Title: You Won't Be Seventeen Forever

Rating: T (for now)

Short Summary: Post-New Moon-AU— 50 years after he left her, could Bella really be standing feet away from him in a high school parking lot? Could she possibly still love him? Or will they start over new, because she has changed so much since becoming a vampire? He has to fall in love with the new Bella; including the mistakes she had made in the past 50 years.

In-depth Summary:

When Isabella Swan became a vampire, she had been asking for it for months. She had wanted to be one as desperately as anyone could want anything. But the only problem was that the thing she wanted even more than to be a vampire no longer wanted her. Edward had left her, claiming indifference, so why would she still want to be a vampire? But she got her wish anyways. She became what she had begged him to make her. But she must deal with it alone; solitary against the temptations of the Volturi, human blood, and even the thought of possibly letting herself love someone else; anyone else.

Until she sees him in that damn parking lot.

When he reappears in her life at the most unexpected moment, entangling himself in the carefully spun web of her lies, she realizes that she is not the same person that he left 50 years before. She was not the person that had loved him, even if the memory of the feeling still consumed her.

Warnings: Alternate Universe, All Vampire, Slight OOC, and language.

And a special thanks to my beta freakyhazeleyes for humoring me in my played-out idea. :)

Edward Cullen stepped from the warm confines of his small silver car and out into the chilled October air of urban Maine.

He looked around him instinctively, sizing up his surroundings the way any good predator would.

High schools all seemed the same to him though. They all seemed to encompass the vision of what he also thought an insane asylum might look like from the outside. He had only ever voiced this aloud once, and had instantly regretted it at the sight of his sister's face. But the way the sad red bricks sat atop one another to form the pathetic box of a building that housed the community's hope for the intellect of their children made him sad.

He had seen too many of these buildings fail in their mission of educating their inhabitants. High school kids could just be so idiotic. A brick structure thrown together when the school district began to overflow with students would not change that.

Alice came up beside him, resting a reassuring hand on his arm, and smiling appraisingly at the school. But as if she had seen a flash of something interesting whiz by her, she snapped her head in the opposite direction, towards a small group of congregated teenagers. She sniffed interestedly, her eyes scrunching at the sides in concentration.

He instinctively snapped his head towards his sister's distraction.

A familiar scent met his tongue, carried by the wind. It was oddly familiar, yet so different than he remembered. He could still taste the scent of her strawberry shampoo mixed with the dewy mist of the rain in their meadow, and the way she would always smell more like freesias when she was angry, when her adrenaline was pumping faster.

He stared, too curious to ignore it, and froze in his spot.

He saw the curve of her back before anything else. Her hair looked exactly as he remembered, still soft and wavy, down only a few inches past her shoulder blades. He could imagine himself burying his nose in it the way he used to, just taking in every scent of her.

But he couldn't be sure.

She seemed the same; yet somehow drastically different. She held herself up straighter, she looked lighter on her feet, she was more confident with her books balanced on her hip than he had remembered, she hugged a girl standing beside her, and the sight of her features in profile made his dead heart restart.

He would recognize her anywhere. It had to be her. He had to be dreaming, no matter the improbability of him actually sleeping. He had been fantasizing about her for 50 years; but never had he had hallucinations of her before. It had to be her. There was no denying that.

But how could it be?

It was mathematically, physically, and scientifically impossible. She should have been well into her sixties by now, with a comfortable rocking chair swaying in the breeze on her front porch, a wrinkled old man at her side, holding tightly to her hand, and several grandchildren running around them, screaming for their attention.

That was the life he had wanted for her. He had given up his own happiness, his own love and joy, so that she could be that person, that unthinkably normal and carefree person.

And just as he had decided on the impossibility of her presence, the first sounds of her melodic voice drifted on the wind, making it easy for his heightened hearing to understand her saying "Charlie's out of town as usual". He could almost hear her smile from across the parking lot filled with teenagers. He remembered her smile well, and the way it floated in the air and mixed with the familiar sound of her voice and the smell of her signature strawberry shampoo made him smile instinctively.

Her voice was so familiar to him, the sunny inflection at the end as she shared her private joke with her friends, and the loving indifference she used at the mention of her father; yet so foreign. She had experienced things that had made her voice deepen in tone in wisdom. And also something else. It was the way she pronounced the name. Her syllables shimmied in some places, and were in a way that he had become accustomed to hearing in Europeans that did not have a full grasp of the English language, making her pronounce her father's name Shar-lee.

But even if the sound of her voice had not convinced him of her existence, in the solid and realistic way he had only ever hoped for, the overwhelming smell of freesias and strawberries engulfed him. He closed his eyes to the scent, tasting its familiarity and foreignness at the same time.

And he knew.

Isabella Marie Swan had returned to his life.

But he would not give her up as easily this time.

She was no longer a soap bubble, so easily breakable.