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“You know it’s polite to knock,” she says, lifting her eyes from her desk to mildly stare down the servant of Death.
Perhaps it was the wrong choice to appear before her in his corporeal form, Kravitz thinks. Standing there, straight-backed in a fine suit, dreadlocks tied back with a black ribbon, he must not be a terribly imposing figure. Still, he had done his research and found there are a small handful of people tied to Magnus, Merle, and Taako who have similar strange tally of deaths. The woman before him seems the most likely to have information on why and how. But questions can come later; he still has a job to do.
“Lucretia,” Kravitz says, taking two steps forward. “I am here for your soul.”
“Ah.” She folds her hands on her desk. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for an assassination today. Or night. Gods, what time is it? Anyway, if you’re from that weird moon conspiracy group then—“
With a wave of his arm he summons his scythe with a peal of thunder, specks of lightning flashing through the small office. In his other hand he holds the book of Death, open to her name.
“I am here on behalf of the Raven Queen, goddess of Death,” he says in his best reaper voice. “And you, Lucretia of the Bureau of Balance, are overdue.”
Now she’s paying attention to him, but still hasn’t risen from her chair. Between her and the three from earlier, they weren’t acting like the usual frantic necromancer or demented undead. Her eyes are calculating as she studies him, eyeing his scythe like she’s determining if it’s real or a prop.
“How many times have I died?” she asks.
He blinks, and then checks the book. “Eighteen times, yet never once have you checked into the Astral Plane. That goes against the laws of life and death, and so I am here to bring you in.“
There is a long silence as he lets her absorb that. The others had been entirely unaware of their own death counts so he admittedly expected the same here, but that is proving wrong. There is no surprise or confusion, nor does she make any effort to run or fight.
“All right, I believe you,” she says eventually, still studying him. “It would also explain why you were able to show up in my office. I have excellent shields, you should know.”
“Glad to hear it,” Kravitz says, blinking and lowering the book. Maybe he’ll get lucky and she’ll surrender. It’s literally never happened before, but it would be nice to do this without a struggle, especially as it had already been a long day. “So then—“
“Are you by any chance the same, er, reaper, who went after Merle and the others in Lucas’s lab? It’s Kravitz, isn’t it? I heard your name over my stone of farspeech.”
“I… yes, that’s right,” he concedes, deflating a little. “And I really must insist on taking your soul.”
“Hmm. No,” she says. “Not yet, anyway. Although I really can’t afford to waste time running from death, so this won’t do. However, if I recall correctly, you’re fond of making deals.”
“A wager, you mean?” he says, frowning slightly.
“Afraid not. Wonderland reminded me that I can’t afford to lose my life right now, so no, not a wager, just an even trade. I will give you information that I think you’ll find valuable, and in return I ask for one year more of life. Then you can come fetch me and I’ll go with you, easy-peasy.”
“I’m listening…”
The details take a little fine-tuning, but he’s frankly curious and this sort of thing does make his job a hell of a lot more interesting. Eventually he agrees to not go after her or the others—seven of them total—for at least one year, as long as the information she provides is worth something. He also confirms that, no, he doesn’t have the Touch of Death so she can move freely around him and he’s not going to kill any of her plants. She agrees to tell only the truth and honestly answer any questions. At last she makes a final sweep of her office: locks the doors with a couple cantrips, drops her stone of farspeech into a desk drawer, and casts a quick ward against scrying before she seems satisfied.
“All right, then,” she says, half-sitting on the edge of her desk while Kravitz lounges in one of the office chairs, his reaper scythe leaning against the back. “You’re probably wondering why my friends and I have such high death counts. Oh, by the way, would you like this?” She holds out a small plate with a jam-filled cookie on it, shaped like a flower and dusted with sugar. “It’s supposed to be my dessert but I won’t be eating it.”
“Ah, no thank you,” he says, politely holding up a hand. “But yes to the first bit. I’m also quite curious why the others have no idea that they had even died.”
“That would be my fault,” she says with a bitter smile. As she speaks these last words Kravitz subtly casts a lie detection spell, paying close attention to not just her words but her actions and expressions. Someone who has escaped true death so many times is probably excellent at slipping around things like the truth.
“So, to start,” she says, moving to sit in the chair besides his own, spinning towards him and kicking a leg over her knee. “The seven of us came here from another world…”
From there she weaves a story of seven inter-dimensional travelers chasing a light and running from a terrible entity, year after year. She speaks of universes being consumed, and of their deaths and resets. That they arrived on Faerun thirteen years ago, and here she pauses and simply says they had devised a plan to finally stop the Hunger. Something in this plan didn’t go right—Kravitz probes her for specifics but she evades, and he reluctantly lets it slide—and so she took things into her own hands. This apparently involved erasing memories, creating a floating moonbase, and hunting down powerful artifacts, but she also assures him the incident at the lab and creating rifts to other planes was mostly unrelated.
It’s all a bit absurd, frankly. However, there are strange kernels of truth, explanations of phenomena like the eyes in the sky a few months prior, and strange creatures watching from the ethereal plane. There are things she doesn’t tell him, occasional faint pauses and corrections, little flashes in her eyes as if deciding, ‘no, I won’t mention that.’ Not once does she ever lie, however, according to his spell, but that just means she believes it, not that it’s necessarily the hard truth. He needs a bit more than that.
“Well… it’s an interesting story,” Kravitz says, after nibbling the last petal of the sugar cookie he had nabbed halfway through. “Do you have any proof? Something besides just your word?”
“I have a spaceship,” she says, and then corrects herself. “Or, rather, it’s all of ours. Maybe Davenport’s. I’m not really sure who’s name it’s technically under, but it is here on the base. Or, to save us a walk, I have another idea. Can you tell a person’s true age? Magically, I mean. I don’t need you guessing.”
“Sure,” he says, hoisting himself out of the surprisingly comfy armchair. “With how much time and death intertwine, it’s a handy thing to know. You’d be amazed what kind of nonsense people can get up to, always trying to find the fountain of youth or making horcruxes.”
“Are we talking a metaphorical or physical fountain,” she asks, holding out a hand.
“Both. I’ve got a dozen maps in my office, I’m thinking of making a collage out of them.”
“I like that. Very creative,” she says as he takes her hand in both of his, and then mildly remarks, “Holy shit your hands are freezing.”
“Sorry.” He quickly lets go, rubbing them together. “Side-effect of being Death and all, just give me a moment.”
“Oh don’t be a baby, it wasn’t that bad,” she says, taking hold of his pressed hands before he can thaw them much, holding them firm between her own, and the easy touch disorients him. She looks down at their linked hands and he follows the curious gaze. He’s accustomed to people shrinking away from his touch, but there is no hesitation here. She looks into his face and a light seems to be shining in her eyes.
“Another time and I would have loved to hear your story,” she says, her voice suddenly warm and earnest. “What it must be like as a servant of death, I can only imagine. I have so many questions. How you came to it, what it’s like… but, sorry, not the time.”
“Old habits die hard?” he remarks.
“Nice. Classy. I’m sure you’re a connoisseur of death puns. And yeah, after a hundred years as a chronicler, pretty much. In fact it’s odd to be telling my own story, it’s usually the other way around. Oh, uh, feel free to cast that spell anytime, I got off topic.”
“Quite all right.” He means it. As assignments go, this is far more pleasant than most. “You’re fully human, is that correct?” he says, letting the spell whisper over her.
“That’s right.”
He quickly glances over the white head of hair and the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, considers the wrinkled hand in his own, still strong. She walks easily, no stoop to her back. A human lifespan, so one hundred is the general threshold, seventy-five the average for a woman. His guess would be her sixties, at the wider range from mid-fifties to mid-seventies. Oh a whim he guesses sixty… nine-no, eight. Sixty-eight.
“One hundred and seventy-six,” he says, frowning down at their linked hands before looking into her eyes, trying to catch anything there. Magic? A curse? A trick?
“Sounds about right,” she says, smiling faintly. “I had wondered what it would be with the staff’s influence thrown in.”
Kravitz reaches deeper, carefully sorting through the years. Indeed, roughly one hundred are similar: each light, oddly fragile, and not of this plane. Twenty are a dark solid mass with traces of undead magic binding them. There are another… twenty-four? He can feel only their absence, counting the missing threads. Buried below, at the core, is the truth.
“Thirty-three. That’s your true age.” Again he looks at her, raising an eyebrow at this solemn white-haired woman with otherworldly and undead magic twisting inside her.
“Thirty-four in a couple months,” is her reply.
“In that case, happy early birthday,” he says, finally letting go. “I noticed some years are missing. If you’ve split your soul into bits, you should know that’s not well looked upon.”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. This Bulwark Staff,” she says, picking it up from where it had been propped up beside her desk, “has been slowly absorbing my life force these past dozen years or so. I suppose I’m technically under its thrall but we have an understanding, if you can call it that. I feed it my life and power, and when the time comes I will be able to use it and the other Relics to create a shield that will save this world and this universe.”
Kravitz stares at the slender white oak in her hands.
“… I see.” There is indeed something magical about the supposed life-devouring staff (which would a real issue if true, that’s almost textbook necrotic sorcery, but he frankly doesn’t want to deal with it), some mind control wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities, but the rest is bonkers.
“I’m telling you this as, uh, reassurance,” she says. “I’m not running from death. In fact I’m somewhat running towards it. I just need to postpone it long enough to complete my task. Frankly I expect it to kill me, one way or another, which should make your job easier.”
“That’s er… noble of you,” he says, still struggling to make sense of all of this, slightly perturbed by the easy way she spoke of it.
Lucretia shrugs. “There’s no other option. I’m literally the only person who can do this. I, uh, realize that sounds a bit… self-important—“
“Not at all.”
“—But it is true. We’ve been running from this Hunger for so long, and now I believe I have what it takes to protect us and finally stop it. If this doesn’t work, then… that’s the end. Everything will be destroyed. I have to do this.” There is a fierce air of determination as she says it, the white oak clutched tight in both hands.
“Just, uh, for my records. You’re saying you alone are the only person who can stop the destruction of the universe. You and that staff?”
“It sounds a bit silly when you say it like that. But, yeah, basically.”
“And it’ll be sometime within the year?”
“Yes.”
Kravitz hums and looks around at the spacious, tidy office at the center of a floating city that mimics the moon. “For a doomsday prophet, I suppose this is at least more pleasant than just shouting from a street corner.”
“Oh, I can only last an hour before my voice goes out,” Lucretia says. “This was the second best option, as tempting as it is to just go yelling at strangers.”
It’s then, surprisingly, that Kravitz decides he likes her.
“So there you have it: my information, as promised.” She sets down the staff, leaning it against her desk once more, and faces him. “Honestly it was nice to be able to talk about all this. You’re a good listener, that’s an undervalued skill.”
“Why thank you.”
“So then, in exchange, we all get at least one more year. Deal?”
Kravitz hesitates at the offered hand. These sorts of things usually counted on the person being of a sound mind. Proclaiming to be the universe’s only hope because you have a necrotic staff and are from another dimension usually doesn’t count. Oh well.
He sighs and takes it. “Deal. One more year it is.” It should be something the Raven Queen can make some use out of, hopefully.
“Wonderful. That should be more than enough time. The Hunger will be here soon, and then it all goes to shit. Uh, a fair warning… I might temporarily break some planes of existence.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Kravitz says, because, one, its not possible, and two, there’s no way he can let her go free if she’s gonna go breaking reality. “So, either the worst or best scenario is that you save the universe, kick the bucket, and then I come pick you up, no fighting or running away?”
“You got it.”
“Great. Then I will see you at the apocalypse, my dear. Or, you know, failing that, I’ll just meet you here in a year’s time. Maybe we can have coffee before we go.”
“I’ll mark it in my calendar,” she says, moving to the high-backed chair behind her desk. “Although the world might be gone by then, so feel free to pop by earlier then if you’re serious about that coffee.”
“I just might.” Kravitz picks up his scythe, makes to cut a portal, and then pauses. “Do the others know? I mean, disregarding the magic amnesia, do they know you’re planning to die soon? This self-sacrifice of yours?”
“No,” she says. Her smile is tired now, and for the first time she almost looks about her age of one hundred and seventy-six. “I don’t want them to know. I have done terrible things, you know that better than most. If this is the price for saving them, then I’ll take it. Besides, once they get their memories back, I, well, quite frankly I believe they’ll be happier with me dead.”
Kravitz frowns. He’s mildly surprised to find he cares. “You should give them the chance.”
“I can’t. I really can’t. I just need to do this for them. And… Kravitz?” she says. For a madwoman, her eyes are clear and sharp. “I truly hope this all works. But if I do fail, and this existence is destroyed… I am sorry.”
She speaks as if she really is holding the weight of the world upon her shoulders, and Kravitz feels a shudder tickle up his back. He nods in solemn acknowledgement, and then with a cut of his scythe he is gone.
*
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* * *
*
*
The apocalypse comes.
Against all odds, they beat it back.
Lucretia’s plan is axed, or rather, altered, and in the end it is still her shield and her staff, with her energy and life and power flowing through it, that ensnares the Hunger. She uses every ounce of strength she has, barely able to stay standing as her life-force pours out, channeled through the staff, and then it is done.
They’ve done it.
She’s careful to hide her face afterwards. She did not expect to live this long after it was all done, but she’s still breathing and now her mission is to not upset her friends and ruin things. Right after the battle, while she can still stand, she steps down in the hull to let Davenport know, leaning heavily on the doorjamb and trying not to sound too winded.
“We really did it, huh?” he says, awed, and she wants to hold onto those words and the voice of their captain, after so long of what she had done to him. Gods, she hopes they can be happy now.
They’ve won, but she still has a cost to pay.
She keeps quiet, keeps her distance, and tries not to pass out as Davenport brings them back to the surface, landing with only a little wobble as the ship groans. She can hear the others racing down the gangway, and the shouts and cheers of a triumphant crowd. Taako especially must be anxious to see his sister, and Magnus has friends out there who he cares for. Merle has fucking family to reunite with. Even Davenport can now move on. It’s incredible to think that, despite all the shit she’s done, they’ve made lives and a home on this planet.
“Lucretia, where you at?” Merle calls down, and she hurriedly makes an effort to stand as if to follow them out, but her legs are shaking and she barely manages to find a wall to lean against. Merle comes closer and she is grateful for the shadows. “Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she says, holding her arm up so her sleeve blocks her face, the other arm bracing against the wall. Hopefully it merely looks like she’s crying. “I just… need a minute to myself.”
“Yeah,” Merle says, and thank the gods he doesn’t argue. “I get ya. Well, come on out whenever you’re ready, we got to celebrate!” He leaves her, disappearing around the corner to go to the main deck of the Starblaster.
She’s alone.
There’s really nowhere for her to go, but she tries to take a step anyway and collapses. She has to hold back a shout, and then bites into the heavy fabric of her robe to keep from screaming as pain shoots all long her weakened body.
Everything hurts. Something bad happened to her hip in the fall, her knees ache, her back and sides really ache, and her head is pounding from the overuse of magic.
She can actually feel herself dying. Before it was like a steady drip, like a cut from a finger. Now it’s as if someone unstopped a plug, or cut off an arm, and it was all pouring out like so much blood, with the same pulse as a heartbeat. It must be soon, she thinks.
As she lies there dying, she thinks of her mother.
It is strange to think of her after so long. There were times during the cycle of years on the Starblaster when Lucretia would suddenly jolt up and realize she couldn’t remember her mother’s face, or her father’s voice. It would leave her terrified and shaking, afraid of losing them entirely. Every time she would find the special journal in her room and read over the stories she had written down of her family and her home, and every legend, myth, and song she could recall. It wasn’t enough, but it was all that was left of them.
Still, it had been a long time since she had given any thought to her old home, a hundred years past from a hundred lives ago. She’s surprised to be able to remember anything.
Specifically, she remembers one morning standing in the kitchen with her mother. The memory is sharper than expected, she can almost feel the hard wooden counter under her elbows as she twisted about while watching her mother prepared breakfast, slicing the skin off a mango like one would a fish, as a pot of topoi bubbled away on the stove, already thickened with coconut and cassava.
They had been talking about the previous night’s dinner and how her Nana had been eating with her hands like a child, grabbing small mounds of kokoda and taro leaves cooked in coconut milk, and tearing off little pieces of fresh roti. Lucretia had thought it so funny that her Nana was so old but ate the same as her chubby-cheeked cousin, a little more than two.
Well, that’s part of the cycle of life, Lucretia’s mother had told her. When we grow old, we become like little children again.
Lucretia had listened, fascinated, not quite understanding but memorized it all the same. It felt like was a great secret of the universe. It was like the waxing and waning of the moon, and the tides, and the seasons flowing from one to another, all of life circling over and over, life and death part of it. Admittedly, she hadn’t quite gotten it. In fact she got in trouble when, with all the wisdom and audacity of youth, she told her cousins that old people were just big babies. After a sharp scolding from relatives she had set the whole thing to the back of her mind and tried to forget it.
But one detail comes to the focus now. That morning her mother had told about the old growing young, the little signs and bigger picture. She had told Lucretia that when we grow old, our bodies begin to curl up, just as we were in the very beginning in the safety and warmth of our mother’s womb.
Death, in a way, she said, is going back to the beginning.
Lucretia had not understood then.
Now, over a century later, she remembers those words as she feels her body tighten and come together, her head and shoulders bowing, her aching knees rising to her chest. Laying there, eyes shut and weeping, she feels her body rapidly age, her fingers become tight and knotted, the skin paper-thin over the bones and withered muscles. She is the world’s greatest abjuration wizard, savior and traveler amongst the stars, but there in the quiet and the dark, she is too weak to even stand, helpless.
She feels ancient and a child all at once. Like her mother had told her.
Her mind loses its sharpness, and there is a cold fog that distresses her. When she closes her eyes she can almost forget where she is. She wants to go home.
She wants to go home.
Her memories of childhood are usually out of reach, in the most distant, dark corners of her mind, but now they are so close, like a string that loops back into a circle.
She remembers her old life, there at the western end of an archipelago surrounded by blue and green waters. It’s so easy to see now, within reach. She wants to again lie under the shade of a palm, sleepy in the warm light of the twin red suns, the heat of the day long gone. She can feel it, more than just a memory. It’s as if she is back there, grass prickling against her back and legs, and she is home with her family.
It will be sundown soon. Any time now her mother might call her in to help with dinner. Her father would be coming in from the sea, she might have time to meet him in the cove where they kept the boat. Or if she ran fast she could go up the hill to the garden and keep watch, waiting for the second sun to slip below the horizon. Was it her turn to feed the chickens, or the mother cat and her three new kittens? She should go and check…
She opens her eyes to a dark and empty room, cold metal under her cheek, and she feels lost.
Her mother is dead. Her father is dead. The house she grew up in is gone, along with the boat and cove and the trees. Her home-world was destroyed long ago. She remembers now. And she remembers that she had found a new family, and then had broken it all to pieces. That, too, is gone.
She is alone, and she is scared. Of what, she’s not entirely sure.
But it’s all right, she thinks, pulling all the little bits of herself close as if they might float away with the outgoing tide. She did it. They saved the entire fucking multiverse. Her friends can live their lives freely now. They can find anew the happiness she had stolen from them.
And she can rest now, right? No more running. No more fighting against the odds. No more long nights agonizing over what will become if she fails. No more having to be Madame Director, or the Chronicler, or the Lonely Journal Keeper.
In the end, she is only Lucretia.
A hand is laid upon her shoulder, and she is ashamed that anyone should see her like this. But there is no judgment or reproach, not even a gasp of shock at the sorry state of her. Instead she feels warmth seep out from the contact, soothing away the worst of the pain. It makes it easier to breathe, some of the tightness in her muscles slackening.
Merle must have come back to look for me, she thinks, and manages to lift her head enough to see a familiar face. It is not Merle, however. The high-boned face is framed with dreadlocks, and he is wearing a fine black suit.
His eyes are kind as he looks down upon her. “You did it,” he says gently.
It takes longer than usual for her to process that: his presence, their pact. “Is it time?” she murmurs. She almost doesn’t recognize her own voice.
“Not yet. A few minutes, that’s all.” He lifts his head towards the exit. Now that she’s paying attention she can hear the sounds of the crowd, the cheering and rejoicing from not so far away. They must be just outside the ship. “It’ll have to be enough. I’ll go get your friends so they can—“
“No,” she replies immediately, shutting her eyes. “Please. I don’t want to… no, let them celebrate in peace.” She has to catch her breath. “Let them be happy.”
Kravitz frowns but doesn’t argue with this final wish of a dying woman. “Is there anything I can do? Anything you want?”
“No. What I want isn’t possible,” she says, too tired to even consider such things, merely laying her head upon her arm. “Although I should have picked a better spot to die. This floor’s filthy.”
He laughs. “I can help with that.” Carefully he puts his arms under her and picks her up with a small grunt. She feels as hollow-boned as a sparrow, but her body is dead weight. Perhaps he is used to it, considering his job. “Where to?” he asks.
She points one gnarled finger towards a darkened hallway. “My room is down there. Second to the right.”
It is almost entirely untouched these past few years, and the small space is clean and familiar as Kravitz gently lies her upon the cot with it’s quilted coverlet.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, as Kravitz pulls a blanket over her. She is too tired and cold to resist, pride be damned. In the short time since her shield had taken effect it feels like all her warmth is leaching out along with her life, and she is too weak to even shiver, merely curls up tighter, longing for the warmth of the twin suns and white sand.
“I hadn’t believed you when you told me you were going to save the universe,” he says, after adjusting the pillows beneath her head, pulling the edge of the blanket around her shoulders.
“I must have sounded mad,” she replies, can feel her cheeks quirking up in a semblance of a smile. “But we did it. Pretty fucking baller, huh?”
“You did,” he says softly. He goes to her desk and moves the little chair closer, the one with the wonky leg from overuse, and sits beside her, hunching over his knees and looking a bit lost himself, like he wasn’t supposed to be there. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
“Don’t be,” she says, slowly patting his arm to reassure him. “This is the price I had to pay. My friends are okay. All of them.” She breaths in, and then out, and smiles, closing her eyes. “So… it’s good,” she murmurs.
And it is good, right? She’s… they’re going to be okay. Her friends are okay and that’s enough of a comfort to hold onto. They must hate her, sure, but she had already accepted that. Her life is a small, incidental thing in the grand picture. There in her aging body, she indeed feels very small.
“You said that I can’t give you what you want,” Kravitz says, after another precious half-minute slips away in silence. “What is it? Tell me, maybe I can help.”
What I want doesn’t matter, she thinks stubbornly. But a traitorous lump forms in her throat. What does she want? Her pride makes her bite her tongue when she thinks of the answer because it’s not someone a grown woman is supposed to say. It sounds so fucking stupid and pathetic. It terrifies her.
But now she is old and she is dying, and so perhaps it is not so surprising that she speaks with the voice of a child.
“I-I want to go home,” she whispers, and oh, oh god do those words send her spiraling into her past, her voice as thin and desperate as when she was a little girl, ferried off to school on the other island every week. She thinks of those nights when she was at her weakest, quietly sobbing into her knees, homesick and alone, and she can almost hear the small tic-tic-tic of the slow-moving fan overhead. The memory pulls at her, beseeching, tugging at her skin, and she nearly slips into it. But she feels a strong hand in her own, grounding her to the present where the world is safe and strange, and she is dying.
She wants to go home, but that doesn’t exist anymore. Faerun is not her own. She had saved it, but only after nearly destroying it through her own near-sighted foolishness. People have died because of her action and inaction, including people she loved. There is blood on her shaking hands, and brokenness in the wake of her footsteps.
“I hurt them,” she tells him, as if the whole world didn’t already know how badly she fucked everything up. “I hurt them so badly. It’s my fault. I-I… I’m sorry…” Her heart doesn’t feel right, her lungs too weak. It feels like she can’t breathe.
She wants to go home, and that is with her family, her friends. But that too is all gone.
“It’s okay,” Kravitz says, this thumb rubbing lightly over the back of her hand. “They would forgive you, I’m sure of it.”
Part of her knows this person is a stranger to her. They have known each other perhaps an hour, two tops. He is simply doing his job. She shouldn’t burden him with her bullshit. But she is dying, there are things left unsaid, left undone, and she is scared.
“I should have told them,” she says, panic beginning to rise in her throat. It would have been so easy to just tell them the truth before the ship even docked so she could at least say goodbye. Her own damn pride had stopped her then, but now she doesn’t give a shit about that. It always felt like they had endless time, that there would be other chances, and now mortality was looming over her, chasing her down at long last, and she’s not ready.
More than anything, she wants her family.
“Where are they?” she says, looking to the door. A rush of energy and clarity hits her. Why is she just laying there? She pushes herself up, trying to shake off the blanket and go find them.
“Stop,” Kravitz says urgently, rising and putting a firm hand on her shoulder, pushing her back. “You can’t walk.”
“But…” She looks at him, not understanding. There was still time, they were just outside. “I want to see them.” Please, she thinks. Let them hate me, just let me see them again. Just once.
“You can’t…” he says, his voice trembling. “It’s too late.”
It’s then she hears the horrible, wet noise coming from her throat, and she understands. It is the sound of a dying person. She’s eased back onto the bed and Kravitz takes her hand in his and holds tight. I’ll never see them again, she realizes. Never. Her chest hurts as a hundred regrets consume her, as ravenous as the Hunger, and it’s too fucking late.
“I… I should have done better,” she manages to gasp, almost choking around her own heaving breaths, that awful jagged noise. “I need to tell them I’m sorry. I-I should have told them I loved them.”
“I’ll tell them,” he says.
Lucretia can only just roll her head enough to look at him, can feel the tears slipping free, leaving cold trails down her cheeks and neck. Her breath is coming too fast now, quick and irregular. There is a word for it, a name, she just can’t recall it. It doesn’t hurt as bad as it sounds to her own ears, but she understands what it means. Her organs are failing now. Her body is shutting down.
She tries to squeeze his hand, but her fingers are stiff and numb. She can barely feel it when he squeezes back. It’s unclear whether she’s breathing.
“Tell them…” But there are too many things to tell them, far too much left unsaid, and when it matters most the words won’t come.
Kravitz lets go. There is a shift, a something on the edge of sound, and there is no longer a person standing before her bed—she can feel the presence of Death, and imagines the shadow of a scythe over her neck.
It’s too late. This was the deal she made. She has died eighteen times, and now this is the last.
But death doesn’t come sharp. There’s no burst of pain.
She just isn’t breathing anymore.
Her world shrinks away, bit by bit. Once again it is just the empty ship, her once-home. Then all of existence is within these four walls with its dim yellow light. Then it is just her frail body upon a small bed: a tiny island all alone.
Everything goes very quiet, and very still.
Her eyes drift close one last time. The blackness there is soft and comforting.
There is just her, now, and even that is fading, not into nothingness, but rather into the whole of everything, like a drop of water into a gentle sea.
Time stretches on, and it is all dark and peaceful and warm, and she thinks of her mother’s words, of coming back to the beginning.
All that remains is the slow fading beat of her heart.
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