A/N: Okay, this one-shot is darker than the other stories I've posted on here. It does have all the main Twilight characters, but the characters themselves are not prominent. This is purely story driven, the reminiscing of a dying woman who knows she only has one hour left. With one hour left what is there to do but think?

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, belongs to Stephenie Meyer. But the deeply philosophical (cause I'm not modest) thinking in this one-shot is all my own thoughts and opinions.

Please review at the end and tell me what you think. It doesn't matter what. Honesty is a jewel that never fades.

ONE HOUR

…I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dripped it carelessly, Ah! I didn't know, I held opportunity…

You're told many things you are young. You're told to look before you jump and think before you leap, but you're also told to seize life and take chances. A way of summing the conflicting advice would be to take calculated risks. You're young, innocent, and you have your whole life stretched out before you. When the time comes, then worry about everything else. Do everything and regret nothing; mistakes are what while support the foundations of experience when you've grown tired and have discovered who you are.

But what if you didn't have any time left, no life stretched out before you. The time has long since past looking before jumping and thinking before leaping. All you can do is have faith and say yes, so when your time comes you will have no regrets. When you have no time left. What of you were told you only had one year left to live or six months? How would you feel about one month or a week? A day? What if you told an amount of time that used to seem so insignificant but now seemed so important, a time frame so small that it didn't seem possible to complete anything in that amount of time? That's what I was told I had.

One hour.

An hour, sixty minutes, three hundred and sixty seconds. It didn't matter how many different ways you looked at it, I still had infinitesimal amount of time left of my life.

My mother died of lung cancer when I was ten. No one would tell me what was going on. No one explained to me why mum could no longer read me bedtime stories or bake chocolate chip cookies with me. And no one explained where she had disappeared to or why I had to wear an uncomfortable black dress or why I was going to church when it wasn't Sunday. And what was the mahogany casket? Why was daddy standing in the rain when there was lightning in the sky? Could someone please tell me? Mum…mummy?

Dad wasn't the same after that, and I was forced to grow up faster than most teenagers so I could take care of my aging, ghostly father. His pain seemed to be never ending but he wanted me to enjoy my years as a young adult, to seize life while I was still young. The night he went to sleep for eternity was one of the few nights I had relented and gone to the movies with Alice. I remember the rain flashing in the headlights of Alice's mum's car and the murmur of Celine Dion exuding from the car stereo as we pulled up infront of the dark house. It wasn't so much as he died, more like he just gave up. Gave up living without mum.

I thought of Alice and Jasper, my best friends though they were so wrapped up in their love for each other. There had been a huge party on the beach six months ago, a real rager, the epitomeof a clichéd teenage gathering. Alice and Jasper had gone, but I was too out of it to go as I was doing last minute preparations for my father's funeral the next day. They got bored with the party and when it started to rain Alice decided to leave. They forgot to take into account that Jasper had drunk a little too much to distract himself from other pains and the rain was coming down in a wet, unforgiving curtain. And that was what the consequences were. A slick road, a cliff, and a buzzed high cooling on impact with a stormy ocean. Wet and unforgiving. Like a sister, like a brother. Lost, never to be regained.

Jasper's twin sister was raped when I was fifteen. I remember; Alice and I had been hanging out at Jasper and Rosalie's house watching movies when Rosalie called her brother. We had all ran out the door into black rain in search of the shattered girl with golden hair and a broken spirit. Once so confident and carefree, now fragile and haunted. It was all over the newspapers. I can still recite verbatim what the papers read: King Breaks the City's Jewel and Royal Rape: King Destroys Golden Girl were just two of the sadistically clever titles. The man that ruined Rosalie's life, Royce King, was eventually caught and sentenced to life, but the damage to Rosalie was done. She became a recluse, always staying at home. Her parents sent her away to a reserve where they hoped she could be helped. But the surrounding atmosphere just depressed her further. With no sharp or hard objects or surfaces permitted on the reserve in the middle of no where, simply cutting off your air supply could be quite effective. By the time she was found, she had held her breath for too long. There was one last breath of surprise when she saw them approaching, and the exhaling air produced one word. Emmet. At least she would be with her childhood love.

We were only eight years old, all living in the same neighbourhood and we were playing hide-and-seek in the bush. The trees weren't very dense, they were actually quite sparse, but it was getting dark. I had been in and had managed to find everyone. Everyone but Emmet. Everyone else began to help me search for him, but we came up with no trace of him. We ran to our calling mothers and asked for help. The search ended when stars began to glitter in the sky. Men in navy blue uniforms holding guns that did not look as if they were toys took over the search from us. Torches flashed in between the trees and Emmet's name echoed down the street into the wee hours of the morning and continued until pale light began to streak the sky and blot out the tiny beacons of hope. Dark clouds had crept across the sky during the night and it had begun to drizzle by the time the search was called off. The little boy was never seen again.

Jake. He was such a good boy. Jake was a rescue pup; half wolf, half husky. The vet didn't believe he would survive as long he did after abuse he had suffered, but he was strong. At first no one had wanted him to come home with me because he was so ferocious with everyone else. But he would still under my hand. He obeyed me and no one else, always curling up on my feet during those stormy winter nights and weaving in and out of the sprinkler with me on those suffocating summer days. He was more than a pet; he was my unquestioningly loyal friend. I loved him for two whole years before his strength grew thin and the toll of the abuse when he was younger began to show. The rain pondered against the window as Jake shivered when he was put to sleep. I tried not to cry for him. He was such a good boy. He didn't make a noise the entire time.

Then there was…Him. We had known each other our whole lives, grown up on the same street together. He was the first person I found during that game of hide-and-seek and he helped me ask the adults what was going on. He was going to go the movies with Alice and me but couldn't at the last minute because he had a piano recital the next day. He was helping with the funeral preparations the night of the beach party and he held my hand while I held my friend's paw. He was always there. He never told me to stop crying, never told that it would be okay. He explained to me that the pain of loving someone you've lost will always hurt. It may dull down over the years, may become bearable, but it will never go away. He told me that I would always miss those who have moved on but missing someone is just another way of loving them. He would hold my hand, made sure I went for walks along the beach and through the bush, brought seven white roses for each grave.

White roses of purity, of love, of hope…the funeral roses of mortal loss.

And as he was there for me through my losses, I was there for him through his. His parents were holidaying in Bali in 2003 for their anniversary. He had to fly over with his aunt and uncle (who he was to live with) to identify their bodies. Their names, Elizabeth and Edward Masen, are on one of the memorials in Kuta, lost amongst the thousands soulless names. Shortly before his seventeenth birthday there was an accident involving dangerous trails and a runaway horse. The piece he played on the piano in his aunt and uncle's honour still haunts the church the farewell service was in.

With neither of us having anyone left but the other, we did what was given to us as candy advice when we were children: seize life. We did everyone we had dream of doing. We went bungee diving, boat racing, and rode for endless days on horse back. We went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, rode a gondola through the streets of Venice, and saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. He taught me to play the piano and I taught him how dance the salsa. We swam with sharks and dolphins and went skinny dipping. We saw musicals and operas and Japanese interpretations of Shakespeare's beloved plays. We saw the Grand Canyon, the Northern Lights, and the Amazon Rainforest. There was Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the Wiccan celebration of Beltane at Stonehenge, and New Year's Eve in Times Square. We went everywhere and anywhere, doing anything and everything. What could be done and seen, we did.

He was my first…everything. First kiss, first sexual experience…and my first love. My first and only everything.

We were driving to the airport. We were flying to Las Vegas to get married. Barely into adulthood we knew it was crazy, but everything else we had done had been utterly insane and there was no one else there to tell us otherwise.

The road was covered with puddles from the rain that fell in grey sheets from the sky. We were talking and laughing and singing along to every song on the radio. I suppose he was pushing the speed limit but we were already late for our plane and we didn't want to wait for the next one. And maybe he should have had both hands on the steering wheel instead of only usinig one while the other held my hand. I had just sung a really out of tune and off key rendition of I'll Be There For You by The Rembrandts and he was laughing as I finished the last line off in a fashion that would insult the original singer. I joined in his laughter and turned to look at me with his sparkling green eyes, taking them off the wet road. I saw a deer leap into the pool of light from the headlights and yelled a warning. He jerked the steering wheel to the left, avoiding the startled deer but the sharp turn had caused the car the skid and flip, the car's metallic squeals and our very human screams filling the empty, rainy night.

My door burst open and my seatbelt snapped as I flew into the night. I landed on all fours milliseconds after the sound only a car crashing to Earth would make. My left arm gave way beneath me and I felt the bones splinter and break sending painful shockwaves up my arm. I could feel every cut and slash on my body. I think I'd also broken a couple of ribs as well as my arm from the strength the seatbelt had shown before it had snapped. I stood as quickly as I was able, my head feeling as though there was a metal band protesting against any movement. I could feel a tight swelling at the back of my head. My unbroken arm wiped the warm blood off my forehead to try and prevent it from trickling from the large gash above my hair line into my eyes.

I heard a muted groan come from the car. I humbled over as fast as possible, ignoring the metal band that had taken up residency inside my skull. I knelt next to the driver's door and wrenched it off what remained of its hinges. He opened his eyes, now glittering in pain, and looked at me. His head was on the roof of the car and the car was upside down. His whole body was crushed by the car engine having been smashed in; only the left side of his torso, left arm, and his head were free. His hand and arm were mangled and slashed, lying in a scattered pile of shattered glasses and the steering wheel had broken into his chest. I could see a few bones had stabbed through his skin and saw the labored rise and fall of his chest.

I cupped the side his face with the hand of my broken arm. Ignoring the pain, I dialed the emergency number into my phone as he shut his eyes against the pain. How the phone had managed to get out unscathed in my back pocket was something I would never figure out. I sobbed out the necessary details to the lady who answered with enough coherency for her to understand. The lady assured me that all emergency services would be arriving as soon as possible and I hung up. I dropped the phone onto the wet grass and touched my right hand to the other side of his face. The rain pouring from the sky tangled with the blood in my long dark hair and dripped onto his face, but neither of us cared.

I kissed him gently on the lips and begged him to open his eyes, to stay awake a little while longer. Help will be here soon I promised him, please, just open your eyes.

His eyes fluttered open and I saw in the pained green that he wouldn't last that long. He moved forward the tiniest fraction of a micrometer but I knew what he was seeking. I pressed my lips to his softly again, his sad, pained eyes staring into my own wet ones, whether from the rain or tears I couldn't be sure. He kissed me back with the lightest amount of pressure and then I rested my forehead against his. I counted his shallow breaths.

1…2…3…4…5…

When he exhaled the sixth time he breathed four words that I knew meant that this was the end.

"I love you Bella."

"I love you too. I love you Edward." I choked back the sobs that threatened to spill from my throat. Not now, not now. Later. He inhaled and exhaled a seventh time.

He never reached eight.

Eighteen. So young, so old. Innocent, wise, a child, and an adult. In past cultures an eighteen year old could have been married at the age of twelve and have five children. If they had been married at eight years then the eighteen year old could even have grandchildren. Eighteen years old means you are legally an adult. In some countries it means you are about to finish school, you can drive and drink alcohol. You can leave home, support yourself, start a career or continue onto university. You can get married, have sex, and have the right to dictate your own life. Movies, books, nightclubs are at your endless disposal, nothing restricting you except for lack of an identification card.

Eighteen. An age many race to reach, and are then scared to let go of their mother's hand. It is a milestone signifying the end of innocence and the beginning of responsibility. You can't act like a petulant child or a moody teenager, you have to be calm, collected adult. And it'll happen, it's waiting for you whether you are ready or not.

Eighteen. That's all I've lived. Eighteen short years. So much pain, so much suffering, so many chances taken. I've lived, let live, and seen life. I cried through too many funerals for too many reasons. But no more. My time is up.

Who will go to me funeral? Who will weep for me? Who will weep for him? Will anyone come, will anyone cry? Will passionate words be spoken and longing tears shed? Or will it be well versed passages and crocodile tears? Who will be there to say goodbye when I am gone? All those whom I have loved have left this earth we have shared and are waiting for me somewhere that is now so close. Only a few more minutes.

The doctor whispered to the nurse by my bed when he thought I was unconscious. One hour, he said. One hour is all she has. But what use was it knowing how long I had left? I had already done everything I had wanted to do. Well, almost everything…

And I know that hour is now up as I hear the machine sing one long, drawn out note, signaling an unbeating heart. But it as though my heart was working better than ever, racing with me as I raced the top of the pale green hill. Edward waited at the top, his green eyes dancing again, white suit flapping around him. My white dress fluttered around me as I slipped my hand into his outstretched palm. Silver rain shimmered as it fell from the turquoise sky. Rain fell from the sky just as it had at every other ending, and now every beginning. The infinite blue cried, sobbing in thunderclaps. But in response to every sad crack was a flash of lightening, a flash of hope and joy. Edward smiled and held me close as he pointed towards the light drifting towards us.

In the light I could see Mum and Dad; Alice and Jasper and Rosalie and Emmet; Edward's parents and his aunt and uncle, Esme and Carlisle. Jake was running circles around them and threading in and out of their feet. I could see others behind them, stretching on and on until it was impossible to see them anymore. From long dark hair to bright green eyes I instinctively knew that these unseen people were our ancestors, going back generations. I grinned at my loved ones, a genuine smile, anticipating the stories I had to tell them. But, somehow I knew they really knew every single one as my father and Edward's father tossed us two golden rings that slipped onto our left ring fingers.

It doesn't matter how small or insignificant the death of someone is to others, as long as you loved, love, and will keep loving those lost, it will still hurt. But sometime in your future, when it is time for you to depart from this world, you will see them again. And seeing them happy in death will be the bandage you couldn't find in life.