disclaimer: You cannot have made it this far without taking note of all the other disclaimers previous to this one. Come on. They were right there. Go back and read them if you want the reminder as to who owns Moonlight. I'm too tired to come up with a coherently witty one for the epilogue.
author's note: And we've found our way to the end. Late again (cough), but on the more cheerful side, Everybody Wants To Rule The World broke 1000 hits! (No, not per chapter. Are you crazy?) I'm astonished but more than a little flattered, even though I know that it's probably just one maniac sitting on a page refreshing constantly to get my hopes up. Thank you for reading and (occasionally) for reviewing! This is the end of the road for this particular fic, since by next episode it'll probably be AU and as much as I love my dead slayers, I'm not all that fond of AU.
Other fics will be up later, though. I have two weeks' worth of unposted material.
Hope you enjoy this last bit!
-
-
-
epilogue
-
-
-
He spends hours fishing the bones of the slayers from the ruins. When he has gathered them all, he has them buried in a churchyard.
It seems only fair.
Afterwards, he paces his apartment restlessly, holding in all the words and brittle strength that would smash everything in sight if only he would allow it. He doesn't try to reason out what he thinks of Coraline's surfacing from death; he's long ago given up on the idea that anything tied to Coraline can be rational. She walks in madness, and it trails contagiously in her path.
He believes in responsibility, in a strict moral code, and in fairness; he always has. But one can't ask someone only clinging to sanity by chance to right her wrongs. It's not fair, and the fact that it isn't leaves him irrationally unbalanced, capable of neither accepting the matter nor of leaving it behind. He's never liked anything he didn't understand, either.
But it wasn't entirely her fault after all. Josef had saved her. And Josef - Josef, he understands. Josef is close and easily blamed, and over the hours, all that helpless rage transmutes into something pure and simple and mindless.
He drives out of the city still drowning in it, a fury that pierces down to the bone. Stalking across the stone bridge in the pond, he finds Josef sitting alone in one of his twisted, fashionable chairs, gazing at the colors the screensavers flash over the ceiling.
For a moment, Mick hates himself for being so easily predicted - Josef, after all, is never alone if he can help it. He's probably arranged the entire scene ahead. Then the thought fades, until he remembers only the sensation of hatred like fuel, a jolt better than blood as it courses beneath his thoughts.
Together they draw the silence to a snapping point before Mick bursts out with the words. "Aren't you even going to try to give me a reason?"
Josef gazes up at him from behind the glass, unrepentant. His hand turns; light glances off the smooth edge and into his eyes. "What, do you want me to explain?"
"Yeah." A beat. "Why'd you save her?"
"Oh." Josef drinks absently. "You wouldn't have? And here I thought you loved her."
Part of the reason he never argues with Josef is because Josef, weighed with centuries of human cunning and business finesse, knows exactly where to hit him. He flinches, but manages after a moment to look Josef square in the eye. "I did."
"Before you realised what she was." He pauses again, sipping theatrically at the blood. "Oh yeah. True love, that."
A memory burns in his veins. "She was going to turn a little girl so that--"
"So that what? Have you even thought about her reasons?"
"What possible reason could be good enough for that?"
Josef laughs up at him. "Think about it, man. She falls in love with something you're supposed to pick out of your teeth. But she doesn't; she decides that she wants an eternity with you. So she turns you. Gives you the chance to live forever--"
"As a murderer."
"People have killed for love before," Josef says. "It's not like you'd have been the first. Anyway, she turns you. And you run from her."
"She made me into a monster."
"Wrong," Josef says, almost sharply. "She made you into what you could be if you'd stop denying yourself and pretending that holier-than-blessed-water attitude is going to get you anywhere."
Mick scoffs, half-laughing without being in the least amused. At last he turns, hands still dangling from his pockets. "That doesn't explain anything."
"I didn't save her," Josef says.
"She says you did."
He tips back the glass and drains it with a sigh. "I gave her the funds to go into hiding until she could heal. That's not saving her; that's an investment."
He almost asks what Josef's investing in. But the answer's obvious: as daring a businessman as Josef is, he likes insurance - to have all his sources backed up. And what better insurance to take out on a brooding detective than the woman who turned him?
"A tip," Josef adds. "If you're going to try to kill a vampire with fire again, make sure that the whole body burns. If you miss the head or the heart--" he clicks between his teeth in a parody of sadness.
"I'll keep that in mind," Mick says tensely. "Thoughts on any vampires I should be killing?"
Josef only looks at him, rapt in silence, without answer.
It's strange, Mick thinks, that this is the first time he's seen Josef do something without solid monetary reasons or personal preferences to back it up. It's almost as if he's operating by some kind of moral code. And it's good, he supposes, that Josef's found something to be moral about, but he hasn't the time to decipher the twisted logic behind Josef's thoughts, and he's not sure that he has the patience to care.
Stripped of words and rage, Mick turns on his heel and leaves for the night.
-
-
-
Beth wakes, cold.
It is late and dark. All of the lights have been shut off, but for one; it shines wanly out of the space reserved as their working domain from behind the corner. She rises to her feet and follows its trail, into the office.
Josh is sitting at the desk, staring tiredly at the clean wood. As she approaches he lifts his head from his hands and smiles at her ruefully in that old familiar way. All at once, the events of the past two days seem distant, unreal: a procession of nightmares on parade. The mad-eyed woman; Richard with his empty, cutting lightness; vampires and slayers destroying each other with fangs and fire.
None of it seems likely with Josh, who is ordinary and smiling and true. "Hey," he says softly. "Didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't." She tucks her hands under her arms. As she comes closer, she sees the cardboard boxes lined neatly beneath the desk, half-full of documents and binders and pictures. "What are you doing?"
"I, uh--" he glances down, then meets her eyes again. "Organizing. Just, uh, organizing some stuff." He reaches out, thumbing her shoulder; his hand is warm on her skin, and out of absent habit she moves into the touch.
Josh looks away. His hand falls. "I called your work," he says abruptly. "When I realised that you hadn't come home. I told them you were missing. You should probably--"
"Yeah, I will. Tomorrow morning." Why, she wonders, does it feel as if they're walking on the edge of a precipice, skirting the borders of something without voice? He hasn't asked her once where she's been, and there's something she cannot read when she looks at him. "Josh, are you sure that you're--"
"If you're going to tell me where you've been," Josh says, "I just want to say that... I don't want to know."
She stares at him blankly; it costs her a moment to understand what he means. "What?"
"You were right. I wasn't treating you like a rational adult. Where you go, what you do... that's all your business. Not mine." He waits, as if for an answer; with none forthcoming, he turns back to the boxes. "I'm just going to..."
"Yeah," Beth manages, and even smiles at him a little, though there's no heart in the gesture. "Sure."
She walks back to the couch and lies down, though she does not - cannot - sleep. She is hardly aware that she is waiting, but she is. All night, she lies awake, eyes open and ears pricked for the tell-tale footsteps, walking out the door with all her certainties.
-
-
-
It would have been easier if, after the expected awkward exchange of thank-you-for-saving-my-life-from-crazed-vampires and you're-welcomes, they never spoke of it again. But what they have isn't easy, so they do. They quarrel, laugh, and peck apart the details of the incident until it crumbles to the subjective faintness of memory.
Later, though, she comes to think of it as a strange kind of symmetry: the end of one phase, and several new beginnings.
-
-
-
the definite end
feedback: is awful. (What, reverse psychology doesn't work?) Well, I was lying. Feedback is always charming and a delight to receive. I just don't reply to it because I'm never sure whether it's appropriate.