One Restful, Gentle, Happy Final Day

[Gundham]

Rebekah knew.

They’d been walking away from the sheriff's office for a while now, with little snippets of conversation every now and again, but they didn’t say much, save for a few quiet discussions about the map. This wasn’t how the walk was supposed to go. Rebekah had planned for the three of them to talk about animals (polar bears can get infested with algae and turn bright green!, and dolphins are jerks; discuss), and about celebrity crushes (Steve Irwin’s son), and about who they wanted to be when they grew up (Steve Irwin, but a girl, and without a TV show). She'd been planning to talk to them about the anonymous poems she'd written for the paper, because she'd never told anybody, not even her parents, and it would have been nice for someone to know the secret. The last one she'd written had been really good. It'd been about how you always die at the exact same time as somebody else, and that person is your soulmate whose entire life has been building up to meeting you, and in that way it was happy. One last little present to look forward to, when everything else seemed bad. That had seemed like something worth saying, to blunt whatever was going to come tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after. But it was hard to talk. The feral girl and the cloud of secrecy precipitated by her attack and presumable death had put a real damper on the group's mood, for one thing. For another, despite being a relatively gentle slope, the road was still a slope. Every plodding step forward took more effort than the last, so it took most of Rebekah's energy to just keep breathing and stumbling along, promising herself every time that she was one step closer to the utopia at the top. They could still make it. She clung onto that hope for as long as she could.

But somewhere between the last footfall and the current one, she just... knew.

She knew that her heart wasn't racing from fear or adrenaline or exhaustion. She knew that her skin wasn't cold from the winter. She knew that it wasn't sweat running down her side, that underneath the brightly-colored façade of her Snuggie, something had gone wrong that couldn't ever be put right. She knew that the mountain was too high, and the bandages too thin, and that even if they carried her, that she wouldn't be seeing the hot springs today.

Cats know, too. They understand, deep down inside, when they're down to the last few grains of sand in the hourglass. They run outside, or they go into rooms that they wouldn't normally enter. They hide. In their last moments, they hide. Because they don't want their owners to see. Cats are healers. They purr and they nuzzle, they sit with people when they're sad and they try to make it better. And when they die, they know that they're inflicting a hurt that they can't fix. So they go, to try and minimize that hurt.

She stopped walking. A tear slipped down her face.

"H-Hey guys... I..."

She took a deep, rattling breath.

"I need to take a break. Just... just for a little while. I'm just gonna... just... sit down."

There was a tree by the side of the road, just a couple steps off. It was old and worn, with a little patch of brown grass peering through at the base where the sun had hit it just right and melted the snow. It looked like a nice place to sleep.

She shuffled towards it and sat down. There was a shallow curve at the base of it, just the right size. Like it had been made just for her. "You guys can take my bag and... I'll... I'll meet you at the hot springs."

[Deamon]

Jessica had been in the lead of the triumvirate when Rebekah spoke up. She froze when she heard Rebekah say she needed to take a break and silently looked up towards the sky, eyes closed. She let out a quiet shaky sigh as she gathered her thoughts.

There was one obvious truth that Rebekah's decision to speak up implied. It also confirmed something that had been making Jessica sick with worry ever since Bethany had attacked. Rebekah wasn't going to make it to the hot spring. Jessica had been basically monosyllabic after they had left the sheriff's office. Part of it was worry about Rebekah's condition but part of it was anger at Rebekah for refusing to let them try to help. She had said from the beginning but Rebekah had insisted that she had been fine and forged off ahead.

Over time she had begun to slow though and then she had dramatically slowed. Jessica had taken the lead because it was better than having to watch Rebekah struggle to walk.

By the time Jessica had conjured up the courage to turn and look at her Rebekah was slumping down against a tree. She looked gaunt and pale. If Jessica needed any confirmation that it was over the sight of Rebekah was that confirmation. She gulped down the lump in her front and looked around at their surroundings before hopping down off the road and into the outskirts of the forest.

"Don't make us do that Bekah." She said as firmly as she could muster.

She knelt down in front of her.

"I don't want to abandon a friend." This time her voice was resolute.

[Pippi]

Something had felt off for a while.

Things being ‘off’ was not an uncommon sensation for Beatrice, she knew that. And she knew that what was uncomfortable and wrong for her was perfectly normal for many of her classmates; they wouldn’t even bat an eyelid when a room was too loud, the atmosphere too stifling, the temperature turned up too high.

This could have been yet another of those situations, where the only thing that was wrong was Beatrice’s own measure of it. Their previous walks had been held almost entirely in silence, after all. They’d only really spoken up to double check the map or make sure they were going the right way, and this occasion was no different. And back outside of the sheriff’s office; Beatrice had been put off by the sudden blast of cold air coming through the front door, the voices that had drifted along with it, how close Rebekah and Jessica had been to one another when she’d peered through the doorway. All could be explained away; Jessica could have simply left the door ajar when she’d gone outside to check up on the other girl, the two naturally would want to huddle for warmth given how freezing it was outdoors.

In time, though, it had become obvious it wasn’t just an issue isolated to Beatrice’s mind. Something really had gone dreadfully wrong before they had set off again.

Rebekah had been the one to suggest the trip to the hot springs initially. She had sounded the most excited about it, the most eager to make their way there, the one who had done the bulk of the planning for this afternoon out. It had been infectious, a tonic to further assuage all of Beatrice’s worries and turn them into excitement for their expedition into the mountains.

Now though, she could barely get through a single, short sentence without needing to pause for a breath. Her breathing was growing harsher by the second, her movement was slow, and uncomfortably so; they were heading uphill, yes, but the slope was gentle. She had her friends by her side. This wasn’t how she normally walked. She wasn’t normally this pale. She wasn’t normal at all.

But Beatrice hadn’t said a thing. She had kept on walking, like they were all going to make it up this hill together, like the only problem facing them was whether they had taken a wrong turn or if they’d been reading the map incorrectly. Her own heart was starting to race with worry, but she kept her lips pressed together, her eyes forwards, and her arm at the ready, there to stabilise Rebekah whenever she stumbled. Her friend was pushing forwards, no matter what was wrong with her. So she could do the same. She could make herself believe that they would all be sitting around the hot spring by sundown, letting the stress roll off of them and relax in the deep orange rays of the evening.

Until it was impossible to believe that any longer.

Her hands clenched tightly around the handle of the axe as Rebekah collapsed at the base of the tree. Her fingers tapped away at the wood, not their usual rhythm but a scattered, frantic hammering, feet feeling like they were made of the selfsame clay of the road she was stuck on. She knew what she would see if she followed after Jessica. She could work out what was happening now, why Rebekah had slowed down to such a crawl. As soon as she made her way over to the treeline, she would see it again. Red on white. The pile of bloody snow, finding her yet again.

It terrified her. Petrified her even.

But this was bigger than her. This was her ally. Her friend. She had pushed through her terror before. She could do so again, when it mattered the most.

“Y… Yeah,” Beatrice said, pushing her voice to become audible as she stumbled off of the road and towards the two girls. “We’re not… we’re not about to leave you behind, Rebekah.”

She fell to her knees, shuffling closer to Rebekah’s prone body, her hands, instinctively, finding purchase on her shoulder. She felt tears spilling onto the snuggie that had once kept them all so safe and warm together. She couldn’t stop that from happening. But she could remain. She could do that. She would.

“Let’s, um… let’s… let’s take a breather, together. We’re not too far now. From the hot springs. We can rest here, all of us, and then… then um…”

Her voice finally faltered.

[Gundham]

Jess called her Bekah. She liked the sound of that. Nobody called her Bekah, except her mom. It never sounded right from anybody else, but it sounded right from Jess. She wanted to hear it again. Wanted to hear it a hundred times.

Beatrice was next to her, with hands on Rebekah’s shoulder. She felt solid, reassuring.

Her lower lip trembled. It wouldn’t stop shaking, no matter how hard she tried. The tears started to come.

“Thank you…” she managed to say. “Thank you… for being here.”

They stayed. Even though she’d lied and hidden from them, even though she’d been stupid and weird and she’d hurt them so many times; even though she’d been afraid to let them in, and wanted to run away, even though she’d refused to let them see how badly she was hurt, they stayed with her. They were good people, better people than she deserved, and she would have given anything to stay with them longer, to be here to protect them when things got worse. She wanted to get up and run away with them, to take them far away from this place of death and decay and go somewhere where they’d always be happy and warm and safe.

Her lower lip trembled and the tears started to fall. First one, then another, then another, then a whole torrent of them.

“I’m… s-sorry…”

She shouldn’t have hidden from them. She saw that now. She’d told herself that she was being strong for them, that she was trying to power through and make it to the hot springs for their sake, but in reality she’d been doing it for herself, because she was afraid. Because she didn’t want to look and she didn’t want to know. Should have told them and let them help, because even if they couldn’t have done anything, at least they could have tried. She should have given them that.

“I’m sorry… f-for being me…”

She started to sob, big, wracking sobs that shook her whole body. She didn’t want to leave them. Not now. Not when she finally saw these humans, these wonderful, beautiful humans, for what they were. Not when she finally felt like one of them.

Rebekah had never felt properly human. Not really.

When she was younger, Rebekah had wondered sometimes if she was something like a turtle. Not physically, of course; the distinct lack of a carapace ruled that out pretty definitively. But spiritually, perhaps. There are turtles who live on the banks of the Nile River in Egypt, who will sneak into the nests of crocodiles and lay their eggs. Crocodiles are aggressive, and they’re dangerous. But they’ll defend their nests in ways that turtles simply aren’t capable of. So the turtle babies have a better chance of surviving if they’re in a crocodile nest. Rebekah had wondered, back then, if there were things out there, things that were like humans in the way that turtles, with their scales and tails and claws, were like crocodiles. She had wondered if those not-humans sometimes left children behind, with humans who weren’t entirely like them. It would have been nice, she thought, if that were true. It would have been nice if there was a reason why her mother didn’t like her and her father seemed confused by her all the time, or why they hated each other so much. It would have been nice if those things weren’t her fault.

But as time had gone on, the evidence for her humanity kept mounting, and Rebekah had resigned herself to the fact that she was probably a human. So she grew to think of herself instead as the human equivalent to a whale named Blue 52. Blue 52 was, unmistakably, a whale. It looked like a whale, it had all of the right anatomy for a whale, it could swim and eat, and perform basic whale functions. But it had one defect - it sang in 52 hertz. Other whales couldn’t hear or respond to whalesong on that frequency. They visually recognized Blue 52 as one of them, by all accounts, but they couldn’t understand it. They had no idea what Blue 52 needed, or what it was saying, or why it was doing anything that it was doing. Most of the time it wandered the seas alone, singing songs that nothing else in the entire world could understand. Outside of a few privileged marine biologists, no one knew Blue 52’s species, its location, or even its gender. It was the loneliest creature in the entire world.

Rebekah was a human in the same way that Blue 52 was a whale. She had all of the right ingredients to be a human - the eyes and ears and toes and brain, the unnecessary appendix. She could talk to other humans and listen to other humans, she could do so many things that other humans could do. But she couldn’t be understood by other humans, and they couldn’t understand her. She couldn’t have the right feelings, or enjoy the same things. She cared too much about things that were unimportant, and not enough about things that mattered. She could fake it well enough to get by, but she couldn’t ever actually be whatever the other humans were.

That was how Rebekah had felt her entire life. Different. Something other than human. Until now.

Now she was lying here, with bark scratching her neck, feeling her blood running down her hips and her thighs and pooling inside her waterproof ski pants, and she felt more human than she ever had. It would have been nice to be a whale right about now. It would have been nice to be a turtle. It would have been nice to be anything other than human, because being human meant sitting here in the cold, feeling her life literally draining out of her, and being so, so afraid. An animal wouldn’t die missing their mom and dad and their teddy bear, and hating itself for missing the teddy bear more than their mom. An animal wouldn’t regret not being able to say goodbye to their friends. An animal wouldn’t have to die worrying about Jess and Beatrice and how they’d get along without her. An animal wouldn’t have to worry about what came next.

Rebekah knew that everything dies. Everything, everywhere. There were insects that would be born and grow up and die before a single day had passed. In the night sky, there were stars that had actually died out thousands of years ago. Death was a part of everything. Death was form and function; it was the black lines on the pages of a coloring book. Life was the colors, the bit that you were supposed to focus on and enjoy. But without the black lines, the colors didn’t mean anything. You had to have them, or you’d just have shapeless, aimless blobs. Death was what made life matter. And now that she could zoom out and see it all from a distance, she could see how beautiful it all was, how important all of the little things were, and the beautiful picture they created.

She wanted to say all of this to Beatrice and Jess. She wanted to tell them a lot of things. She wanted to tell them to hide her from the cameras, so that her dad wouldn’t have to see this; he’d be watching, even though she told him not to. She wanted to tell them about the poems. She wanted to tell them about her soulmate, who was rushing towards their own death any moment now. She wanted to tell them that snails can sleep for three years, and that owls don’t have spherical eyeballs, and all the other cool animal facts that she’d been planning to tell them to pass the time during the hike. She wanted to tell them that she was sorry, that she should have just stayed with them instead of wandering outside, and she should have yelled for help instead of trying to handle the feral girl alone. She wanted to tell them to let her dad know that he was right, that going off alone would get her killed someday, and to tell her mom that she was sorry for getting blood all over her nice new ski jacket. She wanted to tell them to be brave and be strong for each other. She wanted to tell Jess how brave she was and how much she admired her strength and her courage, to tell her that none of this was her fault and that she was a good person, no matter what she'd been made to feel. She wanted to tell Beatrice how amazing she was, that she saw all the things that Beatrice had overcome and how much strength it took her just to get by, and that she was incredible. She wanted to tell them that it hurt to leave them and how much she didn’t want to say goodbye.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t say a damn thing. The words were stuck in her head, just like they’d always been, locked away where no one could see and no one could understand. Her brain was running a thousand miles a minute, overheating, and the thoughts came and came and came, and they hit the back of her mouth and just stopped. They piled up there, punching her in the uvula over and over, while she sat there, crying and loving them in silence.

It went on that way for a long time. Until finally, mercifully, the tears and thoughts started to slow. They puttered out in fits and spurts, slower and slower until they finally trickled to a stop. And there was only one thought left, just small enough to slip out past her teeth and into the sunshine.

“I think… I think I’m gonna fall asleep now,” she murmured, burying her head deeper into the Snuggie. Her tongue felt wooly and cold. “But… th-thank you. For everything.”

She snuggled up close. She managed to smile. She was thinking about baby raccoons. About being on the field with the other cheerleaders, waving their pompoms and making everyone smile. About sitting in the woods with her dad, watching the fox cubs gambol and play. About her and Jess and Beatrice splashing and laughing in the hot springs. Everything was cold, but the pictures made her feel warm.

One last slow, shallow breath.

Then she reached up, and she took the hand that was waiting for her.

[Human 048 - Rebekah Hayes, Deceased]

[Deamon]

Jessica and Beatrice stayed.

It was quiet between the three, they shared tears but no words. They all had things they wanted to say, Jessica was sure of it, but none of them vocalised it. At the same time it was hard to know what they could say. Jessica and Beatrice had elected to stay and watch their friend die. They stayed with Rebekah until she curled up and the light left her body. There was no great change, no obvious difference between the girl they’d known and the body that replaced her but Jessica knew.

She could sense when Rebekah had stepped out of the cold, uncaring wilds and into the woodlands she’d always dreamed of and she smiled at that.

“Have fun.” She whispered.

Her free hand wiped her tears away and she took a gulping breath.

She didn’t know how exactly to proceed but Jessica felt like she owed Rebekah something. Once they had decided to travel together Rebekah had always cared about and trusted her. Jessica had never truly returned that trust or let her in. She’d kept her at arms length for much of their time together out of resentment and distrust from their initial meeting.

She’d never get to apologise for that.

“I…I think we should go to the hot springs.” She said, turning to look at Beatrice.

“It’s what she would have wanted right?”

[Pippi]

Her hands remained on Rebekah’s shoulder and arm the whole time, resting there as gently as they could, even as they shook and trembled. Her friend’s voice grew quieter and more incoherent, her final words almost impossible to make out properly. There was no dramatic moment to show that she was gone. One moment of silence was much the same as any other.

But Beatrice could still tell when it had happened. The moment that Rebekah had finally drifted off to sleep. It was instinctive, in the same way you could tell when someone was behind you, or how your body could wake you up when you had a strict deadline to adhere to. Rebekah had left them, and Beatrice still couldn’t find her voice to say a single thing, not even to echo Jessica’s sentiment.

She had been smiling, when she closed her eyes. Somehow that made it even more impossible to take.

And normally, Beatrice hated letting other people see her cry. Just one more thing that gave her nothing but discomfort, the worries racking her brain as to whether she was being too loud and disruptive, whether she was making a scene, whether all eyes were on her, and making the situation so much worse. Right now, though, she let her tears fall freely, splattering against the Snuggie, not making any attempt to hide the choked sobbing noise tearing from her throat. Who was there she needed to obscure her sorrow from? Jessica, who was experiencing everything that Beatrice was - and more, given she had been Rebekah’s companion for even longer? Turning and running from her discomfort was the worst thing that she could do right now; it would be callous, heartless even, and she doubted Jessica would want anything to do with her if their paths ever crossed again. Pretending that everything was fine and that the death hadn’t affected her, trying to be strong in the face of it, was almost as bad. It would help nobody, herself included.

So she let her tears run dry, body shaking all the while, clutching tight to what remained of Rebekah Hayes. She almost missed what Jessica said, her voice so quiet, the thundering sound in Beatrice’s head so numbing. She looked up at the other girl, pawing at her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving them red and raw, glistening streaks of dried tears carving paths down her cheeks.

“Y… yeah…” she said, voice quavering. “You’re… right. It’s… we’ve still got a trip to make…”

It would do neither of them any good to go on as though nothing had happened, true. But to carry out Rebekah’s desires, even after she was gone; Beatrice thought that was a worthwhile goal. It could keep her with them in spirit. Jessica was right. The last thing she would have wanted was for them to fall into despair, or to try and seek some form of twisted vengeance.

There was more to the world than that. It was bigger than that. And so much more important.

“Do you think we can… um…”

She looked down at Rebekah’s body for a moment.

“I mean, I don’t know if we can carry… her, or if it would be disrespectful, or…”

Back to Jessica, her words stumbling out of her mouth after being blocked for so long.

“Is there anything of hers we can… take with us? So that… she’s there too?”

There was blood on her hands, now. She refused to let herself flinch.

[Deamon]

Jessica looked between Beatrice and Rebekah's body not knowing what to say. She didn't know Beatrice that well to know if she would have accepted a simple no and a statement that they needed to move on. Plus, with the time they had spent together, Jessica thought that Beatrice seemed easily distressed.

"I don't know..." She started before trailing off.

Another glance between her remaining traveling partner and the corpse of the girl she had woken up alongside. It didn't seem that long ago in the grand scheme of things, only four to five days. But they had seen and done so many things Jessica wished they'd never seen or done. Moving forward without Bekah felt strange and scary. As much as one could be she was the leader of their trio, due to a combination of both Jessica's own disengagement from the situation and Beatrice's general flightiness. Bekah had been the only one able to keep them moving through the storm they found themselves in and now they had lost their sails and rudder in one moment.

Jessica looked at Beatrice once again, taking in the face of the lost lamb before sighing and crouching down. Placing the gun to one side, she pulled her backpack off her shoulders and opened it, looking for the first aid kit. She didn't want to disturb Rebekah, it didn't seem like a fair thing to do. But that train of thought also implied there was any fairness on the island. There had certainly not been any fairness for Miach. So Jessica found herself unclipping the latches and flipping the lid open. She was looking for a specific item, or tool to help with her idea.

"I think," She began, lightly sliding a hand across some bandaid packages to move them out of the way. "We can take something." She continued, plucking the safety scissors out from under the avalanche of general first aid debris, along with some adhesive tape. The tape was left to one side as she didn't need it right away, but she took the scissors and approached Rebekah.

Crouching down in front of her lifeless friend Jessica steadied her breathing and reached out to take hold of some of Rebekah's hair. Her hand lightly brushed against Bekah's ice-cold cheek, causing Jessica to flinch away as if she'd touched a hot stove but on the second try she managed to hack off a collection of hair strands.

"Sorry," She whispered to Rebekah as she backed away.

Then taking hold of the tape she tore off a small strip and stuck the clump of hair to the inside of her first aid box.

Once she was done she looked up at Beatrice.

"We can scatter this at the hot springs I guess." She said with no small amount of uncertainty. "Get her there in spirit."

Jessica didn't want to do any of it, but she wanted to keep Beatrice happy, for Rebekah's sake.

"Alright," She said, standing up. "Let's uh let's go."

((Jessica Romero continued in Don't Sing))

[Pippi]

“I’ll uh… just be a second.”

She nodded at Jessica as the other girl got to her feet. She tried to offer her something of a smile as well, but that was something she had never been good at faking, and she certainly wasn’t in a good enough state of mind to push herself past her usual abilities; not in this area, at least. She couldn’t actually tell whether she’d managed to move her facial features one bit. All she could do was hope that Jessica would trust her, and wait for her.

“I’ll catch up to you on, um, the road, okay?”

It felt uncomfortable, doing this. The words came from her mouth naturally enough; there was no deception or falsehoods in what she was saying at all. Lies always got blocked in her throat, before they could even threaten to come out. She still couldn’t quite tell whether what she was planning on doing was actually wrong, though. Another question that had no definitive right answer, and no straightforward path of even getting to that answer besides.

She liked Jessica’s plan, just to be absolutely clear. The idea of taking some of her hair with them, letting it scatter among the rocks of the hot spring, let some part of her rest there eternally at peace - she thought, though obviously couldn’t say for certain, that Rebekah would have liked that as well. It was just difficult for Beatrice to conceptualise her no longer being with them after that point. It didn’t feel right. She had been something of a rock for Beatrice, a figurehead. She needed part of her to remain in close proximity.

She knew that at some point, she had to feel that same closeness to Jessica, that same strength, that same level of fortitude. She would do all she could to make sure that happened. And maybe then, by doing this, she could guarantee she could let go and ensure some measure of closure.

Her hands gently found purchase on the Snuggie, trying to avoid pressing against the blood coating the front of it, to limited success. It was impossible for her to be delicate; she wasn’t built that way. Blood had already coated her fingertips, making her skin crawl, every part of her body urging her to flinch away and leave without a second thought.

But she remained. She would be strong, and she would be brave, in whatever form that needed to take at any given moment.

She still had to divert her eyes away from Rebekah’s torso, as she unwrapped the fabric from around her body, trying not to breathe in the scent of blood, that looming monster of red on white always lurking in the back of her mind. The whole process took longer than she wanted, thanks to that, Beatrice trying to juggle urgently getting the Snuggie into her hands, with avoiding glimpsing at the bloodshed, with frantically hoping that Jessica wasn’t starting to wonder what the cause of the holdup was.

Eventually, though, she had the blanket bundled up in her arms. Soon enough, it was transferred into her bag, bloodstain in the middle of the heap, pushed down enough that it wasn’t overflowing out of the top of her pack. She took a glance at Rebekah’s own belongings for just a moment. The thought of taking anything never seriously crossed her mind, though. Even just taking this felt like she had defiled something sacred, in a way.

She still didn’t feel comfortable with it jostling along right behind her, as she went to rejoin up with Jessica. But she didn’t know whether she would have felt worse, abandoning Rebekah by the side of the road, nothing left to keep her part of the group.

There were no easy answers. There never would be, anymore.

((Beatrice Briggs continued in Don't Sing))