What can I say about dying? It's not so bad, really. It was my time, finally, and when my time came, it was…well, my time to leave.
People come and go all the time—ninety nine percent of those cases, they're alive and you still never see them again. They're just gone—like people who go missing in horror stories.
Stories don't always have happy endings—mine most certainly did not. But in a way, I felt it wouldn't have been right any other way. I'd nearly died hundreds of times and fake-died three different times (once when I was in that Isolation Tank, when I was trying to save the Flock, and once when I became Diane instead of Max), so I felt that it was only right that I actually die.
Maybe if I'd been just a bit different, everything would have ended in…well, a different way.
I wouldn't have died this way, and I wouldn't have to watch everything slowly unravel and reweave.
Everyone forced themselves to move on. I know they didn't want to dwell on what was past—I'd taught them that personally—but when you remove everything that reminds you , even your names, that's just avoiding the subject and therefore being cowardly.
I don't know why I was so important to them—Molly always cared for Lissa more, and Dag for Molly—but losing me, it hit them hard.
Juju went through the wipe. She doesn't remember Lightning or Itex, doesn't remember me or Stephen or Molly or Dag…even her best friends, Gazzy, Mal, Angel and Ben. The only thing she ever remembers now is Leah Samuels, the normal, non-mutant, human girl she became. She now lives in Canada, with her new life and family.
When she was seventeen, she gave birth to two children—Julia and Lewis. The father of her children was her boyfriend of two years, Stephen Young.
Maybe she did remember some of who she was. I'd like to think so, since she wears the ring Stephen gave her around her neck. But she thinks it's a purity ring. Even so, it's still important to her.
When she turned eighteen, she married Stephen and they lived in Quebec for two years, before moving themselves and the twins to Lanigan, Canada.
She worked as a secretary while Stephen ran a construction company. Last I checked in on them, they'd had their third and fourth children, Diane and Ricky.
Juju's first Stephen also went through the wipe, although he didn't need it so much as Juju apparently did. Like Juju, he lives in Canada, although his home is in Victoria. When he woke up, he thought he was Victor Ruling, and he wasn't sure why he had two rings in his hand. But for some reason, he absolutely loved the silver and gold ring, like Juju.
Molly and Dag did divorce—Dag moved to Alaska, where he runs a military base, as second in command, of course. Never first in command. I think he remembered when he and Molly became the firsts and the pressure became too much. He had a girlfriend for a while, but the two of them broke up mutually for reasons I didn't quite understand. Something about her being allergic to dog hair.
Molly adopted Ben and Mal, since she somehow knew that was I wanted her to do. The three of them moved to Colorado with the Flock, and they built a house about a mile away from the E-house. Eventually, Molly got married again, to a man named Will Mayfield.
She worked as a computer consultant and a kindergarten teacher for six years after Lightning formally disbanded, before she became the mother of three of her own children—three very cute boys. I think she was finally happy because they kids gave her someone to worry over. She kept teaching even after her kids were born.
Dag and Molly kept in touch, and while they certainly don't love each other like they once did, they're definitely best friends and confidants. It was like me and Iggy. The possibility was there, but it was about as likely to happen as me coming back to life.
When Will died in a car crash, Dag was the first one there to comfort Molly, and they wound up getting remarried. I wasn't sure why, but they were happy together, so no one interfered with that.
Both Ben and Mal changed their names—Legally, they're Amanda Grace O'Brien and Rebecca Mallory O'Brien.
Or Rebecca Mallory O'Brien-Rise, now.
When they got married, Mal was twenty. Ben was sixteen.
As for the rest of the Flock…well, stuff happened. Nudge finally got her wish—she underwent the wipe, along with Juju. She lives in Europe and works as a model.
Fang...Fang never really did recover. Sure, he put on a good face and he even got married to another girl who was his soulmate as well (people never have just one, you know. If you did, the whole world would be totally messed up), but if anyone mentioned the name Max or Di, he flipped.
Iggy eventually went on and became the first televised blind chef—and his show is a hit, lemme tell you! But before that, he was a firefighter, one of the first blind ones, ever. He taught the world that being blind isn't a hindrance, but instead a gift. According to him, the world is very different from what you can see and that there is so much you can learn from a blind or deaf child.
Gazzy, as you know, married Mal and went on to have a…strange life, to put it nicely. He works as an FBI agent, as does Mal, so they both moved to DC. As far as I know, they're still living there happily.
The last member of the Flock, Angel. Angel smacked some sense into everyone. She was the one who let go the easiest. Why? I don't know. Maybe because she'd read my mind and knew what I wanted her to do.
Angel moved to Arizona with Ella and Mom. Since she was so smart, she graduated high school at the tender age of twelve (right about when I died) and whizzed through college. At fifteen, she was working with Mom in her veterinary practice. Ella joined them after she graduated college—at a normal pace.
.
All of them moved on, and I'm proud of them. I'm proud to have known them, and I'm proud to have been parts of their lives.
The world knows each and every one of them as a normal person, but each of them has a past they either want to return to or forget completely.
I'm part of that past.
Of course, most of them chose to let the past go, while one of them decided to remember everything.
Eight years after my life officially ended, one last, final event happened.
.
Eighteen year old Benevolence Zeta-Rho stepped out of the small car and slung her tote over her shoulder.
She looked up to the sky and saw it was the same blue it had always been. She didn't know why, but she'd thought everything would have been different, now that she was older.
The old Base looked much the same, except for the slightly peeling paint. Ben smiled slightly and started forward, remembering the bumps of the asphalt and the windows where she'd played hopscotch and practiced her left-side kicks.
A stained patch of concrete was where Mal had accidentally knocked out an Ocean kid and cracked their skull. The kid was fine, but they never did get the blood out. Three feet away, splatters of paint decorate the sidewalk from various projects and decorations.
She stepped up to the once-imposing double doors that were worn with time and disuse. Her fingers flickered over the letters J, M and B before pushing the door open with an eerie creak.
Her footsteps are light over the dirty floor, leaving small prints in the undisturbed dust. She's amazed that no one's dared to visit in the past seven and a half years.
Sunlight filtered into the grand room from dusty skylights seven stories up. The various balconies looked down on her, and Ben closed her eyes tightly against the memories of when they were filled with people of every size, shape and color, all wearing red or blue or green.
She kept going, and noticed that the furniture in every room she passed through was fine, albeit dusty. The paint on the walls was faded, but it was still neatly done and not peeling.
Moving slowly, remembering everything that had happened in these rooms in the years before, she noticed the little things that had changed and the smaller things that had stayed the same.
Eventually, she reached a room on the fifth floor, one with a smooth wooden door, burnt just a bit at the edges, with a bronze plaque with three names in imposing letters.
DIANE MUMIXAM
MOLLY O'BRIAN
GIRASOL DE LOS REYES
She gently pushed it open, and stepped into the room lit with dusty sunlight.
Nothing had changed here, nothing since the day Gira had committed suicide.
Gira's bed was still rumpled and my photos still stuck to the walls. Molly's bed was as neatly made as ever, and each of the three colors vividly stood out even with the decade of disuse.
Ben stepped gingerly over the floor—it really was quite dusty—and picked up the camera that Di had so valued in her life on Earth.
She unzipped the case and pulled out the camera, turning it on with the flip of a switch. The starting tune was startling loud in the almost silent space, and the pictures started flickering across the small screen.
These pictures were obviously taken when no one was watching, because she saw a black and white image of two hands that we obviously Juju and Stephen's based on the rings, a snapshot of her ten year old self laughing with a full-out grin.
Then another picture flickered into being. It was a self-portrait of Di. Ben gasped when she saw it—it was Di looking at a mirror, crying, while the camera around her neck flashed, snapping an eternal image.
It was the last picture anyone had of Di, and Ben was the first one to ever see it.
The next photo was one of a note, and she had to manipulate the zoom to be able to read it.
Read the journals. Boxes under my bed.
It was odd, seeing a picture of a note, but Ben shrugged and dragged out three boxes. One was filled with spiral notebooks, one with thick leather-bound journals and the last with various scraps and sheets of paper.
She picked up a spiral bound notebook that she recognized and opened it. Her own childish scrawl smattered across the pages, never quite straight, but still there. She set it down and grabbed a leather one. Mart's meticulous print marched across the pages in razor straight lines. The next one was a pink paisley one. Molly's cursive wove like ribbons across the page.
A solid black notebook was Dag's; a red one with a yellow sunflower was Gira's. The black one streaked with different colors had once belonged to Nudge; the blue one that read "Princess" across the top was filled with Juju's handwriting. For each of the notebooks, there was a different person's handwriting, and when she got to the final book, a thick five inch binder, a neat typed page stared up at her.
The funny thing about imminent death is that it snaps everything right into perspective. Take right now, for instance.
Ben flipped halfway through.
Fang, Iggy and I are all fourteen…Nudge is eleven, roughly…the Gasman is eightish. Angel is somewhere in the six range. I don't know how old Total is, and frankly, what with the calculations of dog years into human years, I don't care…Angel's quick instincts had saved my life. But Total had taken the hit…
She flipped to the last page of the binder, where a blue edged sheet of paper waited. In Max's handwriting, a letter waited.
Dear Ben,
Yes, I know you'll be here. Right now, it's the day I'll die…eight years before you'll ever see this. This whole binder…it's my life story. I know I've told you all the stories, but I thought that maybe it would shed some light on why I died. The last section is particularly interesting. It tells about a woman named Beta…who happens to be alive and made a horrible mistake. I'm sure if you asked Marianna, she would help you track down one Beta Greek…better known to the world as Suzanne Namowitz. And I'm sure that she'd be glad to see one of her babies again.
Honey, it wasn't your fault that everything ended the way it did. It was simply an end, and when you hit the end…it's exactly that. An end. I don't know if there's a heaven or a hell, or if I'm even going to one or the other, but I do know that somehow, I'll be able to watch as you read this letter.
Go ahead. Tell the world. Bust the story open—maybe it's time the world knew exactly what all those mysterious sabotage attacks and explosions were all those years ago. Maybe they're ready.
But they won't be if you aren't. And run this by two people, if you will. One by the name of Fang, the other by the name of your heart. They'll both guide you in the right direction.
Also: The other journals all are part of a series I think you'd like to read. It's called the Lightning Chronicles, and it's a grand tale of how everything weaves and meshes together to reach one final story.
Love, Max.
PS: I know, right? This would have been so much easier without the mutations…and if I'm wrong with what you're thinking by your expression, my bad.
PPS: This will shake a lot of people. Call if a wake-up call if you will.
Ben laughed long and hard. How did everyone miss this?
She would definitely be giving everyone a bit of a wake-up call. Di had always been doing that in her life on Earth.
It was funny to see her do it in death.
.
Heaven was a unique place for me—everyone there was someone who'd died, obviously. I saw Sasha, Gira, Mart and Ricky on a regular basis—dinner at my house on Monday, Sasha's on Wednesday, Gira's on Friday, and the boys co-oped for a Saturday night barbeque. The rest of the time, we'd just pick someone's house and have a potluck.
Yeah, dead people eat.
Other than my four, there were maybe eight children that flickered in and out—children that should have been. Kids from the futures that never happened. On Earth, if we hadn't been Lightning, everything would have been way different, and these children proved it. Every day, there was someone new, and every evening, they'd leave. I don't know why, just that they'd come and go.
And that's the end.
Dead, but not forgotten.
Lost, but remembered.
So, in the end, I say goodbye, and I hope you will all visit again soon. The afterlife is a bit boring, and I've got plenty more stories that have yet to be told.
Good luck with your lives—may they be far more normal than mine!
.
There's the end…*is bawling* I can't believe it's over!
Shout out-CONGRATULATIONS ETTA!!! SHE'S A NATIONAL FENCER! YESYESYESYESYES!
And then I want to thank everyone…and I want to give gratitude to six people.
Shadowleaf264: My wonderful Beta and plot-bouncer who talked me through rough patches, plot holes and put up with my insane ramblings. Also: thank you for smacking me with poisoned food items and a dull foil when I attempted to procrastinate. My gratitude has been given.
Kelsey Goode: My first and one of my most faithful reviewers. My gratitude has been given.
Separate Entiety: Your reviews always encouraged and lightened. Also: You're the only person to have reviewed every single chapter. Much gratitude has been given.
ToxicRain42: Honestly, you're one of the first who I would see whenever I got a review. And you were always so cheerful when you did so. Gratitude given.
Stargazer-Look4Me: Another reviewer who reviewed most of the chapters and one of the first I see when I get a review. Gratitude given.
The last person isn't a usual reviewer, but she is a reviewer than means a lot.
AmyQueen95: Thank you for being bluntly honest with me about writing too fast and losing loose ends and plot twists that I forgot about. Gratitude is given; I hope you accept it.
I want to thank everyone who reviewed, no matter how few times, and I want to give gratitude to everyone who read and subscribed. I want to give gratitude to everyone who stuck with me and give gratitude to everyone who favorited and commented.
Now I will take my final bow, and proceed to vanish.
I wish you laughter, love and luck, and I hope you'll come back and visit sometime!
Sylver Luna