When You Lose Something You Cannot Replace

Summary: Twenty-one years, and still the pain hadn't lessened. Still, something was missing from him, and that child, his imprint, wasn't going to replace it.

"Missing someone is the reverberating echo of everything beautiful about her—her laugh, her song, her touch, her smell, the power of her words, and the constant shadow that lingers on as her perfect image in your memory."

― Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year

Jacob had done everything he could for the last eighteen years to avoid thinking about his future, particularly who was waiting for him.

The Leeches had tried to reason with him many times as she got older.

"You're supposed to look out for her! She's your imprint! You are the one who is supposed to care for her!"

He refused.

He had refused to go see the child.

He'd left the Cullens house the minute he was able to get back to his feet and he had refused to have anything to do with the baby as it grew up. And now he ignored the leeches' pleas for him to see her, and get to know her.

He didn't want to know her.

He didn't want anything to do with her.

Sam was sure that he'd eventually give in. After all, who could resist the call of their soulmate?

But he'd already met his soulmate long before that child had been born and he didn't want another one, he thought, feeling no shame for his unwillingness.

They did, at least, seem to understand that his mind would not be changed, and didn't bring the matter up for a few years.

But once the eighteenth year passed….and the nineteenth year…and the twentieth…

Until finally, on the twenty-first year, Edward came to him and said, "Renesmee is old enough to know her soulmate. The least you can do is at least meet her."

"Never," Jacob said.

"You don't have a choice. She is here and she really wants to meet you."

His head shot up as he glared at Edward. "Do not bring her in here," he snarled, but it was too late.

A Bronze-haired woman stood in the doorway, with familiar chocolate brown eyes, holding the hand of her mother.

Bella stood there, staring at him, with cold Golden eyes.

For a moment he rose to his feet and began to reach out, the word Bells hovering over his lips, before she turned her head and looked away from him.

Her daughter looked at him with adoration, her familiar eyes lighting up the way her mother's once did.

The familiar expression on the wrong face broke something inside him. It was wrong, it was all wrong–

He didn't want her to look at him like that.

He wanted…

He wanted…

Bella looked at him again and he could tell just from the stiff way she held herself that she was uncomfortable. He didn't see any lingering feelings of love or friendship…everything of his friend was long gone.

Jacob turned away.

That's right.

Bella was gone.

He had watched her die. He'd watched her heart stop beating as he pushed frantically on her chest, and tried to breath air into her cold dead lips.

And in her place was this…cold, undead thing.

There wasn't anything left of his Bella.

The eyes were gone.

The skin was different, harder.

He couldn't hear her heart beating or any breath passing from her lips.

He was 37 and didn't look a day over 25. She was 39, going on 40, and didn't look a day over 18.

"Hi, I'm Renesmee," his imprint said, then looked embarrassed. "But you probably already knew that." She giggled.

Jacob flinched.

She had her mother's laugh.

"So, I really wanted to meet you. After all, it isn't every day that you get to meet your soul-" she continued and he blocked out the rest of what she was saying.

Edward called after him, but he kept walking, past his imprint, bumping shoulders with her undead mother as he went.

He walked until he was far enough away from his house that they couldn't see him. Then he collapsed to his knees. He felt tears streaming down his face as he sobbed.

Twenty-one years, and still the pain hadn't lessened. Still, something was missing from him, and that woman, his imprint, wasn't going to replace it.

Nothing was ever going to replace her.

Author's note: An Alternative universe where, after Jacob fell to his knees, in breaking dawn part one, he got back up and ran away rejecting the imprint.