Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Lady Macbeth, Macbeth

In Memoriam

Gravestones.

Dinosaurs aren't humans. They don't know what these mean. Don't know that there's a meal waiting for them beneath the earth. Don't know if they were to dig up my mother's grave, they'd find nothing.

And yet still I come...more than Taylor knows. Have to keep him sweet with our 'daddy-daughter' visits, but still...if I'm living a lie for the sake of the supposedly dead, I'd rather live it alone.

I stare at the dates...born 2113, died Year 4...as in the fourth year of the colony's founding. I suppose it'll be quite some time before gravestones here display dates without 22nd century ones. I suppose having 85,000,000 took a bit too much room. But then...if what I've heard is true...then it won't matter. Memorial Field will be as nothing to those lining the Sixer's pockets. If the dead are lucky, they'll be cremated in the future (not enough room left for graveyards from what I remember). If not, the scavenging dinosaurs will indeed get the meal they're missing out on.

It's when I reflect on this that I'm grateful that my mother's still alive.

I glance back at the colony. A colony of sheep with Taylor as their shepherd...and I don't mean that in a vindictive sense. They're white sheep...clean, despite the pollution of the future. Blissfully ignorant of that future, of what's stirring in it. They don't see past my whitewash, that I'm the black sheep of the lot. I feel that I'm just a step from Lady Macbeth in this regard...I don't have blood on my hands. Not yet at least. But I fear that if...when...the time comes, the whitewash will be inefficient. No amount of washing will remove the spots. How many other graves will I have to visit before this is all over?

Will I be given a grave myself as a 'reward?' Or simply burnt away like sin?

I can't believe an empty grave is getting me to think like this. We're all mortals. This is a different timeline. This isn't Eden, or even a Lost Paradise. Even if humans manage to evolve tens of millions of years from now in this timeline despite our presence, they'll have nothing to find. We try to remember the dead, but only in the short term. In the long term...it's left to worms. Or the Cretaceous equivalent at least.

It's time to go, I realize. The dragonfly will be arriving anytime soon, and as usual, I'll have to load it up with juicy secrets for Mira and her band of rogues. Sighing, I turn away from my mother's grave. The one that's not real.

But at least I can live knowing that my regret is.

A/N

I forget who said it, but I recall the saying that it takes a good writer to produce a twist one didn't see coming, while it takes a great writer to produce a twist one didn't see coming, yet makes the person feel that they should have seen it all along. Giving credit where credit is due, Skye turning out to be the Sixer mole approaches the second category IMO-didn't see it coming, but in light of certain things (accompanying Josh to the Sixers-'travel insurance' perhaps), there were certainly hints. Then again, I was staking my bets on Reynolds originally, so what would I know?

And yes, I'm kind of stretching the imagery of her cutting her hand in Now You See Me with the concept of having blood on your hands, but hey, it allows me to use a Shakespeare quote. Go figure.