Disclaimer: Nope. Nothing. Not a thing. Cheers.

A/N: Well, we made it! It's taken us what, five years or so to get to this point, but this is the final chapter. Hopefully it ties things up for anyone who has stayed with me through the unnecessarily long time it took me to get this whole thing posted. On that note, I'm going to throw my shoutouts in this note up here because I find nothing kills the moment like a rambling author's note in the bottom margin of a story, and I'm really proud of this ending and I don't want to murder it. Thanks so much to anyone and everyone who reviewed this story, who left me critiques or constructive criticism or just a "good job" at the right moment to inspire me to throw another chapter up on this link. You guys have saved this story, and I hope it was worth it to you. I know it was to me. But I think we've all learned our lesson here, haven't we? If you have the attention span of a fourth grader, stick to one-shots. You get on people's nerves way less that way. Well, I think the best way to thank anyone still hanging out wondering what I have to say is to let you read the final (sniff, sniff, tear slightly) installment in this relatively epic project of mine entitled, perhaps not particularly creatively, Through Their Eyes. Enjoy, or at least experience, and one last time, this is RebelFaerie, signing out.

-Author does a little dance at having actually finished something longer than 5,000 words, stops, looks around a little self-consciously, and resumes posting the chapter, which was really the whole point in the first place-

Epilogue:

Doc:

Flashes of Light

"One night I fell asleep

I woke up on that sunny street

At first I thought I couldn't, but now I see

That the shadows kept me hidden from the light that calls my name

All the creatures stood above me, now I'm crawling towards the sun"

The Hush Sound, Crawling Towards The Sun

"Making out their shapes, focus on their frames, can you hear them?

Now you're on your feet, floating in the sea, pins and needles...

All your plans and all your reveries stagger on

While your tin gods are left behind."

Black Gold, Plans & Reveries

There are some things you just don't forget, no matter how much time passes. Some things explode on the scene with the force of an H-bomb, and they burn with a white-hot light so bright you see it even when you close your eyes. It's not even so much a memory, exactly. I still see the summer of 1950 when I close my eyes. And I have to ask myself, if I saw then the same scene I can't quit seeing now, what could I have done to stop it? What should I have done? How much of it is my fault, or theirs, or anyone's fault?

Sometimes I think I see them out the front window of my store, when I look up over the counter at the snow-covered street view, seeing them owning the world with that walk-tall swagger. I think that any second now Tony's gonna bust right in through that door, talking a mile a minute about this dream he had where I and him and his sister were flying over the streets of Paris and I got myself eaten by a flock of geese. He'll go on for hours as he sweeps up the floor of the shop, as I count the money in the register and try to get a word in edgewise to tell him he missed a spot. Sometimes I swear I see Bernardo walking uptown towards the store where his girl Anita worked, his hands in his pockets and carelessly whistling a Spanish lullaby. I see him turn his face to catch the cool Atlantic breeze off the harbor as it drifted through the heavy summer heat. I can see him see the sun behind the clouds of industrial smog, trying to find the clean air behind it all.

I see them more often than I like to admit. I don't know why their ghosts chose me to follow around. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Questions like that keep men up nights. I'd be surprised if it's just me.

It's almost the end of December now. Christmas came and went, the first Christmas in a new world. Everything's changed now. I feel like the world I knew was wiped out with the snow, and now we're just left with a blank page as we try to figure out where to go from here.

Tony's family knew exactly where to go from here, and as time goes by I'm more and more sure they had the right idea. They packed up the apartment into giant corrugated cardboard boxes a month after the funeral and hit the road. I heard they were headed to Vermont, some family friend who'd set up shop three years ago in the Green Mountains. Can't say I blame them; the city hadn't exactly done right by them over the years. I find myself thinking about her face, too, in that time between one and four in the morning where there ain't nothing but me and my thoughts in the dark. The face of a soldier's mother listening to a 21-gun salute, it's hard to describe, harder to think about. I can't think about it.

Anyway, they're gone. And the rest of us, we linger. Anita moved in with Maria after... after it happened. I think the empty apartment full of broken plates must be haunted for her the way the streets are with me, only worse. Maybe she sees his proud, powerful black eyes in his sister's face. I don't know. It's a situation I don't like to pry into. She's stopped coming around the store, or this whole side of town, really. Mostly she sits on the rooftop of Maria's apartment building, listening to a record player play a soft cha-cha record that was Bernardo's favorite. Maria tells me she sits there all through the night, her hands loosely folded in her lap and an envelope with a boat ticket in her fingers. This has been going on for weeks now. Time's gotta be running out. But Lord only knows how she's going to make a decision.

Maria comes round all the time, mostly just to talk. She knows I and Tony was close, and when Anita goes quiet and stares out at the stars she wants me to tell her stories about him. And I close the shop for an hour, business and profit be damned, and I do. I tell her about Tony as I knew him, the boy built more from hopes and dreams than bones and blood. I tell stories that mean nothing and yet everything, the stories of the best goddamn skywriting that hands over the street with Tony still lingering out there admiring the evenness of the letters, about the day Tony quit the Jets, about the day I met him. As I talk I can see her building a monument in her mind, an immortal memory of the love and goodness and perfection that was her Tony and will always be her Tony so long as she's alive to remember him. I leave stuff out, but I never, ever lie to the girl. She wants to remember him as she knew him, a perfect dream she woke up from too soon. I figure I can at least let her have that. She's dealing. She's a strong girl. She'll be all right, with some time. Never perfect, never the same, but all right.

I don't know if I'd recognize Anybodys if I hadn't watched her change right in front of me. Sorry, not Anybodys. Guess I gotta call her Alison now. She and Maria started talking at first the way I did, just reminiscing and exploring and trying to make some sense of it all. It's different now, though. Anbodys ain't never had any friends that was girls, but it's done her good. She swears less now, and she wears her hair down maybe once a week. I saw her wearing a dress on Christmas. I didn't tell anyone; she's got a rep to protect and I respect that, but I'm telling you now, it was an honest-to-Christ dress. Floral print and everything. I wouldn't make this stuff up. Yeah, she still throws in some choice words when she talks to Action, she still smokes like a chimney, but it seems like she's got less to prove now. Maybe she's seen what comes from trying to walk tall.

Christmas Eve, I found out that Maxwell Schrank retired from the Manhattan Police Department. He's at a temp agency now, answering phone calls and trying to sell something nobody needs.

It ain't all bad round these parts, though. There's light through the clouds. Chino and Estella had their baby boy on the seventh of November, and a prouder parent I ain't never seen. That day he never left his girl's side, watching every movement of those tiny little hands and feet like he was watching the Second Coming. He'd tell anyone who listened about the kid's every move, not that first day only but for months on end. I was on the receiving end of the five minute speech on Baby's First Smile. Estella was proud too, but in a quieter way, more of a glow than a spontaneous explosion. I've seen the kid, too. Cute. They named him Bernardo.

When one person comes, seems like another one's gotta leave. Riff got picked up from my back room where he'd been staying a few days by the black Lincoln of a social worker. For him it was either leave the city and stay with a cousin or get pushed into the foster system for the year until he turned eighteen, which really wasn't much of a choice. He said goodbye to his boys and his girl and rolled off outta Manhattan the week after the funeral. I ain't sure suburban living's what ol' Riff was cut out for. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure the rules and the sameness and the empty space are killing him. He's been writing to Graziella twice a week since then, first in someone else's neater handwriting like he was dictating, then later in his own jerky hand, with less and less misspellings every time. The boy's trying, I'll give him that. Graz brought a few of the letters by for me to read, and I gave her a few suggestions for life lessons to include as postscripts to her responses. He's set to come back on the 27th of February, on his eighteenth birthday. I'm putting good money down that him and Graziellla will be married by the 28th. Kids don't commit to much these days, but when they do they hold on tight and don't let go.

And then there's the rest of us trying to get by. Sharks and Jets alike, they're all on their own now, no one left to lead them or tell them what's right and what's worth fighting for and what's worth dying for. That's something they've got to figure out for themselves now, and I'm seeing different answers in everyone's eyes. Action broke every window in his mother's house on September 2nd with a baseball bat before hitting the road. I think he's in juvie for six months or so, but that's hearsay. Toro disappeared not long after that without a trace, without a hint of where he was going, all his clothes and books and his porcelain figure of the Virgin Mary exactly where they'd always been in his apartment like they was waiting for him to come back. The only sign he'd gone at all was a note he'd left for his girl, half a piece of paper that said simply, "I am so sorry." Yeah, Toro. Ain't we all.

Some boys have to fight just to fight. They weren't raised to know there was anything else. Others found something else to fight for. A-Rab and Pauline, Indio and Rosalia, they're joining in with Chino and Estella, with Riff and Graziella. If you're gonna fight (and what's life without a little bit of fight in it?), you've gotta fight for love. It don't always work out, we're living with the ghostly proof of that, but at least then you can go down with your head held high.

And then, I guess, there's me. The shop's colder than I remember it being in a long time. Maybe I forgot to pay the heating bill, but I can't believe something like that would slip my mind. My breath escapes me in a visible smoky cloud as I count the money in the register, shuffling fives and calculating the day's profit. Not too bad, actually. Lots of loaded businessmen been dropping in for coffee on cold days like this, and being loaded they don't know enough to tell I'm charging 'em a 300% markup rate. Maybe I'll have my new assistant check out the place's heat when he comes in tomorrow.

Yeah, my new assistant. Turns out I'm getting a little older than I thought. I could use a hand with the moving and the pushing and the heavy lifting. Baby John will be coming round tomorrow morning, dull-eyed and half-asleep, ready to earn his minimum wage. I figure by the end of two weeks I'll be able to open his eyes some, wake him up a little bit. Maybe I can make some kind of difference.

This time.