Chapter 201: The End, For Now...
Happily ever after
I have ideas sometimes, useless ideas, ideas that I’m glad no one can hear me think about. I’m sure many can relate. Nowadays, oftentimes, the same idea would pass me by.
Become supreme leader of words, and fucking ostracized that phrase right out of the history books. The fact that that is the universal standard that all endings had to adhere to is some serious crap let me tell ya.
Makes it worse that they make it look so easy to get – them fairytale stories are a bunch of damn liars. This is what our children are being set up for – they’re gonna think once they achieve a high point in their life that it’ll always stay that way for everything else going forward.
And I wanna be there to tell them no, I’m sorry. Happiness doesn’t equate to all problems in life just magically going bye-bye. Cause even if you feel like you’re untouchable... you’ll still have problems.
I still have problems. Cause life still goes on even after happily ever after. Worst part was... I didn’t even get one to begin with.
Don’t remember passing out as soon as I finished my dealings with Sera. It’s like one moment as I was standing there, breathing out loud, practically gasping, having an intense staring contest with the gleaming golden eyes glaring at me, then the next... I was rousing, groaning awake to darkness.
.....
Very dark darkness.
Hope I didn’t lose that staring contest.
I could feel my body shaking, but I wasn’t cold. There was a quiet humming in the air, it took a few moments of listening to realize that it sounded more like a whirring.
A click. A gear being shifted.
I tilted my head right, ignoring the pounding sensation I gave myself from how fast I did it. This time my next moment of realization took only but an instant.
Amanda’s car was still had that horrible smell of fresh paint in the backseat. Unlucky me, I was also in the backseat. I felt my closed lips start to come loose.
“Where – ?”
As always, I never get to finish. As always, my body wouldn’t let me. It was a croaky voice before, lack of strength the other, a few instances as well where I nearly puked just at the first syllable.
Well, this time, it was all three – and they all came at me at once with a vengeance.
“You see, you see?” said someone from somewhere.
I searched around and caught Amanda’s eye in the driver seat staring at me from the rear-view mirror... they also didn’t look too happy to see me.
“Don’t want to die, he says,” She continued grumbling, hands getting tighter on the wheel. “Won’t move an inch, he says. You can trust me, no problem! He says... tsk.”
Really didn’t like how she looked ready to finish me off herself, so I averted my gaze elsewhere, only to find that another pair of eyes had their sights set on me. Glimmering wide, bright... and very, very green.
“Master, don’t speak... don’t even attempt to raise yourself now, you’ve already pushed yourself too far, do any more and...” Ash trailed off and continued elsewhere instead. “I implore you, for now just rest... we’re nearing home soon.”
Home.
So that’s where we’re going. Streetlights outside couldn’t really light up the night well enough to see the twists and turns we were taking but... okay... home...
This wasn’t exactly how I pictured myself going back.
Clinging onto my consciousness by a thinning thread, barely able to do anything at all but breathe, blink and think... but there was at least one thing that I know for certain, however...
The constant chatter on the car radio, from what little I could hear, sounded rather boisterous and lively. If that weren’t enough, there was also the blaring of horns and the glare of headlights passing us by every once in a while... blurry figures walking the sidewalks, and the neon lights whizzing us by.
Hear that? See that? Can you feel that?
The rain had stopped.
Town was alive again... and it was almost like they just kinda picked up where they all left off. Couldn’t even tell that anything had happened at all... like the past few days were nothing more than just a long, grueling nightmare everybody had just snapped awake from.
It was no nightmare, I assure you. Everything that happened was real. The aching in my bones, the pounding in my head. They were all real. Which also means, on the other hand, so were our successes, our triumphs, in spite of the odds against us.
We did it.
I did it.
Where was the happiness then? Where was the feeling of victory? I couldn’t see it at all in any of their faces. We won, didn’t we? So where was our happily ever after?
Ain’t here, certainly. Maybe it at home... maybe the feeling would come there... maybe. We’re almost there, anyway... right?
“Lady Irene had decided to stay behind for the time being,” Ash said, keeping her voice light. “She thought it best considering our current circumstances, meanwhile...”
She went on to explain that following my hitting the ground with a thud, Sera, the begrudging, reluctant, violet-wearer, stalked out of the room and was eventually found again within seconds, hunched over Ria, doing her best to snap her awake from her slumber... to no avail.
Despite her abilities, even after hours of trying, Sera couldn’t wake her up. After a while, she eventually gave up for the time being, citing fatigue as the reason for her lack of success, and will try again another day, in the meantime...
Seeing as there was no reason to dawdle any longer, Irene ordered for the rest of us to just go home while she stayed behind to keep an eye on things as soon as I was strong enough to be carried all the way down to the ground floor and into Amanda’s car.
Good enough of summary of events, but Mr. Black where? Don’t tell me you just left him there... did you?
Was about to ask, risk dying just to know, luckily I saw thin white little whiskers poking out of the seat on Ash’s side, and that told me all I needed to know.
Looks like I need to keep a mental note to buy some cat food next time I go grocery shopping. Never had a pet before, but hey, with all the things I have to deal with on a daily, can’t be that hard.
Long story short... here we were now in the dead night, pulling up into a driveway slowly, the rumble of the engine whirring by on idle.
“Home sweet home,” Amanda said to me, turning herself around. “Don’t move, don’t even try to. Ash will get you – go on Ash, doors unlocked.”
Ash nodded and got out first, walking around to the other end of the car.
“Police stops aren’t as much anymore,” From out her pocket, my phone in her hands. “I’m going to go see my parents...”
Okay. She should. She looked like she needed it.
“I never got to say thanks, mmm, didn’t get to show it either,” My phone in her hands, now in my pocket, stuffing it in with a pat. “But right now, you don’t look like you’re in a thanking mood... so, I’ll thank you later, alright? I’ll see you later.”
Ash opened the door, and after a few moments of awkward positioning and clueless struggling, she hoisted me away from the backseat, holding me in her hands in that fireman carry.
“Hopefully with a new phone too,” Amanda called out from the driver-side window. “I’ll text you.”
Ash bowed her way, I tried my best to give a wave, and with a fleeting smile at us, Amanda finally drove away, shrinking into the dead night before she could be seen no longer.
Now it was just the two of us, with Black loitering and scurrying around her legs.
“Well then,” Ash said, turning the both of us towards the cobble-paved path that we walked so many times before. “Let’s go home, Master.”
This scene seems strangely familiar, doesn’t it? I remembered the view from up here, I remember the gentle ups and downs with her every cautious step forward.
When the Blight first poured, she carried me home just like this, didn’t she? Only fitting everything ended the same way it started. Life’s fickle like that.
“Sera Nas believes that you are the cause for my acting strange,” Ash muttered, her face like a blur as she stared at me. “She thinks... away from your influence, I will revert back to the Eshwlyn that she knows.”
So that’s why she proposed such a stupid deal.
I opened my lips, speaking slowly, between breaths. ‘Do you think... that she’s... right?”
Silence... and then, “I worry that she might be.”
“That’s why you said yes,” I closed my eyes. “You wanted to prove to her that she’s wrong. That even without the Knight thing holding you back... that you’ll still be you.”
“I – I acted in haste,” She hung her head. “Now I realize that I wasn’t acting in your best interest, Master... I was acting for my own.”
Ash spoke with sorrow and regret. A selfish knight languishing, a remorseful servant lamenting.
She really shouldn’t be.
“And that’s why... Sera will eat her words instead.”
Ash stopped, stared... watching me in my pathetic attempts at mustering a smile on my face.
“How do you mean?” She asked.
“If you truly didn’t believe you’re good,” I said slowly, feeling my words growing faint. “Then would you have accepted the deal in the first place?”
“But... but...”
I could see that she needed a little bit more convincing, a little bit more time to see it the way I see it. But I can’t right now... too tired, too frail... speaking was already an uphill battle, and I think she could see that.
Ash stopped... and only nodded, and for the rest of the way, up the porch, in front of the door, it was all done in a sort of discontented quiet.
The Blight might be gone, but that doesn’t mean everything had been settled. So many things left undone, so many things left unsaid.
Happily ever after was still a ways away... if it ever existed at all. Hopefully, there’ll come a day one day where I can look at my life, and say that’s my happy ending.
The front door swung open wide to a pair of misty-white eyes staring back at us from the corridor... a petite figure in a frilly dress, awake and standing. As always, her claws were hidden behind her fists, her fangs enclosed beneath her lips.
You really are more considerate than your sister, aren’t you?
It was good to see you, Adalia. I know you’re curious, I know you wanna know what we know, and what it took to get to where we are now, but please maintain that consideration for the time being... and keep your questions on the standby.
Because, right now, just for tonight, and probably many nights after this one... I needed to fucking sleep.
For now, I’ll settle with that happy ending.
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