Fate Fights - Fate Series 3 - Book 3 (A J*A*D*E*S/s*t*a*r*s novel)

Part 9 - Finale - Saying Goodbye

Part 9-Finale

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saying goodbye

Tears streak her face. She can't remember the last time she's cried. Just one more. She can do this—just one more.

Andrew is lying on the bed in black boxers and a white tee shirt. They'd all laid down for this. Jo squares her shoulder, takes a deep breath.

"You don't have to stay, babe," says Andrew. Their job is done, and the light in Andrew's green eyes have dimmed to the embers of a dying fire. They had had a million lifetimes together—both as Andrew and Jo and Amy and Jo.

And it still hadn't been enough.

She sits on the bed, then lays down next to him. His body is weak, frail, but alive. She closes her eyes, a mixture of blue, amber, and the turbulent color of the sky before a thunderstorm. Andrew held her, then she felt his hands clasping together, and she opened one tear blurry eye and watched as Andrew removed the soul ring. A gasp escaped his lips.

"I love you, Jo Fucking Wheaton."

Jo feels the last snap of her power return, the soul power that had been keeping them all alive for generation after generation. The return is like a hole being punctured into her. It gapes. She shudders as the tears come again. A torrent at first, which ebbs with time. How much time Jo doesn't know or care because she will live forever. She sits up, seeing that the morning had walked into evening. She tilts her head, looking at the soul she'd loved. Taking the band, the original soul ring, and she slides it into her pocket.

"I love you, too, chere."

There would never be another Amy or Andrew Astin.

She remembers her death as well. A gorgeous fall day in Maine, so frail and old that Jo had to carry her everywhere. Her own personal human wheelchair. Amy had lost the use of her legs in her 2nd century. They'd sat, enjoying the sun doing down when Amy had taken her hand and placed her ring it in, said, "I love you, Jo Fucking Wheaton. Time for you to go do what you need to do. You take care of our girls." Closed her blazing green eyes and been gone. Jo had instantly been snapped back to where Andrew Astin had been, moments after he'd died. Not understanding, Jo had to wait until the paramedics had called him at the scene and found her way to the morgue. Placing the ring on Andrew's finger, Jo had used the power she found out later, had been Remy Lazar's power—to call back souls. Amy Astin's life, all of their lives, in the other reality had ended and reverted back, inexplicably, to the alternate earth.

Jo takes a deep breath again, remembering. Standing and walking to the wall safe hidden behind a painting that Andrew had done when they'd been young, someplace Jo didn't know. Maybe it was just a random sunset. She punches the code and opens the safe, gathering the few objects there. A necklace with an ankh, donning that. Passport, license, and credentials, paperwork to the billions she has stashed. Feeling the pull of the other world, drawing her back.

She feels the other place, her original place of birth, tugging at her. Jo closes her eyes and knows it's time to let fate win its fight.

*

Jo sits on the porch steps of her small island cabin on Venus Island. The sun is setting, and the stars, torn twinkling lights in the dark fabric of the sky, are her only company.

For now.

She hears the footfalls, bare feet on the sand.

Then there she is.