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Sometimes, life doesn’t give us a choice. It doesn’t give us an option to choose, or an option to fight back. Sometimes it doesn’t give us the possibility of saying “No,” to the decision it has made for you.
Sometimes, life just makes a decision. Sometimes life just takes the only thing you truly care for from you and you just have to sit there and watch it happen. Sometimes life will beat you to a fucking pulp and you can just sit there and take it.
Sometimes there just are no decisions. No good, no bad.
Just life deciding that maybe you’ve just had it too good for too long and that just isn’t fair. Not for to all of those out there suffering, to all of those out there in pain.
Because why did Kailani Amara, the murderer of her own father, of his crew, of so many people, why did she deserve to be happy? Why would she be allowed to be? There was no point in her happiness, not with all the pain that she had caused. It just wasn’t fair, but what in life was?
Was it fair to the workers of the ship that she gutted them on instinct? Was it fair for her father to drown her?
Was it fair that when she leaned down to give Hezekiah Hill, her little spider, a kiss on the forehead, as she had done so many times before, her lips didn’t connect? That instead of warm skin and a giggle, she was met with cold air and loneliness?
Was it fair that even though she felt truly powerful for the first time in decades, that she wanted nothing more than to go back?
Was it fair, that after such a long search for happiness, she would lose it all in one second? One single second, so vital, so important and not even longer than a heartbeat that she no longer possessed.
But here she was, alone. The black tendrils littering the ground that she stood upon, each of them connecting and twisting in places. Knots, where the life’s of people had been interwoven and connected, connections that have now been lost.
She didn’t even have time to think about what happened, she felt the telltale sign of someone Seeing her on her back, a fear that was once so familiar, once a sensation that was like a blanket to her, calming and freeing all the same. But now it just wanted to make her break, she was afraid of it for the first time. This was Auggie’s god, not him. This was not the gentle spoken man that she lovingly called Snoopy. This wasn’t the man that she held the hands of when she quietly told him about the ways that she saw him and the rest of the crew die that day. A statement of her fear of her own entity.
Of losing them.
In the end, no matter how good she was at predicting their death, she could have never predicted losing them like this.
Suddenly, painfully, without a chance to take her back.
So, as she felt the eye on the back of her head, she fell to her knees, the black tendrils beneath her knees pulsing in time with her sobs as they clawed themselves out of her throat and broke free into the night.
Just like her laughter used to on those nights on the deck with Hez, sharing stories about their past with each other.
The sobs broke free like her voice tended to when she sang with Miriam. Songs so morbid that only they could find them lovely.
They rose like Clarence and her after a successful night.
She thought of Gall, who had never failed to make her laugh, even on the hardest of days. She thought of Jack, who would sometimes purr in her sleep like a cat. She let out a sob for Henrique, who she liked to fluster, because she used to think them getting all soft and melty was hilarious.
She thought of Clancy, who would never leave a light on. She thought of Cook and the day they had learned what a vegetable was.
She thought of the day of her and Clarence first hug, the taste of whiskey in their mouths and their warmth around each other.
Joshua, who had never failed to impress her with his knowledge.
Micah, the avatar who she taught how to swim, who would disappear into the lonely whenever he got flustered.
Of Eli, who she could never stand to look at for a longer time, but whose quiet company she enjoyed greatly.
She thought of her family as her knees turned cold from touching the tendrils of Terminus, as her tears hit them and made them pulse in confusion. There was no reason for her to cry, they tried to say. Some of the tendrils lead to them after all, lead to them wherever they were because they could still die.
But she didn’t want them to, she wanted them here. She wanted to hear their laughter, to wipe their tears away. She wanted to be there for them, as they were there for her.
She wanted her family back. The only people that had loved her for herself, that had loved her for just being herself. That didn’t have expectations for her to be like they wanted her to be.
So she cried, she wept for those that were not yet dead, because one day they would be and she might be the avatar of a patient god, but she did not gain that trait.
She wasn’t willing to wait.
Not for this.
She needed to find them.
She needed her family.
She loved them too much to let them go like this.