The Crow

XII: Death and passover

If Sarah had only gotten to the cemetery a few moments earlier, she would have seen something that could have come straight from a gothic take on Heaven above.

Just as the ambulance workers gathered up Albrecht, Eric had stumbled out of the church through a side door that led into the cemetery, each step he took growing steadily weaker as he approached his and his love's gravestones. "Shelly..." he whispered before he weakly collapsed, feeling the cold ground beneath his side through his shirt as he reached out to Shelly's cold marker, using it to pull himself close enough to rest against it. He caught his breath, feeling darkness beginning to creep around his body and into his line of sight.
As the wind started to grow and whip around him, Eric could sense the cold fingers of death reaching out for him again, blood beginning to seep from his wounds in fresh torrents. Darkness edged around his vision, the other graves beginning to blur. This was it. Nothing could stop it now.

Then, something else gently shook him out of his pre-death trance: a warm hand brushing its fingers through his steaming wet locks. Prying open his eyes, Eric slowly turned to look up and see the owner of the warm appendage. And what he saw filled him with light, his jaw hanging open in a gasp as he beheld his deliverer.

She seemed just as beautiful to him as she did the first time he saw her, her gaze soft and gentle, her perfect figure clad in an angelic white dress. Slowly, gently, Shelly Webster knelt down on the ground between Eric's legs, tilting her head toward his.
Their lips met, and Eric could see the dark edges around his vision be slowly replaced by the light that enveloped his body, light that seemed to be taken from the growing exultation of an early morning sunrise. His arms shakily went up to her waist, almost afraid to hold her for fear of this being a dream.
But Shelly's figure proved solid to him, and as the kiss slowly ended, Eric felt her bare arms wrap around his fabric-covered shoulders, her hair in his face as he held her tight. "Shelly...am I coming home?"
He could feel her nodding, her gentle voice against his ear. "You're coming home. It's over, baby."
His hands balled into the fabric of her dress, his head burying into her smooth shoulder, tears beginning to flood from his eyes.

"Eric...it's alright. It's over. I'm here."

Eric couldn't help but let out a sad smile at her words. He finally let himself realize that the crow was right - he couldn't save her back then, he'd come to terms with that now.

But he had saved Sarah. He had saved any more people from suffering the same fate her mother or Shelly had done. He had taken his vengeance, discovering that under the skin, it was only love's darker brother. And here, with that vengeance had indeed come justice, as the reason for his being brought back was finally gone.

And redemption for himself. He may not have been able to save her, but she had come back to help save him.

Eric wasn't ready to leave yet, though. He managed to lean away just enough to look up into Shelly's loving amber gaze, his voice a whisper. "Remember when I told you that I loved you that last time?"
Shelly nodded, a smile starting to spread across her face as well. "And I asked you 'forever'?"
The same smile, happier this time, seemed to spread across Eric's face under the almost-completely faded mask of makeup. "And I said 'forever', then you asked 'Only forever?'"
He leaned up, feeling every invisible weight beginning to leave his shoulders as they departed; his final words a whisper in his angel's ear, reflected through her voice as it murmured into his own.
"It's forever now."

Sarah finally managed to make it into the cemetery, keeping a close eye on her darkly feathered friend as it landed on top of Eric's gravestone. As she got closer to the twin markers, she found both graves as if they'd never been touched in the first place. Yet she didn't let herself feel surprised - with all the strange happenings these last couple of nights, she didn't think anything would continue to faze her for a long time.
Slowly, Sarah opened up her hand to hold it beneath the crow's beak before the bird dropped the engagement ring, its tiny diamond and gold finish gleaming, into her palm. She held it up and looked at the inside of the ring, noting the simple inscription of FOREVER with a soft smile.

Her gaze flickered to the murderous, yet gentle, bird. "Thanks", she whispered with a smile before slowly turning away and walking back to the street, her respects more than paid.

She heard a fluttering behind her as the bird disappeared into the darkness of the night, so new to her eyes after so many years. How delightfully ironic it was that, on this newly darkened Devil's Night, she finally found it in herself to believe in angels.

If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn. People die.
But real love is forever.