Starlight

Epilogue

They were memorials, not funerals. The news made that very clear. To call them funerals would have been to suggest that there were bodies to bury, but that wasn't the case.

The whole town was wiped from the face of the Earth. The people, their hopes and their dreams were all burnt away, leaving no more than ash and blackened buildings.

A ruptured gas line and a meteor and an explosion, the Government said.

For a brief time, the Hatchetfield Disaster became a point of national morbid curiosity. The conspiracy fans began chattering away, and some even got pretty close to the truth of the matter - though none thought to include the singing in their theories.

The nation wept, they promised to remember their dead, and then they promptly forgot.

But Henry Hidgens remembered.

How could he not?

He'd sit in his front room sometimes, years later, listening to his records and absent-mindedly scratching his rescue cat behind the ears. His left arm wasn't up to much anymore, stiff and scarred and numb, but he did his best to play the piano, too. And while he did, he'd re-watch that entire day unfold, like a movie in his mind.

Reunited. Kissing her in his lab. The horrendous decision he'd almost made, and the fire he'd planned to burn, in as atonement for what he now realised were his evils. The blast. The heat of it. Her screams, and the silence, the hospital, and then--

Well. Then the last few years had happened.

Henry knew what really happened to the people of Hatchetfield. So did the other survivors: Emma, Paul and Ted were all someplace else, using new names. They weren't exactly supposed to, but they kept in touch through mail. Alice had just graduated from college. A physics major. Ever the proud and attentive dad, Bill had sent a series of photographs to the Hidgens residence.

PEIP were pretty lax on those rules, especially where Henry was concerned: a perk of working for them, even in his limited capacity.

With his guidance, they had been able to quell the other, smaller outbreaks that smattered the surrounding states. It had been nothing, really - with the main nervous system burned out of Hatchetfield, the hive was in its death-throes already. All he'd done was help Colonel Schaffer put it out of its misery.

In return, he'd been permitted to keep his identity, and was gifted a quaint little house at the edge of some other small town. It made enough sense for him to survive, she had said; he was prepared for the end of the world after all, and it gave the public a feel-good story from the wreckage.

He'd wondered if the slack she cut him was because she was guilty for nearly killing him, but was incredibly grateful for all she had done nonetheless. Her guilt had nothing on his. What was a drop compared to an ocean?

Some days were better than others.

He turned up his nose at the idea of going to a therapist to begin with. Nothing would make him feel better; nothing could help him, he was bad and wrong and he should have died that night. He was sure of it.

But he couldn't keep it all in, and he couldn't blame anyone else for his dysfunction, or expose them to its flame. So, he went. And thank god he did.

Gradually, he began to answer the questions asked of him. He began to share. He admitted his darkest thoughts and his impulsiveness, his anger and his devastation. And while he hadn't yet absolved himself of the guilt - he was sure that he would carry that burden with him until the end of time - he began to use the tools and techniques offered to him. He let others see his pain, and he tried to grow.