Beach Day

60: What Remains

She lets her breath catch up to her, unsteady in a heaving chest. This is fine. This is what she wanted, isn't it? Not for him to die, but for him to understand. Does he get it yet? It's hard to ask when there's panic in his eyes and barely-restrained rage in her chest. It's hard to see when her vision is going white from the rage of it all.

Something approaches in the trees. For the first time since all of this began, she doesn't flinch at it.

The undead unintentional-necromancer atop her steed of amalgam animal doesn't force Tiff to turn and face her when she speaks. "It's done, then? It's over?"

"I guess so."

"There's a timeline where I go full throttle and let him die in the belly of the beast."

"There's a timeline where I let you." She doesn't wipe off the blade. She just stabs it into the wet dirt. The rain pours into her eyes; she lets it. "It's not this one."

"No?" She raises her eyebrows as much as what remains will let her.

Tiff shakes her head. "No. I'm making the choice here. I'll take your bones to the cemetery and bury you there, and I'm going to decide what happens with him." He's fading. It shouldn't break her heart, but it does. She nudges him with the toe of her boot. "Maybe I'll let him die. Maybe I'll take him to a gay bar and let him bleed out there. Maybe I'll expose him for what he is: a low-down fraud and a goddamn murderer. But— I've done what I said I would. I got your skull. I need the rest of your bones."

"I guess this is where the story ends, then."

"This isn't a story, Auntie. It's just a part of life. And it's going to stop here for you, but you don't end when you end. You know that. You lived past death. You brought yourself back by rage, right? By grief? What remains when that's gone? The cycle ends here, but your memory lives on, right?"

"A sweet platitude, but can you guarantee it?"

"I can't. Nobody can. But— Listen, Auntie. As long as somebody doesn't kill me, I'm going to live for a really long time. And I'm going to make sure you get a tombstone. Peepaw'll pay for it. It's honestly the least he could do."

"A tombstone." There's no moral quality to the word. She sounds positively hollow about it.

"A tombstone and a grave. A memory that lives on. It's all that any of us really get."

"Then I suppose I can't ask for more."

"You could. But I couldn't guarantee it."

That's the end of it, then. Resigned to what fate and nature had in store for her, her aunt gives a solemn nod, climbs down from the beast, and pats its cheek gently. It's a tender moment, to be sure. Tiff is a little too exhausted and preoccupied with pain and what's going on around her to feel much of anything about it— anything more than guilt. It's a moment of grieving, of saying goodbye; it's one of the last moments on this mortal coil that Priscilla Cain will ever get: saying goodbye to her only companion of about fifty years. When she dies, so too will it.

She should have been allowed to live. It's a spark of rage in Tiff's chest that she can't do anything with. So what if it changed the course of her grandfather's life? It ended his sister's, and for what?

Tiff wasn't blessed by the Time Gnome. Even then, going back in time to fix it would be irresponsible. She can see the paradox stretching out in front of her, and she doesn't want to deal with the ramifications. It's easier not to mess with it. It's still unjust that this is the way things were supposed to go. Modern tragedy: she was dead before the story began.