Night fell, and the three prepared a funeral without a body to bury. It was too dangerous to return to Anna's house to retrieve it, as Ash knew that would be the first place Permafrost and his people would be watching to see if they had returned. Dan and Anna had taken some stones and fashioned them into a crude monument, and Ash had dug up an old notebook from the house they were currently hiding in, to put Dr. Carpenter's name on it. It wouldn't be much, and would almost certainly suffer water damage, even through the stiff, degraded plastic bag she had managed to scavenge, but it was more than nothing. And given their record at the moment, more than nothing would have to suffice.
They stood around the monument awkwardly, each internally daring the others to be the first one to speak, none wanting to disturb the cold silence. Ash was the first one to break the quiet. "I didn't know her very well," she said. "Honestly, she scared the Calamity out of me. But she was brave. Until the end. I wish there were more people still like her." But they had all died for that bravery, or been scared out of their courage. Or worse, became that which they should've been defying. Became like her.
The others stared at her, surprised at what she had said. "Sorry. I don't do speeches very well."
Anna was the next to speak. Her voice was hoarse, cut by the sharp edges of Calamity's darkness and all that had happened, and static hung in the air, heavy and oppressive. "I could've done more," she said. "I should've done more to save her. I had the power to do it, why in Calamity's fires didn't I?"
Ash's heart sunk. The heavy static in the air told her exactly what she thought "more" was. "That would've been throwing your life away," Ash said. "Or it could've been even worse than that." Not that "worse" was out of the question even now.
"Ash, you weren't the one whose aunt just died. And I don't think you'll ever get that sometimes you need to make sacrifices if you want to save the people you love."
"Excuse me, wasn't I the one who jumped in front of you a couple of weeks ago? Anyway. That isn't the point. Some sacrifices are too big to be made. Trust me." The static grew more oppressive, to the point where the air felt thick and hard to breathe, and Ash could feel hairs sticking up on her arms. Anna, no, she thought.
"You don't get to say where I should go," Anna said. "Why should you be the only one who gets to use their powers?"
Because she knew a bit more of control. Because she found her limits the hard way. Over and over again, until the blood from them became too much to bear. Because the Reckoners were there. And because, win or lose, Ash knew how this was going to end. But she said none of that. Some secrets had to be kept. "I-"Ash started.
"Whatever you have to say, I don't care," Anna said. Her words cut like knives, knives that not even Ash could heal from. "Honestly, with how much you've been disrespecting me, I have no idea why I even listened to you in the first place. Why I even trusted you." She glanced down at her wrist, and in a quick motion, ripped off the hand-carved Faithful bracelet she had so lovingly made earlier, and threw it down on the snow. Her eyes were like cold fire, like those of any Epic Ash had seen before. But it hit different on her face, felt so alien to the Anna she had known. So wrong.
"Anna, no," Dan said. His voice was soft, wavering as if every word took great effort to break through the all-encompassing static. "You're scaring me."
"I. Don't. Care," Anna spat. "You should be grateful for all that I've sacrificed for you. All that I'm going to sacrifice for you." The static around her grew in intensity, and even the cold itself seemed to shy away in fear of it.
Ash looked down at her hands and saw sparks, tiny but each most likely containing deadly amounts of current, dancing between her fingers. Ash felt oddly resigned. Even as Ash had worried about how much time she would have left before the fires returned to claim her, the number on Anna's clock was even lower. And, it would appear, it had reached zero. Anna raised her hand, crackling with sparks, and faced Dan. "I really wish I didn't have to do this, but you're in my way," she said. Her voice, though full of fire, held no warmth.
Before her hand could make contact, Ash pushed Dan out of the way, knocking him to the ground, and took the full force of the blow in her chest. Her whole body seized from the impact of the electricity, and she could only watch as Anna stared at her with those cold, hateful eyes that somehow did not seem to belong to her. Her heart skipped a beat, struggling from the impact of the electricity that still echoed in her chest.
"You were weak," she said. "When you fell, and again, when you turned away from all you could do. I will be greater than you ever could be."
As Anna turned and left, Ash's heart stopped.
