Chapter 7: Found - Present Time

A/N: To be honest, I haven't touched this fic in a long, long time, and I'm so sorry to anyone who is still reading this. I was re reading some old stuff last night, and I found this story, and I was just sad I had never finished it. So here it is, the second last chapter. The last will be up right after. I miss CotT lots, it's a great fandom and I met tons of great friends here, but this is probably my last hurrah.

/ I could live with your ghost if you say that's the most that I'll get /

It was beautiful here, so beautiful. I knew this place, I could feel it somewhere deep inside. It felt so familiar, so real and true. This had to be reality, right? I couldn't have been stabbed, couldn't be dead.

I looked at my chest, down at the green t shirt I was wearing. Odd, I didn't own anything like this at my house. There were no holes in it. I pulled it up, exposing my flesh to the world; goosebumps puckered with the wind.

Wind! Wind! There was no such thing as wind in death. I should know, for I was dead.

Oh, oh. I remembered now. I remembered dying, and Archie -god, his name hurt, even to think-, I remembered the lost souls, and Persephone...

I dropped to my knees, searching, searching for the trigger. I remembered squeezing it, remembered thinking that I could be alive, I could be with Archie.

But he wasn't here, and neither was the trigger.

What in the gods' names had I done?

I scrambled to look around, to see where I was and what had happened. I knew I wasn't in the right place, I knew I wasn't at home with Archie or Theresa in Vancouver. I knew it like I knew the most basic and integral facts about myself: my name is Atlanta, my favourite color is red, I love Archie.

I was somewhere different, somewhere lost. Somewhere more lost and alone and frightening than death had been.

There was a little house, one that called to me, promising comfort and shelter and happiness. There was a pond, and lush green grass. There was a face in the window I recognized, and a part of me demanded to run to it, to sprint and scream and find her and hug her.

"Atlanta!" Her voice was panicked, screaming, shocked. She reached me, fell to her knees beside me. Her arms pulled me into her, and I went, willingly to curl into her shoulder. I was sobbing, I realized.

"Risa, Risa..." I cried. I wanted to tell her everything, tell her about Archie and me and my death. But I could only say her name.

"Atlanta, how did you get here? What's wrong? Where's Archie?" Her voice was stern, the psychologist in her demanding answers. I stared at her, unsure how to answer any of her questions.

"Risa, you were wrong, god, you were so wrong. He wasn't insane, he wasn't cruel or mean... he was mine. Oh god, he was mine."

Her green eyes softened, and she smiled at me, so gently. "I know, sweetheart. I know. And we're gonna find him, we're gonna bring him back to you."

"I love him." I told her this, hearing the sadness, the childlike wonder in my voice. I sounded pathetic, and broken, and unsure.

The words, the promise, the first thing I always remembered, every incarnation, every single time, stung my brain; acid dripping into my body: "We will always be together. I promise I will always love you. No matter what happens."

Theresa nodded. "I know."

/ Where were you, just a little late, you found me? /

"You will never leave me Lanta. I need you. We always have to stick together, now that everyone else is falling apart. I love you."

The words haunted him, sickened him and pained him. How dare he have the mental capacity to remember those words, let alone torture himself with them. Because they were wrong, weren't they? Atlanta had left him, they hadn't stuck together.

And it was all his fault.

Blood coated him, his hands, his face, his hair dyed as red as her's with her blood. Her body was broken and cold beneath his hands, terrible wounds ripping it apart.

He had killed her before, accidentally, and on purpose too, but never this brutally. Never with a knife. Never with her permission.

"Atlanta!" Her name came out of him a whine, a desperate plea.

Damn the gods, damn them. They took everything when they were trying to help. They took her and she was all that mattered.

That's when he realized what he wanted, what he needed.

Archie was going to get the paradise promised to him, even if it wasn't Atlanta. He would have Elysian fields, he would die, permanently. Hell, he didn't want this anymore, this constant hide and seek and pain.

Also, if he died, really died, he wouldn't lose his memories. He would go to Elysian fields and stay and be alright.

The gods though, they were gone; disappeared without a trace centuries ago. Everything was gone, he knew that much at least. But he also knew someone who could tell him where they would be, maybe. Perhaps they were in another world, another realm.

"Herry." He growled, launching himself into the bathroom Atlanta and he had shared for only a few nights. He scrubbed himself clean in the shower, her blood draining in a whirlpool at his feet.

He still felt like it coated him, like her death had sunk into his skin, and become a part of him. It almost had, really. Archie could count her deaths out loud. He had never forgotten a single one, ever. Never forgotten a single moment with her, a single reincarnation, a single word she had ever said.

"I hate you!" She screamed, "Why would I ever love you, ever promise that! What have you done to me, you sick freak? You're a monster!"

Sometimes remembering every word every incarnation had ever said wasn't a blessing. Sometimes Atlanta was too stubborn and independent to even think someone like Archie could be hers. Sometimes she already had people in her life; parents, best friends, once a spouse and a son.

He had loved that incarnation, as he loved all of them, but that one had been different. Sadder, lonelier, more soft and gentle than all the other ones. She had been beautiful, of course, and she could hardly resist the draw of him. None of the incarnations had ever been able to.

Even this one, dead on his floor, couldn't help but look back when she had left the gas station. Couldn't help but meet his eyes. And then the rest was history.

"But why would you marry him? Why would you get married? You were supposed to wait, it was supposed to be me!"

"Archie, sometimes things don't work the way we want. But it is you, it has always been, and will always be you."

Archie shook his head, clearing away that memory. Died, of course, as they all did. Husband killed her in a fit of jealous rage over her affair. Archie killed him for taking away Atlanta again.

Left her son orphaned. He was wealthy, and well taken care of though. Archie had seen to it. No part of Atlanta, no matter how infinitesimal, would ever be unloved.

This incarnation though? Archie sighed, because even the memory of her, only days old, was beautiful. This one would haunt him. So like the original, so brash and wild and beautiful. So independent and proud, but also so willing to love and be his.

She would haunt him, more than most of Atlanta's ever had.

"I love you."

Gods, how that had shocked him. She had sat there, heard his explanation and understood. And then she had said those three words, the three that he hadn't heard in so long. The last time had been the incarnation where she had her heart attack.

The most recent one she had died as a baby. Leukaemia. Damn the gods.

"I love you too." He said this aloud, pulling on a dark sweater and the hood, slipping out the window silently, leaving the brutalized body of the woman he loved.

/ next time I'll be braver, I'll be my own saviour /

It had been weeks, and all I had done was sit on the window ledge. I was starting to look as skeletal as Theresa had before she had settled in with Jay. I barely ate, barely slept, barely spoke. I didn't want to, didn't need to.

Theresa settled beside me. She did this every day, right around this time. I think it was guilt, that made her do it. Maybe I was wrong though, maybe she did care enough to do this. I wouldn't put it past her, this incarnation of her was more like the original than I cared to tell her. So passionate, and caring, and powerful; I knew without a doubt that she would follow Jay into death if he died again.

We wouldn't live through another scream like hers, tearing our worlds apart.

"Atlanta, you need to eat. I don't think he's coming." Theresa's voice was heartbroken. She had told me, only a week ago, that Persephone had been here and said this was our last incarnation. The Fates would intervene no longer, so we were safe from bizarre deaths, and we were immortal, unless of course we were murdered.

She had also told me that all the gateways had been destroyed. Physical ones that is. Like the trigger, that brought me to Theresa.

Why Persephone let me use it baffled me. Why would she let me go to Theresa, when Archie wasn't even here.

This was the line of reasoning that kept me sitting on this window ledge, instead of taking a knife to my wrists as the Original Theresa had so long ago.

They underestimated me, they thought I wouldn't follow Archie into death, but I would. I will.

That is, if he didn't come. But I believed in Persephone. She had to have had a reason. Archie would come.

He had to.

"He will come Theresa. He would never leave me here. He will chase me till the end of the world, and this time, I will let him catch me."

/ you are all I have /