Disclaimer: Don't own it. Wish I did. I'd love to be able to learn Spanish at one glance. Grr.

A/N: And here, my friends, is the final chapter of Nightfall. I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Personally, I'm absurdly glad that I actually finished it!  I learned a lot through this story—mostly about my style, but I remain thrilled beyond all rationality that I pegged Bella's power before Breaking Dawn came out. Please review and send me some love!

If you enjoyed this story, please look for my next story, Ivy Tree. I'm writing it with my absolutely brilliant-beyond-all-belief sister, hopeisabluebird. I'm posting the preface and first chapter this evening. Ivy Tree is pretty much the culmination of every epiphany hopeisabluebird and I have ever had about the Twilight universe. I shamefully admit that I think it to be brilliant. Anyway, we would appreciate readers, especially the kind that reviews!

Thank you for your support. I love you all.

Blessings from BlindingFirefly!

………………………………………………………………………………………………

The rest of the day passed in a haze of details and sensations. The details were from the meticulous wedding rehearsal that Alice put us all through. Even though my sense of balance was vastly improved, she still seemed to think that I was going to trip down the aisle. At one point, Alice roped Emmett and Jasper into throwing marbles at my feet as I walked toward the altar, just to make sure that nothing could possibly go wrong with my feet. If I could navigate an aisle littered with glass marbles, I could surely manage to replicate the feat when I was only nervous from the normal bride jitters.

Strangely enough, I didn't have bride jitters. I examined my stomach and didn't find any butterflies. I didn't even find an amoeba. Everything was perfectly calm down there. I wasn't scared or afraid or secretly planning on shielding Alice long enough to give Edward and me a fighting chance of escaping her monstrous ceremony.

When I searched back through my memories to my first wedding, I realized how different my emotions were when I was marrying Jacob. Part of that had to do with age, of course. I was older now, and hopefully wiser. I had a far better grasp of what marriage meant than I had as a teenager.

But it was more than that. I realized now how numb I truly was at my wedding to Jacob. I had shut down so much of myself, just to preserve what little sanity I had left. I hadn't known anything of my heart defect at the time, but I did know that my heart was gone. Even though Jacob had helped me to heal enough to function, I was still only a fragile shell of what I'd been with Edward.

The fullness of the life I lived now threw my life with Jacob into the shadows. It was if my life in Forks had been filmed in sepia tone, but the moment Edward found me again, we'd entered the Land of Oz and discovered that the world was full of a new kind of beauty: color. I still looked around at me at this new home in Alaska with my family, and my eyes were stunned by what they saw. Now that I knew of the glory that the world held for me, I could never go back to the bland tans of my old life.

I missed Charlie and Renee with a dull ache, and I thought fondly of Jake and Billy, but this was right. My heart was healed, and I was going to wed the person that would hold my life in his hands for all eternity. He had proven himself worthy of my heart, and I gave it without a qualm.

"Bella? What are you thinking about?" I turned and saw Edward climbing out of our bedroom window to join me on my perch on the edge of the roof.

I smiled at him, stunned by the colors that he brought with him. "Oh…lots of things and nothing at all. I imagine you would be glad you can't hear my mind right now. You would be bored."

"I highly doubt that," he said with a crooked smile as he balanced perfectly on the gutter and walked like a tight rope walker toward me. "Even your smallest thought seems unexpected and full of things that no one else on earth has ever thought before. You could never be boring to me." He sat down beside me, and I leaned my head on his shoulder. "Seriously, love, what were you thinking about?"

"Mostly about the wedding, about how different things are this time around. How whole I feel, and how I'm not afraid at all." I moved my head enough so that I could see his eyes. "Are you nervous? You've never done this before, after all."

He laughed softly. "I'm as far on the other side of nervous as I can possibly be. I imagine that no one on Earth has ever been as happy as I am at this very moment, Bella. You are going to be my wife in a few short hours—you'll be my companion for all eternity. I'm so overjoyed that I could run around the world and never slow down…and my thrill at the speed wouldn't match the euphoria I feel at just imagining you walking towards me, vowing to be mine."

The image he described made me laugh out loud. "If your imagination alone is that exciting, what are you going to do when it's reality?"

"I have no idea," he said fervently, "but I can't wait to find out." We sat in silence for a little while longer before Edward spoke again. "So you really do feel whole now, then? You've seemed happy, but sometimes I wonder…"

"Stop wondering," I said shortly. I'd discovered that the best way to railroad an epic Edward panic attack was to stop it in its tracks before he really got rolling with the angst and drama. If he got away from you, you were in for at least an hour of talking softly and nonstop reassurances until you were about ready to smack him simply for being an emotional ignoramus. Trust me—I knew this from bitter experience. "I'm only going to say this once more, Edward Cullen, because repeating it would be allowing you to think that the opposite is plausible." I took his face firmly in my hands and gazed so deeply into his golden eyes that I was surprised that I couldn't see his stomach. "You've made me whole, Edward."

He started to open his mouth to say something, but I shook my head. "Let me finish." He nodded and waited for me to continue.

"Edward, you don't realize what you are to me. I was lost for so long…I tried everything to fix myself. I'd promised you that I would live, but I wasn't living. I just…existed. I used Jake and my dad and school and a fake life to try and fill the hole in my chest, but they were just like pieces of cardboard that would fall out whenever I moved too quickly. None of it was really mine. Jake was Dani's, even then, and Billy belonged to the tribe and the house was Billy and Jake's, and my dad had his own life. The only thing in this world that is really and truly mine and mine alone is your love." I took my right hand from his face and placed it on his chest, over his heart. "This right here plugged the hole in my chest, Edward. You made me whole again. Not Jake, not Alice, not becoming a vampire, but you. You always thought that making me one of you would be taking away my life, but it wasn't. You gave me my life instead. I was living the half-life then. This forever here with you…this is my life, whatever a life might be. I love you. I'm never going to reassure you of this decision to marry you again, because the idea of me not marrying you is so stupid that it could possibly win a record in the Guinness Book of World Records under the stupidity category."

Edward sighed, and the little line over his eyes disappeared. "I believe you." Such simple words, but he said them with such awe that I had no choice but to believe him.

I smiled at him, and said, "Besides, if you hadn't come back, I might be dead by now anyway. Heart defect, remember? My heart was always meant for you. It was like my body knew all along that the only way we could be together was for me to be flawed."

"My heart was just as flawed as yours, Bella, only mine was in emotion while yours was in tissue," Edward said, bringing my head back to his shoulder. "Your heart was the representation of my life without you: constant pain and the inability to take a real breath. We two flawed individuals…together we were made whole."

"Like puzzle pieces!" I snickered. I kindly refrained from mentioning the sexual innuendo that immediately popped into my head—Edward probably wouldn't appreciate it in his current introspective frame of mind.

We sat on the roof for hours longer, not saying anything, just enjoying being with one another. The stars had never seemed so bright, not that they weren't absolutely fascinating with this new sight, anyway. I could actually see each star for what it was, as if I were gazing through a telescope. I amused myself by looking at the vague outline of the lunar module that had been left behind on the moon by the astronauts in 1969.

Dawn was breaking over the horizon when Edward pulled me to my feet so that I could stand beside him. I was entranced by the individual colors of the rays of light that poured through the trees and danced across the snow. The world suddenly seemed to be full of magic, not the least of which was the matching sparkling skin on the hands that were clasped as Edward and I stood together. He smiled and glanced over at me, continually captivated by my changed visage.

"Weird, huh?" I commented dryly, knowing he would argue.

"Weird? No! That's not the word I'd use," he said as he leaned down to press his lips against my forehead. "I think I'd use new. This is a new beginning for us, Bella. We're free now. We're free from the demands of humanity, of the Volturi and of our doubts. Only a real life awaits us now."

Edward looked directly into the sun and quoted softly under his breath with a voice of velvet and joy, "'For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come.'"

Smiling, I pressed my lips against his and led him inside to get ready for the wedding that would be taking place in just a few hours. Behind us, the sun gleamed with light and ice crystals and a bluebird chirped hopefully in a pine tree.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

A/N: YES, I'm really ending it there. It felt right—we'll leave Edward and Bella to their new future. Please review and you'll receive one vial of vampire venom to use on whatever you want. Please, for my sake, don't use it on an animal that's super hyper or on a total ditz. Think long and hard on what you'd like to have around for…well…long and hard.