Wow...my first (and probably my last) Twilight fic. Needless to say, I think BD was full of fail and I can't believe I even wrote something that goes along with that pile of junk. But, I just sat down and started writing and this is what I came up with. Beware of spoilers, huge amounts of angst, a bit of hatred for Bella on my part, and did I mention angst? Don't read if you're a E/B shipper...just saying.

Ten years later, he was still the one that didn’t need to read her thoughts to know what she was thinking.

Her husband couldn’t…still. And the times she purposely let him in, tore down her defenses and let him really see her, were fewer and farther between now. Once, she had even deliberately hurt him, playing in her mind her slightly suicidal jump from the cliff and the clear memory of exactly who saved her then, when she was still human and pathetically weak.

She was weak even now, no matter how she tried to fool herself, or to fool them.

Him. Cold and hard marble, perpetual winter and frozen time, unable to change.

Him. Hot and yielding flesh, perpetual summer and shifting years, choosing to stay the same because he could.

Choosing to stay the same for her daughter.

It was ironic, really, how this had turned out, how absolutely wrong she had been.

She had her daughter. Her sweet, beautiful, selfless, intelligent, talented, immortal daughter.

But she wanted the children she had briefly seen so long ago, contemplating what her life would have been like with him. She wanted to grow old, to see her children have children, and someday, she wanted to die in his arms.

She wanted to die in her daugther’s husband’s arms. Clearly, she had problems.

And clearly, they would never go away. Eternity, a million lifetimes, unfathomable amounts of time, to smolder in her still heart and wish.

And to know that he knew exactly what she was thinking, that he knew she regretted her decisions, that he could see her pain and humiliation and did nothing to stop it.

He couldn’t. Her decisions had affected his, practically chosen his for him. To think she not only took away her own free will, but his, as well. Cruel.

He was the natural path her life would have taken. They would have been happy – blissful, even. Now she had veered so sharply from that path that there was no going back.

What would she say to her seventeen year old self, so enamored with Edward Cullen that she couldn’t see straight?

Run, Bella. Run to Jacob. Run to the summer and leave the winter behind.

Review, please?