It was always you | Fran Drabble
They had to come down here, they had to finish it. It was apart of the story, and it always had been. As they stepped into that long abandoned basement, an eerily familiarity swept over Fran.
“I’ve been here,” she whispered to Alice, taking hold of her hand. “In my nightmares.” She’s always running, running in circles, trying to escape that grasp waiting to take hold.
Amelia....Amelia Frances.
She looked over at Patricia, she heard the voice too. “The veil is crumbling too fast,” Fran said, “move quick, we don’t have any more time.” Her wrist was grabbed as she attempted to follow, forcing a strangled cry from her. “Go!” She hollered out, “just go!”
“Am I going to die, Grandmother?” She asked as the woman appeared before her one last time, in the form she had begun to prefer.
“Then I think I’ll save my friends.”
Grabbing hold of the wrist crippling her, it became ash in her hands, and she ran. Just like in all those visions before. She fled the call and the insistence of it.
Finding everyone at the pool, she stood next to Henrik. “Does Klaus know we’re down here?”
“I dunno, why?” He said, looking between her and Seph who took a sudden interest.
Shaking her head, there wasn’t time for explanation. The rest was something of the blur, and when she saw the flash of bone, she knew. Stepping into it, she took it to the abdomen.
Jerking it out, she held the bloody bone in her hands as the world went fuzzy around her.
It was him, it was his voice, his past, his final moments. They played out before her eyes as if she had stood with Angel and Cordelia on that fateful night. He was so brave when it counted, and she hoped she had been the same. As the light went out, the moment froze, and he appeared in the basement with her.
“Where we part, yeah, I t’ink so, mate. I won’ linger though, you bought me a one way ticket to the heavenly places.”
“What? No...no, no, no. Don’t leave me, please. You have been the best part of me for all these years, and I can’t--I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t have you.”
“Ah, bud, ya know that ain’t true. You already had all the best parts. Thank ya for takin’ care of Angel and Cordelia, guess they’re our friends now, huh? Tell them I was alright in the end, it was my time.”
“I’m not dying, am I?” She asked, tears welling up in her eyes, “you are.”
The bone was in his hand now as he held it up to her, “t’is thing, it separates the livin’ from the dead. Why that Hades fella can’t come back, he cheated death again and again and this ev’ned the score.” He approached her, placing a hand on her cheek and leaned over to kiss her forehead.
“It was my honor, Francis Sheppard.”
“No, you were mine,” she choked out.
“By the way, I th’nk you should keep the name. It suits you.”
She nodded, the lump in her throat becoming increasingly more painful.
“Guess this is it, when your friends close up shop, you’ll be just you again,” Doyle explained.
“But I don’t know who I am without you?”
“You’re just like me. We’re heroes now, remember?”
And that was the last thing he ever said to her. Her eyes shut and when they opened again, everything was real. She had fallen, and she was on the ground. Someone had a hand pressed against her wound to slow the bleeding. It was all over and she’d missed it.
Her head tipped back, and she released a gut-wrenching scream. Her wails echoed and imbedded into the walls of this darkened, abandoned basement. The sound of her wails were of a woman who just lost apart of herself...and she had.
It was time to be all her again.
