A/N: Thank you MariahajilE, my beta, and Layathomemom, my prereader, for holding my hand through all of this.

This is not Bella's point-of-view. This is not Edward's point-of-view. This is the voice of Love.

.

.

.

.

I am alone.

The biological defenses of this body are crashing quickly.

Consciousness was the first to go, taking self-preservation and determination with it. Life, the spirit of flesh and bone and breath, taunts me with whispers of things even I cannot change.

But if this is fate, I'll fight against it with every last drop of my being.

Even hope, my dear old friend, has one foot out the door.

I am the last stand. I'm the last one left to compel this body to keep functioning. And when the lungs and brain fail me, I plead with the heart, the part of this body I've consumed the most. The rest of these organs betray me, but the heart's what's really mine.

Now I'm sharing it, though. The vessel once ripe with me is now my battlefield against hatred and malice. The source of its infiltration? A bullet and a wicked soul.

It's not always like this.

I don't always fight this hard.

But this one is special. This body and this heart are special. This soul is special, bound to another in a way foreign even to me.

This will not be the end of me. There is no end to me. When this body is long gone and rotted, long consumed by the earth, I will live on. When this soul has ascended even out of my reach, I will remain. As long as there are hearts beating and breaths being drawn, I will be here. I will dwell in the hearts of those to come and those after them, and I will do so until the end of time. I will flourish, even, in the new mother looking upon her baby for the first time or the teacher who packed the lunch for the too-skinny kid in the back of the classroom.

But, oh, how I will miss this one. How I will mourn the loss of this heart that embraced me with such ferocity. I thrived in this vessel. I've won battles here. I've torn down walls of fear and grief. I've soothed wounds and reawakened this soul.

So I will fight for it.

With every faint breath and weak rush of blood this heart pumps, I will fight. I will fight to keep this one for just a little longer in the unyielding vastness of my eternity. If destiny is predetermined to take this one from me, it will have to be ripped from the clutches of my desperate grasp.

I stroke the heart that sputters on the thick bitterness that coated the bullet that ripped through the flesh. I beg of it to remember me when the brain is too incapacitated… to remember everything I am.

I am the prayer whispered from these lungs for the girl when fate took her father.

I am the twisting of two bodies between soft linen.

I am his tears when anger kept him from her.

I am spontaneous vows spoken on white sand.

I am rings drawn on fingers.

A door opens, and the other half of the soul I am fighting for fills the space I battle in. The body it inhabits comes to sit beside the bed this one lies on, and one of the hands it operates takes one of his, limp and heavy in her grasp.

Only the beeping of machines and the sound of her tears fill the room for a long time. If I had physical form, I'd cry with her. I want to. But I don't. And I can't. I crave to comfort her, but the truth is that I only make this worse.

"God," she chokes out eventually. "Please, God. Please…" Her voice is raspy. She is tired and broken. "You can't take him from me. You can't…"

This is a desperate plea, a last resort. This woman is not religious. I know this, because I live in her body, too. I am the reason her heart is breaking so painfully.

The dying heart beats a little stronger at the sound of her voice, and I smile victoriously. This is the miracle that is me. This is the part of me that confounds biology.

She squeezes his hand, and here comes hope, that finicky bitch, tip-toeing back in.

"I love you…" the girl whispers.

I feel myself swell. She has spoken my name. It makes my resolve to fight impossibly stronger.

I am proud of her and the progress we have made together. As she sits, an unknowing witness to the war I wage, I only hope that as I fill her, I bring her comfort in the simple fact that I was here.

I filled these bodies.

I touched these souls.

I healed these hearts.

I was here.

I made my mark.

They knew me.

Love.