Forever Dawn

It was a beautiful night. Our daughter slept soundly, barely moving, and dreamed of pleasant things, as Edward told me. I was so happy that she was finally getting a deep rest. I would not have slept well the past few months if I'd been her. Everything was peaceful now, and we finally had time to rest and take it all in. Twenty-four hours ago we'd been on the edge of the most dangerous night any of us had ever seen. For my family, especially, that was saying something. All of the Volturi, the entire guard, the wives, and witnesses had come to watch us fall. The only death had been Irina's, which everyone present had been able to see as an injustice.  Finally, we were at peace.

It was a little bit like when I'd first woken to this life and marveled at the fact that there was no pain. Several hours had passed and these things had just begun to sink in. Forever. I was going to be with Edward forever, and our daughter would have as long of a life as we would. I could ask for nothing more of our circumstances. Soul or soulless, if things stayed as they are, I would never need a heaven.

 We'd been laying in comfortable silence for a while now. It'd been a few hours since I'd tried to open my shield for Edward to hear me.  I knew that this was something I wanted command of as soon as possible, but I also knew it'd take time to be comfortable with it. I remembered Edward saying that these abilities grow stronger with time. I wondered for a moment what I would eventually be able to do with it. I needed to keep practicing with it. If the time came to use it again, I didn’t want there to be any fear, even if I didn't have Jane‘s smirk to spark my anger.

Lying in his arms, I closed my eyes and pushed it open.  I felt his head snap down towards me, and it made me smile as I felt him still to listen.

I love you, I thought softly. Thank you for my life and everything in it.

He rolled us slowly so that my back was on the bed, and he propped up on his elbow so that he could look into my eyes. He had a soft smile on his face as I opened my eyes. He kissed my forehead and ran the fingers of his other hand through my hair and across my cheek.  He’d done that a thousand times before.

He didn't need to say anything back because I already knew. He loved me.  That would never change. Slowly, I pulled his face towards mine and kissed him tenderly. It was not a kiss of passion but rather of deeply rooted love and devotion and, of course, everlasting peace. As I felt him begin to pull slowly away, I pushed my shield out again to add another thought. To still be your wife in a thousand years......

He smiled, his eyes lit up, and he nodded. He kissed the inside of my wrist, softly, a few times, keeping his eyes locked on mine. We stared at each other for the longest time, gently stroking each other’s faces. 

"She's beginning to wake up,” he said.  He sat us both upright.

I took a deep breath and put my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly for a long moment then rested my head on his shoulder. What a peaceful place to be.

We ventured back to the main house, with Nessie in tow, where everyone had the same serene smile on their faces. The euphoria from the victory had not dissipated at all. The others talked about random things.  I didn't say much but listened as content as could be. Edward stood behind me, with his arms around my waist, joining the conversation now and again.  

Nessie had been learning to play chess from Alice and Emmett. She liked the idea of a game that made her think. I knew she wanted to see Jacob, but I assured her that he'd be along as soon as he woke up.  After all, it had been a long few months for him, too.

My eyes scanned the room, going to and from each of my family members, and I could feel a love for them that I wouldn't have ever thought possible. It's not that I didn't think people were important before this; it’s just that I had never connected like this with this many people before. I could specifically feel love for each of them individually. Each of them was so unique, and I appreciated and loved each of them.

When my eyes shifted to Jasper, he was already looking at me.  Whether it was because he felt the same way about me as I did him or because he could feel what I was feeling, I didn't know. He smiled at me just the same, and it made me smile to know that he could feel what I was feeling.

I'm not sure how long it was, but I didn't take my eyes off of him until I heard a crack from the chess table and turned to see a piece of the board fly towards the kitchen.   Nessie had hit a rook with her queen informing Emmett that she had won. Alice, who had been helping her, laughed at the display of competitiveness that both Nessie and Emmett shared.

I wondered if the thrown piece had damaged any of Esme's things, so I turned to look to where it had landed. Fortunately, it had hit the bulletin board on the wall and landed on top of the desk without much of a dent. I walked over to retrieve it and noticed the calendar that hung on the wall. It was January 15th.

I grabbed the dark rook, and it dawned on me that on January 18th it would be exactly two years to the day that I had first met Edward. The thought made me smile. If someone had told either one of us, that day, that in two years we'd be where we are today, neither one of us would have believed it. It had been the hardest two years of both of our lives, to be sure, but also the best.

I smiled at Edward, walked back into the room, and tossed the rook back to the competitors in front of me. He smiled back at me as if I was the most interesting thing in the room. I threw my arms around his waist, and he kissed my forehead as I returned to watching my game playing family.

Suddenly, Alice looked right at me.

"I think Jacob is almost here because suddenly I can't see,” she said.

I'd have said it was a normal statement except that she said it almost a little too loudly.

She quickly added, "Bella, would you mind going shopping with Rose and I today for a bit?  I saw this amazing dress that I've got to try on, and you need to start learning how to shop like a Cullen."

Even Rose was slightly taken back by the suddenness to go on a shopping trip but shrugged it off because, well, she loved clothes more than Alice did.

With that there was a knock at the door, and Jacob was standing there, with Seth, dutifully at his side. Nessie jumped right into his arms and began telling him about her chess match with Emmett. Seth walked over to Edward, who put him in a headlock, and began horsing around.  Edward really enjoyed Seth.

"Is it alright if I go with Alice, Edward?" I asked.

"Blue," he said as he winked at me.  "Have fun."

Alice hurried Rose and I to the car and talked about the random store, in Seattle, that she just had to shop at. After we‘d been in the car for a while, she said, "You're going to need a little help if you're going to pull this off."

"Pull what off Alice?"

"You're going to do something special for Edward in three days," she said. "It's sort of your anniversary. We just need to find you the right outfit for the occasion. Oh, and, in the future, when you want to do stuff like this, you need to remember to shield me so that he can't read my visions! It’s hard to keep him out of my head sometimes!"

I considered this for a moment. Yes. Something special for Edward was definitely a good idea, especially considering all he'd been through for me.

"You're right. I will have to remember that in the future. Maybe I should practice shielding all the time so that he won't notice I'm trying to hide something. What exactly did you see anyways?"

She replied with a smirk, “I saw you sitting on top of the table in biology where you first met holding something that looked like a necklace chain in your hand. You were smiling at him when he came in, and your dress was blue. That's all I saw."

A necklace chain, I thought. I vaguely remember having a necklace in my hand before I turned but couldn't remember where I’d gotten it or exactly what it looked like. I had been standing in my room at Charlie's house in the memory. We shopped for a blue dress because blue was Edward's favorite color on me, and went to Charlie's to check my room for the mystery necklace.

Once standing in my old room, Alice looked into our future and found that the necklace was in the drawer of my desk. Immediately upon pulling it out, I remembered it.

Before I had been changed, I remember wanting to fill a vile of my blood to give to Edward. I remembered pulling out the vile and the needle to prick my finger.  I’d just about passed out at the thought of having to go through having to fill the entire thing.

I settled for a drop of blood that I put it in this necklace that had been Renee‘s. She gave it to me before I left Phoenix. It had been in the family for generations.  I remember playing with it when I was little. It was a little gothic looking, but she'd told me that originally it had been used to hold medicine. I thought it looked cool never dreaming, of course, that I'd use it to contain my own blood.

I took the necklace in my hand, put it in my bag, and turned to leave. Alice and Rose both smiled at my gift idea. Only two vampire women would think this was appropriate.

Alice informed me that shielding their thoughts from Edward wouldn't be found with suspicion if she was the one telling him I had to keep up with the practicing. This was easy enough to go along with. She smiled a little bit at something else but wouldn't tell me what she'd seen.  I eyed her suspiciously. 

"I can't tell you everything, because even you need to enjoy that day, but I can tell you that he'll love your present. The rest you'll have to find out for yourself," she said, grinning, as we walked back to the car.

All for now,

Bella