you buy an apartment by the ocean, big enough for two, and you watch the days roll by from your windowsill while he works odd jobs to pay the bills. The life you live is unbearably human, and it only takes you six or so years to realize that this is everything you wanted when you said I do. There are days when you miss them, and days when you don't, but you were always too much of a coward to face your demons.

x

(You write them a letter once, and you burn all the rest. Time is a human construction, anyway.)

x

He dies peacefully in his sleep, four decades later, and you wake up in the middle of the night the instant it happens, already dreading the way you can feel the warmth of his body, always at your side, drain away. It happens quickly, easily, almost too simply for the person he had been; you cry perhaps more than you should. The people of the town he had been so enamored with plan an elegant funeral, and when he is laid to rest, you walk out to the edge of the ocean and contemplate life without him. You have never truly made this choice, and now it's been made for you.

x

"I love you, Bella," he had told you once, almost too quietly to hear. "You should know that."

x

The final rule of immortality is that love never lasts.

a/n: i give up on myself. this is literally just. who even knows. if you read this far, please drop me a review to let me know what you thought?

and DON'T favorite without reviewing, please and thank you.