Epilogue: Ten Years Later

"Hey Honey, come here. We just got an email from Danielle. She had the baby last night. It was a little boy that they name Damien."

Ginny came running in from the dining room with a big smile on her face. "Did they send pictures? Please tell me they sent pictures!"

I smiled as she slid into the space next to me on the couch and laid her head on my shoulder. I scrolled down to show the three photos that had been attached to the message. The first was a picture of a tiny pink baby with clenched eyes wrapped in a blue blanket, the second was an exhausted and yet still beaming Danielle holding baby Damien, and the third was the two of them with Danielle's husband Tom. Ginny cuddled in closer to me and sighed with a wide smile on her face.

"Well, that makes five hundred and seventeen currently livin' descendents of our bloodline walkin' the Earth as of this moment." She smiled up at me with warm loving eyes before stretching up to kiss my lips softly. News of new babies in the family always made her a bit more sentimental. "Save the picture to my jump drive and I'll go print out the pictures and put them in the frames I've had waitin' for the big guy's arrival."

"Okay sweetie." I wrapped my arms around my wife's shoulders and kissed her lips once again with a bit more enthusiasm before pulling her back to cuddle to my chest and eating up the joy and love radiating from her body as my mind began to wander into our past.

When we arrived home from Volterra we sat for two straight days and did nothing but talk about the past, the present, and the future. After we had worked out the details of how we were going to move on with our lives from that point she told me that she had one more thing I needed to see. She led me to a hidden door under the staircase that led to a massive basement that was essentially one large room the expanse of the entire house. The walls were covered floor to ceiling with hundreds upon hundreds of photographs of our family throughout the many decades and then I turned to see one full wall was nothing but a massive flow chart. To the far left were two solitary names, Ginny's and mine, and from there each generation branched out to the point that the wall was overflowing from floor to ceiling with the names of our countless descendants. It was both amazing and dumbfounding to see how from two single individuals so many others came to be.

For the next two days I listened in wonder as she told me all about every name on the wall with such energetic enthusiasm that I couldn't help but smile and take every bit in. She really did adore each one and took such great joy from knowing all about them and keeping tabs on their lives. She started me out slowly, putting me in contact with some of the relatives that she was already talking to and introducing me as her 'new' husband, but it didn't take long at all until I was just as excited and intrigued by the whole process as she was. It really did relieve the monotony of immortal life and gave both of us something much more tangible to cling to.

Of course it wasn't all bright and happy. For every birth that we rejoiced in there was also a death for us to mourn. The gains and losses were like a wild rollercoaster ride that we endured perpetually, and yet we would never give up the joys in order to avoid the sadness.

After a few minutes of holding Ginny in my arms I finally released her and copied the pictures to the jump drive as she requested and then made her pay for it with one last kiss before I would relinquish the storage device to her. She giggled in the way that always made my chest twitch in happiness. It wasn't until after we got back from Rome and were finally truly together that I saw how sad Ginny had been when I first met her. She was good at covering up and burying it behind other emotions, but now that I had experienced her spirit her truly happy, the difference was staggering.

It had been ten years since my mad dash to Volterra to save my Ginny from herself and in the process saved my own life too. There were times that I still missed my vampire family who I had lived with for many decades, but my life with Ginny was happy too in a much different way. There was a peace in my life with Ginny that I had never experienced before. We lived an easy life with one another, always seemingly in sync. If I had ever doubted it before, I surely didn't now…I was made to be with Ginny, she was my soul mate in every conceivable way and I cherished her all the more for the difficulty we suffered in finding one another again. My life was now complete and for the first time ever, I was completely and blissfully happy.

Ginny was wrapped up in the new pictures of the baby and didn't even notice when I slipped away into the woods to prepare her surprise. I returned to the house just before dusk and led her out into the woods to the clearing I had prepared for us. Her eyes grew wide as we walked into the open expanse to find the flickering candles displayed in the shape of a ten foot wide heart on the ground before her. I led her to the middle, flipping on a portable CD player and pulling her into my arms to dance with me.

"You remembered," Ginny whispered in awe as she looked into my eyes.

"Of course I remembered Gin, it is our anniversary after all." I leaned down to kiss her beautiful lips that seemed to call to me in the flicker of the candlelight.

"Yes, but this was the anniversary of our human weddin'. We've never celebrated it before."

"Well, we're gonna to start my beautiful darlin'. It was the true beginnin' of our life together and I want to celebrate it every year. I love you darlin' and I wouldn't trade you for anythin'."

"I love you too Jasper…Always."

"Always," I answered back as I held her close and vowing to never let her go again. I had lived life with Ginny and life without her, and a life without my Ginny was no life at all. My heart had found it's home again, and here it would stay until either one of us lost our lives, in which case the other would join them, or the world stopped spinning. Until then we would stay in each other's arms and keep watch over our decedents. My once faded memories of my human past were now the most precious of any I had ever encountered because they were where I found my life again, my Ginny again, and my full capacity to love and appreciate life.

Author's Note: Okay guys…that's it…Faded Memories is now officially and totally complete! I could have left it with the last chapter, but I wanted to show the full scope of the mark the left on the world. Two tiny individuals and their love led to the life of thousands in the hundred plus years following their life. I hope you all liked it and thank you so much for reading it, adding it to your alerts and favorites, and reviewing. I really appreciated it.