A/N: For the last time, please let me know if you catch any typos. More notes at the bottom with details on... a sequel?

Two Weeks Later

"Is it weird that I find this vaguely cathartic?" Bella asked the person behind her.

"It's your funeral, love. You can find it however you want to find it," Edward replied from behind her.

"I mean, I feel bad for them," Bella continued. "But this was how it was always supposed to be. Without the supernatural, I mean. This was how my life was supposed to end, and for them, it did end, like it was supposed to."

Edward didn't reply, so Bella added, "I feel bad, though. That this is helping me, and heart wrenching for them."

"Funerals are supposed to help people," Edward said. "It helps them grieve, move on. Which is what you're doing, in a way."

Bella made a small noise of agreement, even though her guilt was still there.

"If it helps, love, according to Jasper, most of them are shocked, not sad."

She put her hand to her chest. "Are you invading people's privacy to comfort me?" she gassed, mock affronted.

Edward rolled his eyes. "Consider it petty revenge on the fact that our family was forced into the second row."

Our family. Bella looked down to see her two rings, sparkling on her left hand. She looked back up to watch the Cullens in the audience, Esme and Alice wearing veils to conceal their lack of tears. Rose, Emmett, and Jasper were in the near the back rows, where most of her classmates sat, while Esme, Carlisle, and Alice sat in the second row, behind Charlie, Renee, Jacob, Sam, Billy, and Harry Clearwater. Sam's fiance and Harry's wife rounded off the first row, and Bella was sure it was because Jacob and Billy didn't want the Cullens anywhere near her parents.

"And why are most of them shocked?" Bella asked, ignoring his statement though she agreed.

"For your classmates, it's because you were their age. You were only eighteen when you were taken from them. They're being faced with their own mortality."

Bella nodded, accepting his answer. He continued. "For the wolves, it's because they expected you to be dead. For this to be real."

Sam was doing a good job of seeming solemn. As were the rest of the adults in the front row who were in on the secret. As for Jacob, though… He looked genuinely tormented.

As the funeral ended, and everyone began congregating to pay their respects, Bella changed the subject. "So how does Alice plan on covering for you?"

Edward cocked his head. "You know, I'm not sure. She hadn't decided when we left this morning…. Never mind." He cut himself off.

Bella turned to look at him. "What?"

Edward sighed. "She plans on disparaging my good name." He pointed to where Alice was talking to Charlie and mimicked her voice. "'Where's Edward, you ask? Oh, he went back to LA to drink himself to death. He's probably halfway there by now.'"

Bella covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. Edward sent her a dry look.

The wind changed, sending the scent of the funeral towards their perch in a copse of trees. Bella stilled, holding her breath.

"Is this too much for you, love? We can leave if it is. The others are just going to say their goodbyes; they're almost done. We won't miss anything."

Bella shook her head. She took a cautious breath. The pain in her throat burned, but she pushed it aside. "I'm fine. I want to stay."

Edward shot her a worried look, but nodded. Bella continued. "I'm glad we decided to stay here in Forks for a while. I'm worried about Charlie."

She looked to where Charlie stood, staring at her grave. Only ashes laid in it. Seattle PD had uncovered her "body" in an abandoned warehouse by the port. Jasper's forger had hacked into their records, and changed the coroner's report to a positive identification. After that, it had been easy to send the body to a funeral home, and expedite the cremation process. Charlie and Renee were left thinking it was a paperwork error that kept them from being able to see the body. And since the funeral home had followed Bella's request of cremation, they weren't so motivated to look into it any further.

Edward squeezed her shoulder. "He'll be fine, love. Jacob is planning to make sure of that. And until we move on, Esme and Alice won't mind stopping by occasionally."

Charlie was still staring at her grave. Most of the attendees were gone now. Renee took his hand, squeezed it, said something, and also left. Only the Cullens and the wolves remained.

Bella watched the first tear roll down his cheek. She looked away.

Edward pulled her to his chest. "Let's go home, love. There's a line between cathartic release and masochism."

She nodded against his shirt. Edward was right. She didn't need to see this. "You're right. I'm ready."

Edward took her hand as they jumped out of the tree. He gripped it tightly as they returned the way they'd come, a careful path through the woods as far away from humans as possible. They ran slower than what she would have liked, Edward carefully guiding her away from anything she could run into or trip over.

For the entire two weeks since she'd awoken, he'd been acting like this. He hadn't been treating her like she was still human, but he still treated her like she was more fragile than he was. Like the most breakable vampire in the world. And Bella had let him, even though she heard Victoria's words echo every time. I had absolute, unshakable faith in James. I knew he was as capable as I. But Edward doesn't have the same faith in you.

And her own worries crept in, sometimes. Words Victoria had never said. He'll never see you as more than human. He'll never see you as his equal.

He'd brushed her off, when she'd told him about everything that happened with Victoria. And he seemed fine. He seemed normal.

So Bella had let him guide her away from tripping hazards. She had let him carry her over rivers. She had let him lead her to the easy prey, away from the bears and mountain lions. But she was starting to realize that maybe her perspective of Edward's normal behavior wasn't exactly normal behavior.

She stopped him when they reached a creek. Maybe it was because the funeral had pushed her emotions to the surface. Maybe the idea of her death, of one of Victoria's plans coming to fruition made her worried about her other plan coming to fruition. Or maybe she'd just gotten fed up.

Edward watched her, confused, as she took a few steps backwards from the river. She watched as confusion turned to anxiety when she took three steps forward and leapt to the other side.

She waited as he followed, landing a few feet from her. Before he could say anything, she began. "We need to talk."

His eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "About what, love?"

She looked down. "About what Victoria said."

Bella had thought about it so often that her memory of it was crystal clear. My mate made me invincible, and his makes him vulnerable.

Edward took her hand again. "I told you, Bella, we don't have to worry about it. She was mistaken. She wanted to take the world from me, and instead she gave it to me forever."

Her hand slid out of his grip. "I don't think she was wrong, Edward."

He gave her a pained look, and she continued. "I think I do make you weak. I think that even though I'm practically indestructible now, you still think I'm delicate. I mean, I beat Emmett at arm wrestling yesterday! If I run into a tree, it's the tree you should be worried about!"

"You arm wrestled Emmett?" He matched her volume.

Bella rolled her eyes, and said quietly, "Jasper dared me too."

Edward huffed. "Jasper and I will be having words."

She shot him a look. "No! No, you won't be having words! It was fun, not being treated like the most fragile thing in the room! It was fun, proving to myself that I'm not made of glass!" She picked a rock up off the forest floor and pulverized it in her hand. "Look at what I can do, Edward! I'm not something you need to be worried about anymore. You're allowed to be a little less careful around me!"

Edward pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not careful around you because I think you're the most fragile thing in the room; I'm careful around you because you're the most precious thing in the room!" He moved closer to her, and pulled her hands to his chest. "You hold my heart in your palms, love. You mean the world to me; you are the world to me" he continued quietly. "Forgive me for wanting to keep you safe."

Bella sighed, the wind torn from her sails. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned against his chest. "Alice told me what you were going to do. When you thought I would die."

It was something Alice had disclosed a few days after she'd awoken, when the whole family knew what Victoria's plan was. Alice seemed to think that whatever Bella did with the information, it would make things better.

The entire forest seemed to hold its breath as Edward exhaled into her hair. "Oh."

"And I don't think it's healthy," Bella went on, "For us to be each others' everythings again. Especially not when it doesn't make us better people."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at Alice and Jasper." She leaned back to look up at him. "Alice makes him want to be a more compassionate person, and Jasper grounds her, keeps her from getting carried away. Look at Rosalie and Emmett. He keeps her from being so icy, and Rose makes him less impulsive. Or Carlisle and Esme. Look at them. Look at how he's given her what she's always wanted, a family, and how she keeps that family together. Look at how they all make each other better people, Edward. I don't know if we do the same."

Edward didn't say anything. Bella sighed, "All I do is make you paranoid."

He stepped away from her. "Only because I love you, Bella! Jasper, Emmett, Carlisle, do you think they would ever let their mates be in life-threatening danger? Not under any circumstances! And I've let you drift into it four times now, not counting the danger you were in just from proximity to me! I'm just trying to protect you!"

Bella stepped forward and rested a hand on his cheek. "But you've already done that, my love. You've shown me that my life has value to the people I love. Even if you think you failed to protect me, you've succeeded in something far more important: teaching me that I'm worth protecting. That it's worth it to protect myself. I was supposed to die, Edward, but you showed me that it's okay for me to live."

She dropped her voice to a whisper. "I was kind and selfless and smart and funny and strong before we met, Edward. I just didn't believe in myself, in my worth. You made me a better person by showing me that. By showing me that it is worth far more to live for something than to die for something."

Edward closed his eyes gently and didn't respond. "And if I have to teach you the same, I'm not afraid to," Bella finished.

He opened his eyes. "Teach me," he rasped. "Show me."

This time, she was the one who pulled him to her chest and held him. "Don't worry," she said softly. "We have forever for you to learn."

And that's a wrap, folks! When I first wrote the epilogue it felt a little clunky, and to an extent it still does, which is why I'm eventually going to revise Dying Wish. I'm so happy I finished it, and that I got to finally take you guys to the end of the story, but the writing here isn't exactly up to scratch with my other, incomplete stories. In other news, I think a series of one-shots will be the way to go for a sequel. I never thought I would write a sequel because my original plan from 3 years ago when I first started this story was to wrap everything up in the epilogue. But I kinda left Jacob's arc unfinished, and the ending is kind of open to see if Victoria really succeeded in her goal, and there are a few other little bits and pieces I left out. Said one-shots will hopefully go in chronological order, so they might go up to the present day. We'll see. It will probably take a while for me to get any of them written, though. Like, a long while. Lately, I've been working on some fics in fandoms other than Twilight, and I want to explore where some of those go. I'll post an announcement when I actually start the sequel, though. If one of you wants to send me a little reminder poke every now and then in the form of a review or PM about a sequel, I hold no objections to that.