In case you missed it in the summary, do NOT read this unless you've read Reached! There are mucho spoilers here! Well, I guess just one or two... but still! Anyway, here we go!
And will we ever
End up together?
No, I think not,
it's never to become.
For I am not the one.
-Sally's Song
There was a time when I put all of my faith in the Pilot. I would imagine him coming on the ocean, tall, smiling, waiting for us to join him in his triumph, his perfection. That is the way I have survived. That image of the Pilot coming on the waters has sustained me.
I am surrounded by blue. I can feel the controls of the plane beneath my hands, see the bright of the sky through the glass in front of me, but I'm not there at all. I'm really in the ocean, bobbing with the waves, the water stealing over my skin like silk and soothing the scorch of my blood.
My body hurts—my nerves are on fire, my bones ache with deep echoes of pain. But I can feel myself smiling. Ky always thought my smile was beautiful. I imagine he is sitting next to me now, looking at me, saying, I'm thinking I'd like to see you smile.
I remember kissing him. I don't feel sorry for it. I don't think he does either.
The ocean is warm. I don't have to swim. Something holds me above the surface so that sunlight touches my cheeks, or maybe that is the heat from the sickness. I look over and Ky is floating with me.
Does he have the Plague too? Is he dying? Or have we both tumbled out of the sky and landed in the sea, and we will float here until the end of the world, together?
Somewhere I can feel the plane moving and I know I'm not in the sea, I'm in the sky, running, running, running until I can't run any farther. Ky can't be here. I am dying. If he is here, that means he's dying, too.
"You are not supposed to be here," I tell him. I am protective of this sea, this place I have stood looking at my whole life, waiting for someone who wouldn't come. "This is my place. I'm the one who found it."
Ky looks at me, and it's strange how he doesn't think anything of the fact that we are floating in the sea together. "All the water in the world can't be yours," he says, as if it should be obvious.
I suppress a smile. I always liked to argue with Ky, when we were in the Canyon, and when we flew together. Now we don't fly together—we sink.
"It is," I tell him. "And the sky. Everything that's blue is mine now." I imagine I'll drift into the blue forever, trapped between water and sky, and I think I'll be happy there.
"The mountains are blue."
"Then they're mine."
Ky looks almost startled at first, and then he starts laughing. I don't know if he really finds it funny, or if he feels as weightless and free as I do in the sea, and he wants to let it go in a burst of beautiful sound. I listen to his laugh. It's one of the things I love about him. I start to laugh, too, even though I don't want to cover his, and I want to reach across the space and take his hand. Even though we are beside each other, he feels far away.
I am leaving. He isn't ready to go yet.
I look at him, suddenly sad. I think of Cassia, who would jump from the top of the Canyon if that was what it took to save Ky. And he would do the same for her. They belong to each other. He's never been mine. He could have been, I tell myself.
I don't know how sick Ky is, but I know he won't be coming with me. I will be going into that world of blue and weightlessness on my own.
I think that's okay.
"I like the ocean," Ky tells me, smiling.
"I always knew you would," I say. I take him in, the changing colors of his blue and green eyes, his smile, the peace on his face. His eyes are blue, I decide. Which makes them mine.
If I take his hand now and pull him with me, what will happen? Will we both die? Or will he hold me up and keep me alive? Will I go still if he is holding onto me?
It doesn't work that way, though. Ky is strong. He could keep me up if he wanted to. But I'm done here, I think. The sea is pulling on me gently, urging me to a place that's strange and familiar at the same time, a place where maybe, just maybe, I can see Ky, and watch him live, and watch him laugh and smile and just be.
"But you can't follow me," I say. I smile at him, the smile he told me makes me look beautiful, and his blue eyes, my eyes, look at me, and I don't think he understands what's really happening, or where we are, but he smiles back, and it makes my heart sing with more joy and lightness than the sea could ever give me.
Death cannot steal him away from me.
I am going down, the surface closes over my head, Ky disappears. I am sinking, down, down, down, to the bottom of the ocean, and a part of me is frightened because I don't know exactly where I'm going. But that's just another part of the adventure, isn't it?
Somewhere, far away, I think I feel myself go rigid, the controls slipping from my hands, as I go still. I draw away from that place, back to the sea, which is still warm and caresses me like a mother welcoming me home.
The sea never did bring me the Pilot like I'd always dreamed. But it's brought me something even better.
Peace.
So as I drift down and darkness that is not quite blue but maybe someday will be swallows me up, I smile, because I know now.
I'm the Pilot. I always have been.
Sure, that whole scene with Ky might have just been a Plague-induced hallucination of his, but I thought it was much sweeter if they both had the same vision. Thanks for reading, and please tell me what you think!