Hallelujah
-A/N: HA HA oh man it's been forever since I updated. Also not even the same fandom, sorry guys.
It's pretty surreal, being dead. I used to think that maybe there was a Heaven; a place for rest and rebirth, if you were lucky. And maybe it does exist, for those pure enough to snag that golden ticket. But what I do know, is that dying didn't give me any supernatural wisdom or answers about the meaning of life- just a vision of my mother that was gone way too soon.
Maybe this was my punishment for Will, and all the nameless people I had hurt or wronged along the way, to watch as the blood pools underneath the body I used to occupy. I can only watch quietly, sure that I should be feeling something, anything, but all I can think about is how small and insignificant my body looks in that moment. Had I really thought myself a soldier at a measly 16 years old? But it was better this way, anyway; I don't think I could have forgiven myself, knowing now that David had been beyond the door.
When the blood edges up too close to my feet, I can only imagine Caleb's body instead of mine riddled with bullet holes, and I take an involuntary step backwards- and stumble as my surroundings begin to shift erratically.
When it stops, I am standing in a morgue, next to a table with my body on it. There may be a Heaven, for some people, but I have obviously not gotten in. Because the reality of what has happened, and who I have left behind, hits me like a ton of bricks when I see him. It's easy to not care about your own death.
It is infinitely harder not to care about the other people who have to deal with it.
Those wide, disbelieving blue eyes stare at my body on that cold metal table. Someone has cleaned my body up, carefully scrubbed away every speck of red and brushed out my blonde hair, but I am too stunned to feel grateful. I had done it again, I had put that awful look on his face. Although I honestly hadn't meant to this time, the reality is that I had done it again- and my mother hadn't been around to save the day, not this time. I'd been so sure I could resist the Death Serum, and if I could just get through it, we would win. What a cruel joke for David to be on the other side. My story wasn't supposed to end with my body on a table, it wasn't supposed to end at all... not yet. I guess I should have known better; war is not a game that can be won without consequence.
I can only watch helplessly as he grasps my hand, and I can almost feel the ghost sensation of it, his knuckles going white as he squeezes. His too-bright eyes search my face for a moment, before they close abruptly, and he chokes back the tears that want to fall. I can't stop myself from reaching out desperately as his knees buckle beneath him, but time moves strangely in this place after death, and the world is shifting around me again.
I stumble again, disoriented, as the compound's walls crumble around me only to rise up again, this time in the lobby.
Tobias sits in the middle, and it's me choking back tears this time. He doesn't look like he has been sleeping, those fiery eyes that I remember are gone, replaced by a desolation I wish I didn't have to see. His shoulders are slumped, defeated, but before I can go to him for all the good that it will do, I see movement.
Cara sits down next to him, and he flinches away from her, but she says nothing. He is wound up tighter than a spring when he finally speaks, his voice rough, "You don't have to stay."
"I don't have anywhere to be," She says softly, "And the quiet is nice."
He doesn't reply, but relief floods through me as the world around me disappears again, because although I can't be there for him... My mother was right, other people will be.
This time, I'm... falling?
No- flying!
The weightlessness is startling at first, but I can't help the overwhelming feeling of freedom that engulfs me. The wind whips my hair around obnoxiously, and whistles in my ears, but what I see makes me smile.
Tobias looks terrified as he speeds through the air on the zip-line, an urn trailing ash through the air behind him. He is screaming, and I can't stop the helpless, slightly hysterical laughter that bubbles forth; he looks so much better than the last time I saw him, scared as he is. I don't know how much time has passed, but if I thought he had been handsome before, he has only gotten better with age; and when he opens his eyes, I feel a surge of hope. I can see it clearly; he understands, much as I did my first time on the zip-line, how it is to fly.
It doesn't take a genius to piece two and two together, and a bittersweet feeling rises in my chest, because I can see that this is for me- to let me go. It may have only been moments for me, but it has obviously been a while for him.
And perhaps I do have a little supernatural wisdom gained from dying, because I can feel that this is the last I'll see of Tobias- at least in this 'life.' And as the last of the ashes swirl away in the breeze, tugging me with it, I understand why I was allowed to see this, whatever it was; Tobias was not the only one who needed to let go.
Before the world disappears around me for the last time, I see Tobias untie himself from the zip-line, and fall into the circle of arms and hands joined beneath him.