cascade | kotlc

30. Rewind: Dropoff

Was this how June felt when she stood in that plane, facing Mount Everest, ready to sacrifice herself for her friends?

Fitz closed his eyes, reading his own mind, studying his thoughts back and forth, leaving no stone unturned. Right now everything in his mind was a jumble of emotions, pain, mostly, sadness, and also a strange sense of peace.

This would be it for him, he thinks.

Faye stares at him, her mouth slightly open. Her sword was still attached to his waist, he hadn't returned it yet, and he probably wouldn't, and her Ace of Spades was lounging between her fingers.

Tick-tock. The sound is almost a restful lullaby, singing to him with all the content in the world. He can feel his muscles relaxing, losing their tension and all the pain they've ever held. It is like he was preparing to fall asleep.

"You can't," Faye repeats, her expression shocked and grey as mausoleum stone. "June. June will- I don't even know. But you have to think of her."

He opens his eyes, then closes them again, contemplating his emotions.

Tick, and June is there, standing before him with her pretty face, and her windswept hair and light pink lips, that sweet smile adorned on her face and those intertwined fingers; tick and June is there, laughing to his words, leaning against his shoulder and providing him a warmth only the wind can bring, sweet, aromatic, everything that reminded him of summer.

"You can't," Faye begs, again, and her eyes are brimming with tears. He just smiles, walking to her and placing his hand on her shoulder.

Something makes him smile again, as "Be safe," he whispers to her ear, before he pulls away and smiles at everything. Just before death, everything seemed so pretty, strangely utopian in this situation.

"How are you doing this?" Faye asks, half-broken, her eyes sparking with electricity erupting from a field of fireworks. "Think of June. Please."

He laughs now. "June would do this for me," slips from his mouth, and he leans against the door of the airplane, smiling at the wind.

Faye is trembling, quivering more than a circuit component with ten thousand volts running through it. "And you'd be okay with knowing she died for you?" she says, seemingly unable to believe anything.

"I would be happy in knowing that this is what she would want."

"I can't believe it," Faye mutters, as if she'd seen something insane. Her laughs are hitched on something high, almost squeaking an indescribable pitch. "No, you can't be- you can't be. You can't be- doing this."

He smiles, yet again, so many times he cannot count. "Yes, I can."

"How?" Faye nearly screams, shuddering, like she was trapped in a blizzard with no warmth or protection. "How?"

"Let me tell you a story," he says. "There once was a man named Theron Ravenscroft. He was a Diviner. He could leap into the future, alter it to his desire. But he could never touch the past, or the present."

Faye is still shaking, her presence almost intimidating like lightning, but the flashes of shock over her face are fleeting, swiftly disappearing under a thundercloud. "Who? I don't- what?"

"Theron Ravenscroft seemed invincible. He knew when he would die, after all! It was simple for him to change his destiny, replace his fate and rewrite some other fantasy for him to live. The future is brittle, bendable, easily manipulated. The past, not so much."

He glanced at his palm, glowing white-hot with gold. "What I've come to learn is that we cannot escape the past. We may deny it, we may attack it, we may censor it and wipe it from the history books or store it in some inaccessible cache. Or we may embrace it. Live with it. Learn from it. Perhaps we can find condolences in the past itself."