Author's Note: Right after I wrote this I wasn't sure if it was completely awful or great. I have decided that I'm ambivalent about this, but it was very cathartic to write it. If you feel like this is a good place for the story to end, well, it is. The next two chapters are actually a sister story called "Always Enough." This can stand on its own, or you can continue on this little adventure of mine.

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Ennis slouched against the hollowed out log, the chipped ceramic urn placed carefully on his left. The sky was brilliantly clear, and Ennis remembered how Jack had said he could drown looking up into a day like this. The river ran swift and strong, its steady murmur a balm to Ennis's dry soul. Everywhere he looked on this mountain he found the shadows of Jack, the lopsided smile and playful laugh, faded imprints of their joy so fierce it had been etched into the landscape.

Ennis glanced at the urn, his gaze creeping back up to the sky. "Jack… I had a lot a time to think about what I wanted a tell you. But now that I'm here, it don't seem to matter. We both know that I done wrong by you, and I sure ain't the only one." Ennis rose, walked to the banks of the river, needing the distance, the safety that came with physical space.

"Truth is, Jack… you're enough to drive a man crazy. I reckon you knew, it, too. Afore I left your mamma's place, I gone to your daddy's headstone and, well… you can see what I done." He scruffed his boot in the grass, the cracked tip ripping a few pieces from the earth. He muttered something about how much new boots would cost him. "Shit, friend. All I can think about is how I wish you was here to keep makin' me howl at the moon. Go figger."

Ennis walked back to the urn, crouched low to pick it up, and brought it to the river's edge. He held it with reverence, closing his eyes when they could not contain his sorrow. His shoulders shook with silent agony, his breathing hitched at he tried to gain control. When he was on the verge of losing his control, he felt a familiar warmth against his back, the faint impression of an arm around his shoulder, a slight coarseness against his cheek, the lingering strains of melody that hummed deep in his bones. That lullaby he had taught Jack all those years ago. And the words slipped out, the words that Ennis had never said to Alma nor to his daughters, that he had been afraid to say even to himself. They were as natural as breathing, as true as life.

Earth to earth.

Breathing deep, he released the ashes to the wind and water, giving Jack back to the earth, back to the Mountain they had never left.

Ashes to ashes.

He floated on the breeze, danced in the water. And as he disappeared, he seemed to be asking Ennis with the patience of the earth and the sky, Won't you join me?

Dust to dust.

"I'm already here, friend. Just waitin' for this old body a mine to catch up with the rest a me."

Ennis left Brokeback that day with a measure of peace in his weary heart. He had found no answers, no new beginnings, but he let go of just enough to lighten his burden, to last him until his final day.

It was finally enough to fill the space between what he knew and what he tried to believe.